9 Quotes by Madeline Levine

Parents who have more than one child are very aware that, while we certainly have an impact on our child's development, it has as much to do with them as with us. "I can't believe how different my kids are" should inform us that child development is an uneven process only partly tied to parenting (and no one knows exactly how much that "partly" is).

Our children cannot be assumed to follow in our footsteps, assuage our losses, or compensate for our inadequacies.

Kids who learn early in life that they're capable of mastering activities that at first feel a little stressful grow up better able to handle stress of all kinds.

Learning in an interactive setting as opposed to a passive one is conducive to the mix of soft and academic skills we're looking to develop in our kids.

We need to always deal with the child in front of us, not the child of our fantasies.

There’s probably no better example of the throttling of creativity than the difference between what we observe in a kindergarten classroom and what we observe in a high school classroom,” she writes in Teach Your Children Well. “Take a room full of five-year-olds and you will see creativity in all its forms positively flowing around the room. A decade later you will see these same children passively sitting at their desks, half asleep or trying to decipher what will be on the next test.

Remember, our very first job is to appropriately monitor our teen’s safety. After all, if we’re not successful at that, then any discussion of cognitive skills is irrelevant.

Until they enter elementary school most youngsters are motivated by the challenge itself, not by stars or grades or rewards. This is called mastery motivation and is the form of learning most likely to lead to both engagement and persistence, and ultimately to expertise.

Learning in an interactive setting as opposed to a passive one is conducive to the mix of soft and academic skills we’re looking to develop in our kids.