We often tend to ignore how much of a child is still in all of us.

Sometimes, kids want you to hurt the way they hurt.

People think, ‘Hey, I love kids, I want to write children’s books.’ But they think children are happy. That’s their first mistake.

Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction.

"I am convinced that an immense number of people who have children should not have them, and do not particularly want them, except as "symbols" of family life. What they want are ideal children, not real ones; and as soon as the real ones show no intention of conforming to the ideal in the parent's mind, they are treated as burdens, shipped away to school or otherwise neglected."

[Kids] don't remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are.

Children need to know that they matter, that someone in this big, scary, beautiful world thinks that they are the sun, moon, and stars all rolled into one lovable little human. The world will hurt and disillusion them at times, no doubt, but knowing that they are loved beyond measure by someone who's got their back, knowing they are not alone, knowing they always have arms to run to when they're hurt or afraid, will help them to pick themselves up and move on, again and again and again.

What I’ve learned from talking to so many victims of traumatic events, abuse, or neglect is that after absorbing these painful experiences, the child begins to ache. A deep longing to feel needed, validated, and valued begins to take hold. As these children grow, they lack the ability to set a standard for what they deserve. And if that lack is not addressed, what often follows is a complicated, frustrating pattern of self-sabotage, violence, promiscuity, or addiction.

Only the children know what they are looking for. They waste their time over a rag doll and it becomes very important to them; and if anybody takes it away from them, they cry...

Young children cannot possibly understand the motives of adults. It means little to a young child that the parent feels love for him if that parent keeps disappearing at almost any time. The child experiences a sense of abandonment, a subliminal knowledge that there are things in the world much more important to the parent than he, the child, that he is not worthy of the parent’s attention. He begins to feel, at first unconsciously, that there must be something wrong with him. He also begins to work too hard to get his needs met: demanding contact, acting out or trying to please the parent to gain approval and attention.

Something about too many people packed together and nothing to guide them makes the children worse than they used to be, to her mind.

This is one thing they forget to mention in most child-rearing books, that at times you will just lose your mind. Period.

The popular view that a child forgets easily is not an accurate one. Many people go right through life in the grip of an idea which has been impressed on them in very tender years.

Now that I’m an adult, I realize that kids know at a very young age when they’re being devalued, when adults aren’t invested enough to help them learn. Their anger over it can manifest itself as unruliness. It’s hardly their fault. They aren’t “bad kids.” They’re just trying to survive bad circumstances.