Julia Cameron Quotes

We just don't like the idea of turning the children over to nannies and minders. We like to help them ourselves - and then, of course, we know what to tell them when they ought to do something on their own.

To me, Slow parenting is about bringing balance into the home. Children need to strive and struggle and stretch themselves, but that does not mean childhood should be a race. Slow parents give their children plenty of time and space to explore the world on their own terms.

For me, I want my kids to find their way. If they're interested in something, I want them to try it out.

Being made to feel like an irrelevant child was probably an asset. Benign negligence is not a bad parental attitude or at least a cross between a benevolent dictator and benign negligence - you should just let kids crack on with it.

children once settled and confident can mostly be left, it seems, to manage their difficulties without us. Only what we must do, always and unalterably, is hold their hand firmly in general goodwill, then they themselves seem to deal with their own particular troubles far better than we can.

I have very good advice to give to kids this age, which is, you shouldn't listen to your mum or dad and you just have to work it out for yourself. And the reason I've taken the age range down this year, and I never would have done it 10 years ago, is what I've seen with the success of Willow Smith. You don't have to be so cutesy anymore.

Kids are smart. Knowledge is power. Let them figure things out. Don't turn into that grown-up who they won't come to.

There's a level of protection you need to give to your kids, and then sometimes you need to just let them figure out things on their own.

My own eight children all march to the beat of their inner music, and in some cases, it is definitely far away from what I hear. I've had to honor their instincts and their choices, and merely guided them out of harm's way until they could be their own guides.

All I want, and I think all any parent with a semblance of a moral psychology wants, is for my kid to have his own experience, uninhibited.

I started my career in parent education with the idea that we needed to let our kids go. I believed that parents were suffocating for their children. There was no room for individuality and personhood.

Most of the time I believe in letting kids go ahead and make their own mistakes - maybe even get a little hurt - and learn from them.

My mother told me to raise my kids with calculated neglect. They get their self-worth from doing what they can do and not having everything done for them.

All my children have spoken for themselves since they first learned to speak, and not always with my advance approval, and I expect that to continue in the future.

Don't try to 'fix' the child's boredom - rather, let the child find his or her inner resources.

You take responsibility for your children but you're not always the taxi driver and that doesn't make you a bad parent.

I think is important to give a child room to make mistakes in order to learn. Mistakes build wings so later in life they can fly and go on their own. Let them fall once in awhile... Be their friend and parent as well. When they're in trouble, they will come to you first. Don't try to change their opinion.

If you want to see what children can do, you must stop giving them things.

To give a child liberty is not to abandon him to himself.

When a child is given a little leeway, he will at once shout, "I want to do it!" But in our schools, which have an environment adapted to children's needs, they say, "Help me to do it alone." And these words reveal their inner needs.

I think the best thing a parent can do, when raising a child, is simply get out of their way.

I've always discovered things for myself, in marvelous freedom.

Children need parents who will let them grow up to be themselves, but parents often have personal agendas they try to impose on their children.

The present practice is to impress one's own discoveries, opinions and principles on the child by constantly directing his actions. The last thing to be realised by the educator is that he really has before him an entirely new soul, a real self whose first and chief right is to think over the things with which he comes in contact.

Children should have enough freedom to be themselves - once they've learned the rules.