Quotes About Childhood

No matter how much kids beg to be treated like adults, nobody likes to let go of their childhood. You wish for it and dream of it and the second you have it, you wonder what you've done. You wonder what it is you've become.

Vicarious musical pleasure by radio and phonograph, while it encourages listening to good music, seems to put a damper on musical self-expression. [In our childhood] we sang more. Children sang at school and in their play. Folks sang as they worked, indoors and out. Even drunks do not sing in the streets and buses as entertainingly as in [those] days.

The childlike sense of wonder that we had as children, the sense that there is adventure in each activity, is partly what gave us such strong memories when we were young—it's not that we're slipping into dementia.

The best predictor of a child's security of attachment is not what happened to his parents as children, but rather how his parents made sense of those childhood experiences.

People exposed to emotional abuse as children have been found to be at higher risk of developing medical illnesses later in life,

Think about what this information means, practically, as we raise kids who don't have constant access to their upstairs brain. It's unrealistic to expect them always to be rational, regulate their emotions, make good decisions, think before acting, and be empathetic—all of the things a developed upstairs brain helps them do.

We don't want our children to hurt. But we also want them to do more than simply get through their difficult times; we want them to face their troubles and grow from them. When Amanda retreated to the left, hiding from all of the painful emotions that were running through her right brain, she denied an important part of herself that she needed to acknowledge.

From parental sensitivity and structure emerge a child's resourcefulness, resilience, and relational ability.

In terms of development, very young children are right-hemisphere dominant, especially during their first three years.

Conforme los niños se desarrollan, sus cerebros «reflejan» el cerebro de sus padres. Dicho de otro modo, el propio crecimiento y desarrollo de sus padres, o su ausencia, inciden en el cerebro del niño.

Parents often respond to their child's behavior by focusing on the surface level of the experience and not on the deeper level of the mind.

It's not how our parents raised us, or how many parenting books we've read. It's actually how well we've made sense of our experiences with our own parents and how sensitive we are to our children that most powerfully influence our relationship with our kids,

when a child is upset, logic often won't work until we have responded to the right brain's emotional needs. We call this emotional connection "attunement," which is how we connect deeply with another person and allow them to "feel felt." When parent and child are tuned in to each other, they experience a sense of joining together.

not just in childhood, as we had previously assumed. What molds our brain? Experience. Even into old age, our experiences actually change the physical structure of the brain.

Our children need repeated experiences that allow them to develop wiring in their brain that helps them delay gratification, contain urges to react aggressively toward others, and flexibly deal with not getting their way.

Simply by drawing your child's attention to other people's emotions during everyday encounters, you can open up whole new levels of compassion within them and exercise their upstairs brain. Scientists are beginning more and more to think

When we give a child the opportunity to decide how he should act, rather than simply telling him what he should do, he becomes a better decision maker. And that's one of the ultimate goals of parenting, isn't it?

Our kids don't usually lash out at us because they're simply rude, or because we're failures as parents. They usually lash out because they don't yet have the capacity to regulate their emotional states and control their impulses.

Como pronto explicaremos, las investigaciones longitudinales sobre desarrollo infantil muestran que uno de los mejores predictores para saber cómo será nuestro hijo –en cuanto a felicidad, desarrollo social y emocional, dotes de liderazgo, relaciones significativas e incluso éxito académico y profesional– es si ha adquirido seguridad por tener al menos una persona que estuviera presente para él.

La «cantidad de tiempo» sí importa. Claro que sí. Pero ver a un niño va más allá de la mera presencia física. Conlleva estar en sintonía con lo que sucede dentro de ellos y centrar realmente la atención en sus sentimientos, pensamientos y recuerdos íntimos, lo que sea que pase por sus mentes, que subyazga a su comportamiento.

By giving your children repeated experiences that develop the whole brain, you will face fewer everyday parenting crises. But more than that, understanding integration will let you know your child more deeply, respond more effectively to difficult situations, and intentionally build a foundation for a lifetime of love and happiness.

By connecting with him, right brain to right brain, she was able to communicate that she was tuned in to how he was feeling. Even if he was stalling, this right-brain response was the most effective approach, since it let her not only meet his need for connection, but also redirect him to bed more quickly.

A profound finding from attachment research is that the most robust predictor of a child's attachment to parents is the way parents narrate their own recollections of childhood during the Adult Attachment Interview. This implies that the structure of an adult's narrative process—not merely what the adult recalls, but how it is recalled—is the most powerful feature in predicting how an adult will relate to a child.

I recall being fascinated by numbers even at age three and viewed their manipulation as a kind of game.