Stanley Greenspan Quotes & Sayings

A new world of complex relationships and feelings opens up when the peer group takes its place alongside the family as the emotional focus of the child's life. Early peer relationships contribute significantly to the child's ability to participate in a group (and in that sense, society), deal with competition and disappointment, enjoy the intimacy of friendships, and intuitively understand social relationships as they play out at school, in the neighborhood, and later in the workplace and adult family. — Stanley Greenspan

Empathy comes from being empathized with. — Stanley Greenspan

If your child is going to develop a healthy personality with the capacity to remain intact and grow, she must learn how to test reality, regulate her impulses, stabilize her moods, integrate her feelings and actions, focus her concentration and plan. — Stanley Greenspan

Self-esteem is an inner feeling: Sometimes it corresponds with outer reality, and sometimes it doesn't. — Stanley Greenspan

Good discipline is more than just punishing or laying down the law. It is liking children and letting them see that they are liked. It is caring enough about them to provide good, clear rules for their protection. — Stanley Greenspan

Attention, learning, and problem solving depend in part on the ability to plan and sequence actions and ideas. The Interactive Metronome(R) helps individuals systematically exercise and often improve basic motor planning and sequencing capacities. — Stanley Greenspan

If our society were truly to appreciate the significance of children's emotional ties throughout the first years of life, it would no longer tolerate children growing up or parents having to struggle in situations which could not possibly nourish healthy growth. — Stanley Greenspan

To be motivated to sit at home and study, instead of going out and playing, children need a sense of themselves over time
they need to be able to picture themselves in the future ... If they can't, then they're simply reacting to daily events, responding to the needs of the moment
for pleasure, for affiliation, for acceptance. — Stanley Greenspan

We need to take a less narrow look at our children's problems and, instead, see them as windows of opportunity - a way of exploring and understanding all facets of our children's development. If we can understand the underlying developmental process, we can see a child's struggles as signs of striving toward growth instead of chronic problems or attempts to aggravate adults. — Stanley Greenspan

Even if you find yourself in a heated exchange with your toddler, it is better for your child to feel the heat rather than for himto feel you withdraw emotionally ... Active and emotional involvement between parent and child helps the child make the limits a part of himself. — Stanley Greenspan

Learning first occurs as a part of emotional interactions; it involves the split-second initiatives that children take as they try to engage other people,interact with them communicate and reason with them. — Stanley Greenspan

Although pretend play is important, it is still the means to an end, not the end itself. Do not make the mistake of thinking a contrived, pretend drama can substitute for real interpersonal comfort in dealing with important emotional issues. — Stanley Greenspan

Parents are led to believe that they must be consistent, that is, always respond to the same issue the same way. Consistency is good up to a point but your child also needs to understand context and subtlety ... much of adult life is governed by context: what is appropriate in one setting is not appropriate in another; the way something is said may be more important than what is said ... — Stanley Greenspan

Imagine driving a car that isn't working well. When you step on the gas the car sometimes lurches forward and sometimes doesn't respond. When you blow the horn it sounds blaring. The brakes sometimes slow the car, but not always. The blinkers work occasionally, the steering is erratic, and the speedometer is inaccurate.
You are engaged in a constant struggle to keep the car on the road, and it is difficult to concentrate on anything else. — Stanley Greenspan