Quotes About Childhood

I tell the kids that, even in a childhood marked by despair and deprivation, I knew that no matter what happened, I still had my family, or at least the remnants of a family ripped apart by divorce and then glued back together in various odd arrangements through a series of ill- advised remarriages. It was good to know I had a solid foundation.

Hey Dad, will you buy me a flame thrower? Of course not. Don't be silly. Even if I didn't use it in the house?

I could think back to my encounters with rules and regulations that didn't seem to make much sense to me, and have empathy for my children's frustrations. I understood as a very young boy that to blindly follow rules just because they're rules is to lose control over your whole life.

it became clear that he was the only one who harbored long-term grievances about their childhood.

From a clearer perspective, I can now see how my presence on that dock that resulted in my brother's rescue was instrumental in giving me the information and the confidence to become a teacher and practitioner of mind-body healing. That childhood experience helped guide us both, leading us to explore and realize the power we possess to accomplish anything that we place our attention on with love rather than fear as our anchor.

I had trouble climbing little trees and monkey bars. A roof1.

El que todavía estaba avergonzado por sostener mi mano dos días antes de entrar a segundo grado. El que todavía era demasiado tímido para decir mucho más que hola. El que todavía estaba caminando por ahí con mi primer beso.

Mirando atrás hacia segundo grado, me gusta pensar que era por lo mejor en parte la curiosidad científica lo que me hacía perseguir es beso, pero para ser honesta, eran probablemente más esos ojos azules.

At home, he (A.C. Lee) encouraged Nelle to clamber up on him lap to "help" him read the newspaper or complete the crossword puzzle.

Also during their honeymoon, Jane shared with him a gift from her favorite professor at Swarthmore, Henry Goddard, chair of the English Department. For every student, Goddard wrote a phrase from literature on a slip of paper, put it inside a walnut shell, and presented it at the end of the semester. For Jane, he had selected a sentence from Dostoyevsky: "One sacred memory from childhood is perhaps the best education." Kurt referred to it for years as inspiration and solace.

I had a little insight into life that most kids probably didn't have. My mother was a schoolteacher, and my father was a social worker. Through his eyes I saw the underside of society.

Now that I look back on it, having retired from being a reporter, it was kind of romantic. It was a wonderful way to live one's life, just as I imagined it would be when I was 6 or 7.

When I was a little boy I used to borrow my father's hat, and make a press card to stick in the hat band. That was the way reporters were always portrayed in the movies.

Our shame seems to come from what we do with the negative messages, negative affirmations, beliefs and rules that we hear as we grow up. We hear these from our parents, parent figures and other people in authority, such as teachers and clergy. These messages basically tell us that we are somehow not all right, not okay. That our feelings, our needs, our True Self, our Child Within is not acceptable.

Many children from troubled families have difficulty relaxing and having fun. Ability to be spontaneous and to play is a need and a characteristic of our Child Within.

At this point we understand that if the mother or other parent figure cannot provide these first few needs, the child's physical, mental-emotional and spiritual growth would likely be stunted.

A person cannot betray another person's True Self for long without causing serious damage to the relationship. In order to grow, the Child Within should feel trusted and be able to trust others.

What the child sees as reality is denied, and a new model, view or false belief system of reality is assumed as true by each family member. This fantasy often binds the family together in a further dysfunctional way. This denial and the new belief system stifle and retard the child's development and growth in the crucial mental, emotional, and spiritual areas of their life (Brown 1986).

Denial of the Child Within and the subsequent emergence of a false self or negative ego are particularly common among children and adults who grew up in troubled families, such as those where chronic physical or mental illness, rigidity, coldness or lack of nurturing were common.

Many children growing up in troubled or dysfunctional families learn how to be either aggressive or manipulative or to sit back or withdraw. They don't get what they want or need. They almost never see assertiveness being modeled, are rarely taught to be assertive and thus grow up to be adults who operate by being either aggressive, and/or manipulative or passive, "people pleasers," or a combination of these.

In order to survive, the child who cannot develop a strong True Self compensates by developing an exaggerated false or co-dependent self.

When we are not allowed to remember, to express our feelings and to grieve or mourn our losses or traumas, whether real or threatened, through the free expression of our Child Within, we become ill. Thus we can consider viewing a spectrum of unresolved grieving as beginning with mild symptoms or signs of grief, to co-dependence, to PTSD.

In order to survive, the traumatized child's Real Self (True Self or Child Within) goes into hiding deep within the unconscious part of its psyche. What emerges is a false self or ego which tries to run the show of our life, but is unable to succeed because it is simply a defense mechanism against pain and not real. Its motives are based more on needing to be right and in control.

Think what you would have been now, if instead of being fed with tales and old wives' fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history!