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Quotes About Natural Parenting

"The best-kept secret in child psychology is that children who were never spanked are among the best behaved." ~ Murray Straus

"When people ask me what to do, I tell them to just give the child all the love that they can. Don't worry so much about anything else. And when it comes to discipline: never, never physically assault the child in any way, and certainly don't assault them with words, which can be just as cruel as physical punishment." ~ Ashley Montagu

“Do not kiss your children so they will kiss you back but so they will kiss their children, and their children’s children.” ~ Noah ben Shea

“Love is as love does, and it is our responsibility to give children love. When we love children we acknowledge by our every action that they are not property, that they have rights – that we respect and uphold their rights. Without justice there can be no love.” ~ bell hooks

Rachel Carson quote

"Free children are not easily influenced; the absence of fear accounts for this phenomenon. Indeed, the absence of fear is the finest thing that can happen to a child." ~ A. S. Neil

"If we hope to create a non-violent world where respect and kindness replace fear and hatred, we must begin with how we treat each other at the beginning of life. For that is where our deepest patterns are set. From these roots grow fear and alienation - or love and trust." ~ Suzanne Arms

“We have a cultural notion that if children were not engineered, if we did not manipulate them, they would grow up as beasts in the field. This is the wildest fallacy in the world.” ~ Joseph Chilton Pearce

“If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.” ~ Rachel Carson

Dr. Seuss quote

“By now I have come to feel that the fact of being a ‘child,’ of being wholly subservient and dependent, of being seen by older people as a mixture of expensive nuisance, slave and super-pet, does most young people more harm than good.” ~ John Holt

"Society chooses to disregard the mistreatment of children, judging it to be altogether normal because it is so commonplace." ~ Alice Miller

“If you like to make things out of wood, or sew, or dance, or style people’s hair, or dream up stories and act them out, or play the trumpet, or jump rope, or whatever you really love to do, and you love that in front of your children, that’s going to be a far more important gift than anything you could ever give them wrapped up in a box with ribbons.” ~ Fred M. Rogers

“As a society, we must own up to the damage we do to our children...in our families and in our schools. We must also be willing to make the sweeping changes in our institutions, public policies and personal lives that are necessary to reverse that harm to our children and to our society.” ~ Wendy Priesnitz

"I can't help noting that no cultures in the world that I have ever heard of make such a fuss about children's bedtimes, and no cultures have so many adults who find it so hard either to go to sleep or wake up. Could these social facts be connected? I strongly suspect they are." ~ John Holt

children and climate change quote

"A baby's cry is precisely as serious as it sounds." ~ Jean Liedloff

“A newborn baby has only three demands. They are warmth in the arms of its mother, food from her breasts, and security in the knowledge of her presence. Breastfeeding satisfies all three.” ~ Grantly Dick-Read

"We must acknowledge that bearing and raising children is not some pesky, peripheral activity that we engage in, but the whole point." ~ Susan Maushart

"I doubt there has ever been a human culture, anywhere, at any time, that underestimates children's abilities more than we North Americans do today. Our underestimation becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because by depriving children of freedom, we deprive them of the opportunities they need to learn how to take control of their own behavior and emotions." ~ Peter Gray

The Child Cannot Wait

“Many things can wait. The child cannot. Now is the time. His blood is being formed, his bones are being made, his mind is being developed. To him, we cannot say tomorrow. His name is today.” ~ Gabriela Mistra

"The goal of parenting shouldn't be to prepare children to withstand the world, but to grow children who will change the world." ~ L.R. Knost

“If we want children to flourish, to become truly empowered, then let us allow them to love the earth before we ask them to save it. Perhaps this is what Thoreau had in mind when he said, 'The more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think the same is true of human beings'.” ~ David Sobel

Susan Maushart quote

“While breastfeeding may not seem the right choice for every parent, it is the best choice for every baby.” ~ Amy Spangler

“Science is finally beginning to discover what babies have known all along: Babies are designed to sleep with their parents. And parents are designed to sleep with their babies.” ~ Dr. Jay Gordon

“The question is still asked of women: 'How do you propose to answer the need for child care?' That is an obvious attempt to structure conflict in the old terms. The questions are rather: 'If we as a human community want children, how does the total society propose to provide for them?'.” ~ Jean Baker Miller

”The wisdom and compassion a woman can intuitively experience in childbirth can make her a source of healing and understanding for other women.” ~ Stephen Gaskin

"Our children no longer learn how to read the great book of Nature from their own direct experience, or how to interact creatively with the seasonal transformations of the planet. They seldom learn where their water comes from or where it goes. We no longer coordinate our human celebration with the great liturgy of the heavens." ~ Wendell Berry

quote by bell hooks

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