Lev Vygotsky Quotes

This is the treasure we need today - helping the child become independent of us and make his way by himself, receiving in return his gifts of hope and light.

What a child can do in cooperation today, he can do alone tomorrow.

To teach a man how he may learn to grow independently, and for himself, is perhaps the greatest service that one man can do another.

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.

Never miss an opportunity to allow a child to do something she can and wants to on her own. Sometimes we're in too much of a rush--and she might spill something, or do it wrong. But whenever possible she needs to learn, error by error, lesson by lesson, to do better. And the more she is able to learn by herself the more she gets the message that she's a kid who can.

The child seeks for independence by means of work; an independence of body and mind.

It's a mistake not to give people a chance to learn to depend on themselves while they are young.

These words reveal the child’s inner needs; ‘Help me to do it alone’.

I'm very involved with learning to be self-sufficient.

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

In the end, it's not what you do for your children but what you've taught them to do for themselves.

Furnish an example, stop preaching, stop shielding, don't prevent self-reliance and initiative, allow your children to develop along thier own lines.

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

I hope my books empower kids, and that they learn how to work out their problems themselves.

In America we tell our parents to bring their child home and put him or her in a crib; as they get older, children sleep in they own room not in Mom and Dad's room. What are we training them for? It's independence, because that's what being empowered is all about.

The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without his teacher.

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.

I created myself. I have taught myself so much.

I tried to do things independently with each child.

Instead of giving people fish, teach them how to use hooks.

It is only by giving people the tools to empower themselves will they be able to achieve their potential.

In truth , mankind cannot be saved from without, by schoolmasters or any other sort of masters: it can only be lamed and enslaved by them. It is said that if you wash a cat it will never again wash itself. This may or may not be true : what is certain is that if you teach a man anything he will never learn it; and if you cure him of a disease he will be unable to cure himself the next time it attacks him.

We must support as much as possible the child's desires for activity; not wait on him, but educate him to be independent.

The child's conquests of independence are the basic steps in what is called his 'natural development'.

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