Dallas Willard Quotes

There is one thing you and I as parents cannot do, not do we want to do if we really think about it, and that's control our children's will--that spirit that lets them be themselves apart from you and me. They are not ours to possess, control, manipulate, or even to make mind.

It is easy to substitute our will for that of the child by means of suggestion or coercion; but when we have done this we have robbed him of his greatest right, the right to construct his own personality.

I just do what I want to do. I look at what's interesting to me.

I wasn't a pushy parent - you have to let children be who they want to be.

If left to their own devices a child will achieve.

The spontaneous power of the child, his demand for self-expression, can not by any possibility be suppressed.

Adults look upon a child as something empty that is to be filled through their own efforts, as something inert and helpless for which they must do everything, as something lacking an inner guide and in constant need of inner direction. . . . An adult who acts in this way, even though he may be convinced that he is filled with zeal, love, and a spirit of sacrifice on behalf of his child, unconsciously suppresses the development of the child's own personality.

Don't live vicariously through your kids or try to shape them into who you wanted to be, like the popular kid or an athlete. Children should be given the opportunity to be themselves.

I don't believe we own our children, they're their own souls who make their own choices, we just guide and support them.

It's important for me to be free and know I'm acting for myself. I do things because I want to, and that's important. You want to be your own person.

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.

Like any young person, I do what I want.

I do what I want.

I only do what I like to do.

This is America - you're allowed to say and do what you want and what you say and do defines who you are as a person.

Children have their own mind.

I do what I want. Everybody does what he likes. What is so unique about it?

I don't play no one else's game and I don't run no one else's race because if I did that, I wouldn't be who I am.

I do whatever appeals to me. I have always made my own choices.

I want to be my own character.

Let LeBron be LeBron.

I do what I like to do.

I do what I want to do.

That's what you have to learn with life. It's your life at the end of the day. There's really no right or wrong way to do things. Everybody has a way they think you should do it. So why not do it your way, you know what I mean, respectfully.

Do what you really want to do. Don't play their game! Don't do what they want. Find your own way.