Topics ยป Children
There are three ways to get something done: do it yourself, employ someone, or forbid your children to do it.
A child is not a salmon mousse. A child is a temporarily disabled and stunted version of a larger person, whom you will someday know. Your job is to help them overcome the disabilities associated with their size and inexperience so that they get on with being that larger person.
Unhappiness in a child accumulates because he sees no end to the dark tunnel. The thirteen weeks of a term might just as well be thirteen years.
One of the most obvious facts about grownups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.
When I consider how little of a rarity children are -- that every street and blind alley swarms with them -- that the poorest people commonly have them in most abundance -- that there are few marriages that are not blest with at least one of these bargains -- how often they turn out ill, and defeat the fond hopes of their parents, taking to vicious courses, which end in poverty, disgrace, the gallows, etc. -- I cannot for my life tell what cause for pride there can possibly be in having them.
For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.
Let your children be as so many flowers, borrowed from God. If the flowers die or wither, thank God for a summer loan of them.
I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.