You can check the growing number of book reviews at the end of this page… but until then enjoy some words of wisdom:

PARENTING

Connect before you correct.

– Pam Leo

Stop trying to perfect your child, but keep trying to perfect your relationship with him.

– Dr Henker

how we treat them is what we teach them.

– Pam Leo

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

– Carl Jung

Disobedience is not an issue if obedience is not the goal.

– Daron Quinlan

The reason praise can work in the short run is that young children are hungry for our approval… we have a responsibility not to exploit that dependence for our own convenience.

– Alfie Kohn

A child’s actions are not bad or good; they are simply expressions of emotional and physical needs or they are innocent play.

– Naomi Aldort

The reason praise can work in the short run is that young children are hungry for our approval… we have a responsibility not to exploit that dependence for our own convenience.

– Joseph Chilton Pearce

Aware parents accept the entire range of emotions and listen non-judgmentally to children’s expressions of feelings. They realize that they cannot prevent all sadness, anger, or frustration, and they do not attempt to stop children from releasing painful feelings through crying or raging.

– Aletha Solter

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

– Kahlil Gibran

NATURAL LEARNING & UNSCHOOLING

There is no difference between living and learning… it is impossible and misleading and harmful to think of them as being separate.

– John Holt

I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.

– Albert Einstein

To parents I say, above all else, don’t let your home become some terrible miniature copy of the school. No lesson plans! No quizzes! No tests! No report cards! Even leaving your kids alone would be better; at least they could figure out some things on their own. Live together, as well as you can; enjoy life together, as much as you can.

– John Holt

Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind. Let early education be a sort of amusement; this will better enable you to find out the natural bent of the child.

– Plato

Play is the highest form of research.

– Albert Einstein

LEARNING & SELF MOTIVATION

I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.

– Albert Einstein

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ (I’ve found it!), but ‘That’s funny…’

– Isaac Asimov

Just as eating against one’s will is injurious to health, so study without a liking for it spoils the memory, and it retains nothing it takes in.

– Leonardo Da Vinci

What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing.

– Aristotle

Kids don’t resist learning; they resist teaching.

– John Taylor Gatto

What we want to see is the child in pursuit of knowledge, not knowledge in pursuit of the child.

– George Bernard Shaw

It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail. It is a grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.

– Albert Einstein

Since we can’t know what knowledge will be most needed in the future, it is senseless to try to teach it in advance. Instead, we should try to turn out people who love learning so much and learn so well that they will be able to learn whatever needs to be learned

– John Holt

CRITIQUING EDUCATION & SCHOOL

School is where you go between when your parents can’t take you and industry can’t take you.

– John Updike

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”

– Mark Twain

“The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.”

– Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

“My grandmother wanted me to have an education, so she kept me out of school.”

– Margaret Mead

“The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders.”

– John Taylor Gatto

I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays, and have things arranged for them, that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas.

– Agatha Christie

This page has the following sub pages.

• Rue Kream – Parenting A Free Child
• Unschooling & Parenting eGroups
• Pam Leo – Connection Parenting
• Jan Hunt - Unschooling Unmanual

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