***
Would you write your name among the stars
Then write it large upon
The hearts of children.
They will remember!
Have you visions of a nobler, happier World?
Tell the children!
They will build it for you.
– Good Thoughts

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We cannot fashion our children after our desires, we must have them and love them as God has given them to us.
– Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832) German poet, novelist and dramatist.

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Last night my little boy confessed to me
Some childish wrong;
And kneeling at my knee,
He prayed with tears–
“Dear God, make me a man
Like Daddy–wise & strong;
I know you can.”

Then while he slept
I knelt beside his bed,
Confessed my sins,
And prayed with low-bowed head.
“O God, make me a child
Like my child here–
Pure, guileless,
Trusting Thee with faith sincere.
– Author Unknown

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With children… it is a fact that most parents criticize children more than they laud or congratulate them. We tend to be quick to criticize, slow to praise. We should be careful to keep the praise and the expectations far ahead of the criticism.
– Unknown Source

***

Dr. James Dobson, a child development specialist, says that children are sometimes permanently harmed by people’s attitudes towards their looks. Even at age 3 or 4, children can tell if they are beautiful or ugly. One of his patients was a 36-year-old man who told him: “I was 5 years old when I realized I was ugly, & I’ve never been the same since.”
Unhappily, most people treat children as they were beauty contest contestants, giving warmth & praise to the good-looking & ridiculing or neglecting the fat, skinny, or whatever child. The result for the latter is lifelong self-doubt & feelings of worthlessness. Nicknames like “Bucky Beaver”, “Pee Wee” or “Birdlegs” can cause harm for life. Instead of exalting beauty, brains or accomplishment, the specialist urges adults to teach children to emphasize virtues such as diligence, patience & honesty.
“It’s tough to buck the values of society as it is now.” Dr. Dobson admitted, “but teaching a child spiritual values is at least a good place to start.”
– Good Thoughts

***

Children need models rather than critics.
-Joseph Joubert (1754-1824)

***

If a child lives with criticism
He learns to condemn.

If a child lives with acceptance & friendship
He learns to find love in the world.

– Dorothy Law Nolte

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The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it”

-Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
***

People who say they sleep like a baby undoubtedly don’t have one.
– D.B. Berg

***

There never was a child so lovely, but his mother was glad to get him asleep.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

***

Just yesterday it seems my children
Played upon the floor
And I wiped countless fingerprints
From window pane & door.

I kissed away a thousand tears
And darned sock after sock
And tried to keep pace with the hands
That raced around the clock.

And often when at end of day,
Too tired to sleep, in bed I lay,
I’d think how nice when, children grown,
My time again should be my own.

So now I sit & rock alone,
My hands at rest, the work all done;
No little tots upon the floor,
No fingerprints upon the door.

No socks to mend, bruises to kiss–
Ah me! How could I know I’d miss
The very things I grudged to do
Dear God, if only there might be
Someone again who needed me!
– Good Thoughts

***

“The child must know that he is a miracle, that since the beginning of the world there hasn’t been, and until the end of the world there will not be, another child like him.”
– Pablo Casals

***

Let every father & mother realize that when their child is three years of age, they have done more than half they will ever do for its character.
– Good Thoughts

***

Great ideas & fine principles do not live from generation to generation just because they are good, nor because they have been carefully legislated. Ideals & principles continue from generation to generation only when they are built into the hearts of children as they grow up.
-Dr. George S. Benson

***

In order to really get and keep a little child’s attention, you really have to put everything you’ve got into it! Children like to be kept busy. They like to work and do things, but they sometimes have a hard time thinking up things to do, so you have to continually think up new ways to spur them into action. It takes real emotion to move them into motion! You have to have animation, you have to have enthusiasm–lots of action, lots of motion and lots of noise! You have to really illustrate it and sock it to them and put a lot of real meaning and interest into what you’re teaching!
Call it what you like: inspiration, charisma, talent, personality, or the Spirit–you have to have something that brings you and them to life! So ask God to inspire you and He will!
– D.B. Berg

***

“I’ve come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or de-humanized.”
-Dr. Haim G. Ginott

***
To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself.
- D.B. Berg

***

Socrates said, “Could I climb to the highest place in Athens, I would lift my voice & proclaim–fellow-citizens, why do ye turn & scrape every stone to gather wealth, & take so little care of your child, to whom one day you most relinquish it all?”

***

Your children are a reflection of YOU! Your own attitudes and samples of faith as parents sets a standard to your children, and their reactions depend so much on your attitudes! Children need models more than they need critics. You can lead a child to the Lord all the time by your example and your love. The more effort of faith or prayer we show them in concern for their lives, the more they too will learn to get desperate for themselves!
– Daily Might

***
In so many countries of the world today, their greatest problem is their children. What they fail to realize is that the world of tomorrow is what the adults of today make it, according to what they choose to give or not to give the next generation! Capture the youth and you’ve conquered the future!
“Train up a child in the way he should go,” the Bible says, “and when he is old he will not depart from it” (Pro.22:6). We need to mold their minds and educate them and inspire them and encourage them, and most of all we really need to build their faith!
Children are the most sincere people in the world.–And they’re at the age of malleability when they can still be bent and molded. It’s an age of choice, an age of decision. It takes time and patience and understanding and lots of real love to reach them but that’s actually when most people accept the Lord.
“Open the door for the children,
Tenderly gather them in,
In from the highways and hedges,
In from the fields of sin.
Open the door for the children,
Tenderly gather them in.”
–For of such is the Kingdom of God! (Mark 10:14).
- Daily Might
***
Children need discipline (To train by instruction and practice, especially to teach self-control to.)–the Bible says so. They not only need it in order to grow up to be productive and useful members of society, they need it in order to be happy and secure in their relationship with you, their parents. There are plenty of experts in the field of child education and development who will tell you the same thing–that children need and want their boundaries to be defined, and that they’re much more happy and secure when they receive training from their parents and caretakers.

***
I took a piece of plastic clay
And idly fashioned it one day;
And as my fingers pressed it still,
It moved & yielded at my will.

I came again when days were past,
The form I gave it still it bore,
And as my fingers pressed it still,
I could change that form no more.

I took a piece of living clay,
And gently formed it day by day,
And molded with my power & art,
A young child’s soft & yielding heart.

I came again when days were gone;
It was a man I looked upon,
He still that early impress bore,
And I could change it never more.

***
It takes time & patience & understanding & lots of real love to train a child!

***
A child miseducated is a child lost.
-John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

***
Children are little PEOPLE.–And if we’d just stop thinking about them as “children” and think about them as people, we’d get a lot further in understanding them and their problems! So why don’t we just start thinking about them as we do about ourselves?
People are complex. Children are people too and their problems are also complex. Their feelings are much the same as adults’, and the experiences they go through are very similar to things we go through, only HARDER for them to understand.–Children are much more vulnerable than adults, and many things they have to go through which though small to us, may seem monumental or even traumatic to them at the time because they don’t have the experience to understand them, and they haven’t been assured like we have that everything will work out in the end! So you have to treat them even MORE carefully, tenderly and with more consideration than adults.
Try to put YOURSELF in the CHILD’S place. Put yourself in as close a situation as you can think of to your child’s situation and think about how you would feel–then you can get a better understanding of him and his problem.
- Daily Might

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If help and salvation are to come, they can only come from the children, for the children are the makers of men.
– Maria Montessori (1870-1952)

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Let thy child’s first lesson be obedience, & he will be what thou wilt.
-Ben Franklin.

***
How hurt or disappointed do you feel when your children make a mistake? Oh yes, of course you feel a little bad, but you expect them to fail & to be bad sometimes or make the wrong decisions, it’s all a part of growing up. You don’t get all sensitive or offended because your child does something wrong; you know they’re going to be that way & they’re going to do things wrong sometimes, they’re not perfect. In fact, the initial disappointment is all but forgotten in the happiness you feel when you see him learning his lesson & doing the right thing. When you’re learning, you’re bound to make mistakes.
- D.B. Berg

***
We all need to feel special to somebody. That’s why we have husbands or wives, so we can each feel special to somebody!–And children also need to know that they’re important and that they really are loved and looked up to by somebody, just like we do! Even if you have eight children, you can still treat them all a bit differently. You can give each one something special. They should all feel they’re special to you in some way!
People just thrive on love and attention and concern and consideration, and if children don’t have it, or they think they don’t, then just like with all of us, they’re going to feel bad if they feel rejected. You don’t have to spend a great deal of time with children to make them know you really appreciate them, but you do have to spend some.
Perhaps your problem as a parent has just been a lack of time, but your child may consider it a lack of love if he doesn’t get the attention he needs. Unless you explain, pretty soon they get the impression that you don’t think they’re important at all!
Won’t you help each one to know just how special they really are?
- Daily Might
***
The worst danger that confronts the younger generation is the example set by the older generation.
- Good Thoughts