We cannot protect our children from life. Therefore, it is essential to prepare them for it. Feeling sorry for children is one of the most seriously damaging attitudes we can have. It so greatly demonstrates to them and to ourselves that we lack faith in them and their ability to cope with adversities.
Interpretation
We must teach children to handle life's challenges instead of shielding them from difficulties.
Rudolf Dreikurs emphasizes the importance of preparing children for the realities of life rather than overly protecting them. He argues that feeling sorry for children can harm their development, as it implies a lack of belief in their capacity to face and overcome challenges. By equipping them with the skills to manage life's adversities, we instill confidence and resilience in their character.
In practice
In a parenting seminar discussing childhood development.
When a child makes a mistake or fails to accomplish a certain goal, we must avoid any word or action which indicates that we consider him a failure. 'Too bad that didn't work.' 'I'm sorry it didn't work out for you.' We need to separate the deed from the doer.
I never teach until I've spoken to the fighter. I have to first determine his emotional state, get his background, to find out what I have to do, how many layers I have to keep peeling off so that I get to the core of the person so that he can recognize, as well as I, what is there.
There are kids don't want to do something because they're afraid of looking stupid to their peers. There comes a time when they start protecting themselves, instead of extending. I want to make sure that they're always trying to extend themselves.
I did poorly in math for a couple of years in middle school; I was just not interested in thinking about it.
The function of the university is not simply to teach breadwinning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools, or to be a centre of polite society; if is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment from which forms the secret of civilization.
Out of the homes of America will come the future citizens of America, and only as those homes are what they should be will this nation be what it should be.
I went to a segregated school; I was born a Negro, not a black man.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.