Erik Erikson Quotes

Every parent knows this moment in a child's age when he or she needs your attention in a very specific way because it's the beginning and ending of the early life of imagination. It's such a responsibility.

It's hard to think of a 16-month child being anything other than a delight to be around.

It is the parent's job to see how their child learns and to make sure that the children's self confidence is buoyed at all times, or they will plummet like a stone.

When what we introduce into the children's world of ideas and feelings is in line with the direction of the developmental forces of a given stage of life, we strengthen the entire developing person in a way that remains a source of strength throughout that person's life.

We are our children's first teachers.

One of the most distinctive evolutionary features of human beings is our unusually long, protected childhood.

The underlying message of the Lancet article is that if you want to understand aggressive behaviour in children, look to the social and emotional environment in which they are growing up, and the values they bring to the viewing experience.

A stable and nurturing childhood is essential for the healthy psycho-emotional and spiritual development of a human being. While we may understand what is supposed to happen to us physically, we must begin to better understand what happens to children mentally, emotionally and spiritually as a result of the families into which they are born.

If you have children, you know you're responsible for somebody. You realize you are being imitated; your belief systems and priorities have a direct influence on these children, who are like flowers in a garden.

It's very important, once you are a parent, that you educate your kid day by day.

Ours was a loving, nurturing household, but, at the same time, my parents' goal was to make all their children self-sufficient.

An unhappy mother does not raise a happy child.

As a parent, you have to figure out how to shape your kid's character. You want to have human beings who learn about good character. You have to be able to see your child with clarity, see the good side and the bad side of them, and work on the bad side and make them better so they fulfill their potential.

To know that everything we say and do to this new little human being may have a profound effect on him or her is a daunting obligation.

Television has changed the American child from an irresistable force to an immovable object.

Hold back the tide. Keep your kids innocent as long as possible.

I am seriously interested in the psychology of childhood. And I've given a lot of my life to trying to see questions of personal development, as well as the great issues of the day, from a child's point of view.

But however the forms of family life have changed and the number expanded, the role of the family has remained constant and it continues to be the major institution through which children pass en route to adulthood.

Modern parents want to nurture so skillfully that Mother Nature will gasp in admiration at the marvels their parenting produces from the soft clay of children.

When I started acting, my parents gave me three rules: I had to stay good in school, stay the kid they always knew I was, and I had to have fun. If I wasn't doing those three things, then I couldn't do acting anymore.

Nothing is of greater importance than the right early instruction of youth.

The greatest development is achieved during the first years of life, and therefore it is then that the greatest care should be taken. If this is done, then the child does not become a burden; he will reveal himself as the greatest marvel of nature.

In the first three years of life, the foundations of physical and also of psychic health are laid. In these years, the child not only increases in size but passes through great transformations. This is the age in which language and movement develop. The child must be safeguarded in order that these activities may develop freely.

Observation, very general and wide-spread, has shown that small children are endowed with a special psychic nature. This shows us a new way of imparting education!

In raising children, we need to continuously keep in mind how we can best create the most favorable environment for their imitative behavior. Everything done in the past regarding imitation must become more and more conscious and more and more consciously connected with the future.