Dave couldn't remember the last time a grownup had apologized to him.
When I was a kid, I hated being talked to as a kid. I don't know if all kids feel that way, but I seem to remember awful things in the crib, something like people doing baby talk in the crib and sticking their big, fat faces in there and scaring me. So I always talk to kids as if they were a person.
Learning between grown-ups and kids should be reciprocal. The reality, unfortunately, is a little different, and it has a lot to do with trust, or a lack of it.
A kid is a guy I never wrote down to. He's interested in what I say if I make it interesting.
Children have an unerring instinct for knowing when they are being patronized. They go immediately on the defensive against head-patting adults who treat them like strange beings.
It's nice to see you again, Laura." "Thank you, Mrs. T-" "No, no, no. Please, my name is-" "Mud," I suggested. "Mud Barfbag Taylor. Call her Asshat for short." ~Laura, Antonia, Betsy
We must meet children as equals in that area of our nature where we are their equals...The child as reader is neither to be patronized nor idolized: we talk to him as man to man.
Adults find pleasure in deceiving a child. They consider it necessary, but they also enjoy it. The children very quickly figure it out and then practice deception themselves.
In order to be able to cooperate with a child, you have to come down to below their level in order to communicate with them. Actors are also like children.
I've always been quite mature because of the way my parents brought me up. They were very good at talking to me like a person rather than a baby, and I was around so many actors and directors from such a young age because my dad is an actor. I was more comfortable with adults rather than actually being an adult child.
You've got to be vulnerable when you're talking to kids. There's nothing worse than some adult standing up there just talking down to some kid. You can't work that way.
Worlds can be found by a child and an adult bending down and looking together under the grass stems or at the skittering crabs in a tidal pool.
When little kids come up to me, I'm a fully-grown adult, and that's always weird to me.
There is little that gives children greater pleasure than when a grown-up lets himself down to their level, renounces his oppressive superiority and plays with them as an equal.
I called all adults by their first names, and my mum was just another adult. I was the firstborn of my generation in the family, but because I was so close to my parents in age, they treated me with a kind of adult respect. They talked to me as an equal.
Adults always wonder what to say and how to say it when they're talking to a child. You want to be wise, but all you are is a child yourself in a larger body. Nothing is ever what it seems. The things that you think you know are never certain. I know that now. I wish that I didn't, but I do.
I know that big people don't like questions from children. They can ask all the questions they like, How's school? Are you a good boy? Did you say your prayers? but if you ask them did they say their prayers you might be hit on the head.
