Alice Miller Quotes

I can see why people keep having babies. We were looking at a school for my youngest this morning, and there were all these little boys and girls. So sweet. And then the teenagers walk past, and, my God, they're enormous, and I bet they don't kiss their mummies. I'm just going to force my children to remain lovely.

Our children give us the opportunity to become the parents we always wished we'd had.

A Message to Children Who Have Read This Book - When you grow up and have children of your own, do please remember something important: a stodgy parent is no fun at all. What a child wants and deserves is a parent who is SPARKY.

A child's first teacher is its mother.

Learning to dislike children at an early age saves a lot of expense and aggravation later in life.

I have an equal amount of patience as my grade-school children, which is not great.

I was brought up as a normal kid.

In considering the ledger equal, understand the greatest gift you have given your parents is the opportunity to raise you. The things a child gets from parents can't compare to the things a parent gets from raising a child. Only by experiencing this can you understand the degree to which children give meaning to parents' lives.

When a child walks in the room, your child or anybody else’s child, do your eyes light up? That’s what they’re looking for.

A baseball manager has learned a lot about his job from having played the game, but a parent has not learned a thing from having once been a child.

We have a cultural notion that if children were not engineered, if we did not manipulate them, they would grow up as beasts in the field. This is the wildest fallacy in the world.

I wish my parents had raised me in Manhattan because I think it's the greatest thing you can do for a kid is to raise them in New York City. I can see this with my own children.

Affection can no more spoil a child than the sun could be put out by a bucket of gasoline.

If you do not give your children freedom, when they grow up, they will break away from the family, and then your hearts will be broken.

If a mother respects both herself and her child from his very first day onward, she will never need to teach him respect for others.

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.

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

All children should be loved, protected, nurtured --emotionally and intellectually-- respected, and never, under any circumstances, underestimated.

Spanking doesn't lead to anything in the child, other than anger, a sense of frustration and humiliation. And parents can do better. I'm not saying it should be against the law but parents can do better.

I think evil is our collective shadow. Each one of us has a tendency for the diabolical. If I put you in inhumane conditions, if you're not educated, if you're extremely poor, if you're humiliated, then as a child if you suffer abuse, then you will manifest even when you grow up.

Katie is like my calendar, watching her grow and change. She is growing up so fast, learning to have opinions of her own, learning that I don’t have the answers to everything. And the moment a child begins to understand that, you know you’re in trouble.

It is easy to say that you can adopt the whole human race as your children, but it is not the same as living in a home with a child and shaping all you do to help him learn to be happy and whole and good. Don't live your life without ever holding a child in your arms, on your lap, in your home, and feeling a child's arms around you and hearing his voice in your ear and seeing his smile, given to you because you put it into your heart.

If parents would only realize how they bore their children.

What I have most learned from my son is to respect him and to love him unconditionally. I believe that if parents respect their children and educate them with love and justice (and not just with words, but with their own behavior) the relationship with their children will be wonderful. Then parents will always be proud of their children, and children will always be proud of their parents. There will be peace in the family, and the home will be a sanctuary.

Re raising kids: Love, without discipline, isn't.