Bruno Bettelheim Quotes

If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do matters very much.

Taking the child's point of view demands good will, time, and effort on the part of parents. The child is the clear beneficiary. Parents who make the effort to understand their children's point of view are likely to treat children fairly and in an age-appropriate manner.

But I think that parents who criticise their children too much are in fact better than parents who praise their children too much.

If you see in your children most of your own faults, you have failed as a parent, but succeeded as a neurotic.

Parenthood always involves recognizing your child as separate and different from you.

Let the child see Mama and Daddy both at least once a day. Never quarrel or argue in front of a baby or a child-it destroys security.

The roots of a child's ability to cope and thrive, regardless of circumstance, lie in that child's having had at least a small, safe place (an apartment? a room? a lap?) in which, in the companionship of a loving person, that child could discover that he or she was lovable and capable of loving in return. If a child finds this during the first years of life, he or she can grow up to be a competent, healthy person.

I think marriage is a good thing for children, because it gives them a feeling of security.

When you're a parent you find yourself looking at the unknown that is your child, trying to find a piece of yourself inside her, because sometimes that is what it takes to claim.

Marriage and conjugal love are by their nature ordained toward the procreation and education of children. Children are really the supreme gift of marriage and contribute in the highest degree to their parents' welfare.

Most parents don’t know really their children.

Children, I suppose, are always unfinished business: they begin as part of your own body, and continue as separate as another continent.

Physical punishment teaches children that the larger, stronger person has the power to get his way, whether or not he is in the right, and they may resent this in the parent-for life.

Above all else, children need to know and feel they are loved, wanted, and appreciated. They need to be assured of that often. Obviously, this is a role parents should fill, and most often the mother can do it best.

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.

Parents ought, through their own behavior and the values by which they live, to provide direction for their children. But they need to rid themselves of the idea that there are surefire methods which, when well applied, will produce certain predictable results. Whatever we do with and for our children ought to flow from our understanding of and our feelings for the particular situation and the relation we wish to exist between us and our child.

The deeds of the children are a testament to the upbringing they received from their parents.

The child’s parents are not his makers but his guardians.

How can children credit the assertions of parents, which their own eyes show them to be false? Few parents act in such a manner as much to enforce their maxims by the credit of their lives

If you talk to your children, you can help them keep their lives together. If you talk to them skillfully, you can help them to build future dreams.

I just want my child to have security and being looked after by me, by my other half, by my mother and by a nanny. We all share that responsibility equally and I think he is a very well-adjusted little boy.

A child needs both to be hugged and unhugged. The hug lets her know she is valuable. The unhug lets her know that she is viable. If you're always shoving your child away, they will cling to you for love. If you're always holding them closer, they will cling to you for fear.

I always say that a successful parent is one who raises a child so that they can pay for their own psychoanalysis.

In order for me to parent well I have to empathize and stay open with my son.

When a child enters the world through you, it alters everything on a psychic, psychological and purely practical level.