Childhood Psychology Quotes

As a child, one looks for compliments. As an adult, one looks for evidence of effectiveness.

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.

The professor husband of a friend of mine has likened children to the insane. I often think of it. He says that children live on the edge of madness, that their behavior, apparently unmotivated, shares the same dream logic as crazy people's. I see what he means, and because I've learned to be patient with children, to tease out the logic that's always somewhere there, and irrefutable once explained.

It is a common failing of childhood to think that if one makes a hero out of a demon the demon will be satisfied.

You can make children believe whatever you want, and the children of today are the soldiers and mothers of tomorrow.

The fancy that extraterrestrial life is by definition of a higher order than our own is one that soothes all children, and many writers.

I've always thought the best way to teach a kid not to be scared of the dark is to fill his daylight hours with as much horror as possible.

The first-born in every family is always dreaming for an imaginary older brother or sister who will look out for them.

I was never the sort of child who believed in "monsters under the bed" or vampires, or who needed a night-light in his bedroom; on the contrary, my father...once laughingly told my mother that he thought I might suffer from a type of benign psychosis called "antiparanoia," in which I seemed to believe that I was the object of an intricate universal conspiracy to make me so happy I could hardly stand it.

If the child has not an object that it can occupy itself with, it feels ennui; for it does not yet know how to occupy itself with itself.

I started to make a joke that I had an imaginary friend underneath the let-out couch named Binky. I would never talk to him; I would only use him as entertainment for other people. I knew they thought that children had imaginary friends, so I was like, "I don't really believe in imaginary friends, but I want to feel like I do." I used to make a joke, "My imaginary friend Binky says this," because I knew it would get a laugh out of them.

I know it sounds really weedy, but we are all children who seek approval from our parents.

Children like being a little scared, but they don't want to be disturbed.

I have this weird thing where if I close my eyes, I feel like no one can see me.

I am seriously interested in the psychology of childhood. And I've given a lot of my life to trying to see questions of personal development, as well as the great issues of the day, from a child's point of view.

I was concerned about doing the right thing when I was a kid. I suppose as a child, you're a massive egomaniac, and you think that everything you do is going to affect the world.

From the age of 1 to 6 there is a small percentage that is exclusively homosexual, a small percentage heterosexual and there's a wide band in the middle of people who respond to various stimuli. A little bit here, a little more there.