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The more boring a child is, the more the parents, when showing off the child, receive adulation for being good parents — because they have a tame child-creature in their house.
--
"Ben Watson interviews Frank Zappa", in MOJO magazine (October 1993)

 

Frank Zappa

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In considering the ledger equal, understand the greatest gift you have given your parents is the opportunity to raise you. The things a child gets from parents can't compare to the things a parent gets from raising a child. Only by experiencing this can you understand the degree to which children give meaning to parents' lives.

 

Frank Pittman

 

One of the most obvious facts about grown-ups, to a child, is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child. The child has not yet had the chance to know what it is like to be a grownup; he believes, even, that being a grownup is a mistake he will never make—when he grows up he will keep on being a child, a big child with power. So the child and grownup live in mutual love, misunderstanding, and distaste. Children shout and play and cry and want candy; grownups say Ssh! and work and scold and want steak. There is no disputing tastes as contradictory as these. It is not just Mowgli who was raised by a couple of wolves; any child is raised by a couple of grownups. Father and Mother may be nearer and dearer than anyone will ever be again—still, they are members of a different species. God is, I suppose, what our parents were; certainly the ogre of the stories is so huge, so powerful, and so stupid because that is the way a grownup looks to a child.
Grownups forget or cannot believe that they seem even more unreasonable to children than children seem to them.

 

Randall Jarrell

 

Today is such a joyous day for me because we have children and we are dealing with children, most of them are born-realised, they are of a very special category, I've told you many a times. But we spoil them because we were not born-realised, so we don't know how to handle these special children, we spoil them. Not only we spoil them but we interfere with the school, we interfere with this, as if we are the wisest parents. Because we are SYogis we have to be much more sensible than other parents. How can you interfere with any school anywhere? But in SYoga you will! It is because there is no wisdom and no understanding of what is good and benevolent for your child. If you love your child then you must think of its benevolence. You must learn from the experience what happens to children if they are left like that. You cannot spoil your child, you cannot. Because its a special category of children they are. They are not children who can become vagabonds, they cannot become thieves. So you'll make them something funny they are neither here not there, they are born realised and they have to be channelised properly to achieve their complete manifestation of their spirit. So the possessiveness, and the stupid attachment to children must be given-up. There is no force on you , if you want to destroy your child you can destroy. But in an advice. If you are Ganeshas you would have understood it, I don't have to explain so much. What is good for your child, because we have to have beautiful children. They are born beautiful children, I tell you, if they are spoiled is because of you, you have spoiled them. You have ruined them. You are responsible. I know of many of so many children, they are very very sweet, I have conference with them also, and I find them much more congenial, I have a much better report that I can have with you: They never argue, never, they never say no, and they have very good information about all of you. [Shri Ganesha Puja in Cabella 15.9.91]

 

Mataji Nirmala Srivastava

 

The danger does not lie with individuals, however criminal they may be. Far more, it lies in the ignorance of our entire society, which confirms these people in the lies that they were obliged to believe in childhood. Teachers, attorneys, doctors, social workers, priests, and other respected representatives of society protect parents from the mistreated child's every accusation and see to it that the truth about child abuse remains concealed. Even the child protection agencies insist that this crime, and this crime alone, should go unpunished.

 

Alice Miller

 

During the last hundred years parents and teachers have ceased to take childhood and adolescence for granted. They have attempted to fit education to the needs of the child, rather than to press the child into an inflexible educational mould. To this new task they have been spurred by two forces, the growth of the science of psychology, and the difficulties and maladjustments of youth.

 

Margaret Mead