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To be a child is something one learns, as one learns the names of rivers or the kings of France. Childhood, for a child, is a sort of falseness, woodenness, stoniness, a lesson recited. Many children are aware of this — that is, aware of being children as a special, prosy condition: "We can't do that! We're children!" Playing children is a long boring game with occasional exciting moments.
--
"Everybody's Childhood," The Writing on the Wall (1970)

 

Mary McCarthy

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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

 

Children must be under authority, and are themselves aware that they must be, although they like to play a game of rebellion at times. The case of children is unique in the fact that those who have authority over them are sometimes fond of them. Where this is the case, the children do not resent the authority in general, even when they resist it on particular occasions. Education authorities, as opposed to teachers, have not this merit, and do in fact sacrifice the children to what they consider the good of the State by teaching them "patriotism," i.e., a willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.

 

Bertrand Russell

 

[About his first-born child] My mother looked at it and said, "Oh, how precious!" I don't know why she said it. Well, I didn't know then. I know now, because my mother put a curse on me. A long time ago, I remember when I was a child what she said, and I later found out that mothers, all mothers, put a curse on their children. They say, "I hope, when you get married, you have some children who act exactly the same way that you act." And this curse WORKS! I mean, it started with that child! My wife and I have not been intellectuals since. Oh, my wife was pretty good for a while, but it didn't last that long. It didn't last two years.

 

Bill Cosby

 

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

 

Libraries allow children to ask questions about the world and find the answers. And the wonderful thing is that once a child learns to use a library, the doors to learning are always open.

 

Laura Welch Bush