Quotes & Sayings About Independent Child

Technically I have siblings, but they are quite a bit older than me - I was the accident - so I have the only-child syndrome going on. I'm a little more selfish, a little more independent, a little closed. I do wish I were softer. I wish I were able to form relationships better. — Carrie Underwood

I would like to have a child. A very wise and witty little girl who'd grow up to be the woman I could never be. A very independent little girl with no scars on the brain or the psyche ... A little girl who said what she meant and meant what she said. A little girl who was neither bitchy nor mealy-mouthed ... What I really wanted was to give birth to myself - the little girl I might have been in a different family, a different world. - Erica Jong, Fear of Flying — Anonymous

India has progressed to a stage where a divorcee status hardly matters. What matters is that you raise a positive, independent, well-behaved and intelligent child. — Karisma Kapoor

My mother was independent. She had grown up in Dalton and Pittsfield, in western Massachusetts, and she was one of the first women drivers in that area. — Julia Child

Compliant children are very easily led when they are young, because they thrive on approval and pleasing adults. They are just aseasily led in their teen years, because they still seek the same two things: approval and the pleasing their peers. Strong-willed children are never easily led by anybody
not by you, but also not by their peers. So celebrate your child's strength of will throughout the early years ... and know that the independent thinking you are fostering will serve him well in the critical years to come. — Barbara Coloroso

The best thing you can give to a child is to create an environment where the child can develop an independent mind so that he will be the man of no one and the instrument of no system! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

The experience of a sense of guilt for wrong-doing is necessary for the development of self-control. The guilt feelings will laterserve as a warning signal which the child can produce himself when an impulse to repeat the naughty act comes over him. When the child can produce his on warning signals, independent of the actual presence of the adult, he is on the way to developing a conscience. — Selma Fraiberg

The greatest gift a parent can leave a child is that parent's own independence. — Rosamunde Pilcher

Even a child cannot sit here without support. Some support will be necessary. No one can live without the support from the material world. After getting the support from one's own Soul, one doesn't need the support from the material world. 'He' will then become independent [support-free]. — Dada Bhagwan

What do I lose when I have a praying life? Control. Independence. What do I gain? Friendship with God. A quiet heart. The living work of God in the hearts of those I love. The ability to roll back the tide of evil. Essentially, I lose my kingdom and get his. I move from being an independent player to a dependent lover. I move from being an orphan to a child of God. — Paul E. Miller

But when his parents consciously or unconsciously exploit him for their own ends or pleasure, or hate or reject him, so that he cannot be sure of minimal support when he tries out his new independence, the child will cling to the parents and will use his capacity for independence only in the forms of negativity and stubbornness. If, when he first begins tentatively to say "No," his parents beat him down rather than love and encourage him, he thereafter will say "No" not as a form of true independent strength but as a mere rebellion. — Rollo May

This is the treasure we need today - helping the child become independent of us and make his way by himself, receiving in return his gifts of hope and light. — Maria Montessori

I'm one of those hovering mothers and I know it's really important to have an independent child, so I'm trying to back off, but it's hard. I love him so much, and he's so funny and cute to me. — Selma Blair

We must support as much as possible the child's desires for activity; not wait on him, but educate him to be independent. — Maria Montessori

Depend on no one else to give you what you want — Destiny's Child

When we found it you said the number would be either the client, or a source of independent corroboration, or a source of further information. — Lee Child

Many toxic parents compare one sibling unfavorably with another to make the target child feel that he's not doing enough to gain parental affection. This motivates the child to do whatever the parents want in order to regain their favor. This divide-and-conquer technique is often unleashed against children who become a little too independent, threatening the balance of the family system. — Susan Forward

As more and more norms disappear from social praxis, literature faces ever-growing difficulties. Its predicament is beginning to resemble that of a child who has discovered that his incredibly understanding parents will let him break with impunity all his toys, indeed everything in the house. The artist cannot create specific prohibitions for himself in order to attack them later in his work; the prohibitions must be real, and hence independent of the writer's choices. And since the relativization of cultural norms has not so far been able to disturb the given characteristics of human biology, that is where writers today seek the still perceptible points of resistance
which is why literature is preoccupied with the theme of sex. — Stanislaw Lem

And most of the failures in parent-child relationships, from my observation, begin when the child begins to acquire a mind and a will of its own, to make independent decisions and to question the omnipotence or the wisdom of the parent. — Sydney J. Harris

Parents teach children discipline for two different, indeed diametrically opposed, reasons: to render the child submissive to them and to make him independent of them. Only a self-disciplined person can be obedient; and only such a person can be autonomous. — Thomas Szasz

Almost everywhere we find ... the use of various coercive measures, to rid ourselves as quickly as possible of the child withinus
i.e., the weak, helpless, dependent creature
in order to become an independent competent adult deserving of respect. When we reencounter this creature in our children, we persecute it with the same measures once used in ourselves. — Alice Miller

New Rule: Don't name your kid after a ballpark. Cubs fans Paul and Teri Fields have named their newborn son Wrigley. Wrigley Fields. A child is supposed to be an independent individual, not a means of touting your own personal hobbies. At least that's what I've always taught my kids, Panama Red and Jacuzzi. — Bill Maher

The greatest thing about being a mother so young, I had my first child at 24, is that I cook, I clean, I love to be independent and kind of hate to be waited on and hate to be taken care of. So, I guess that demonstrates my fiercely independent nature which is kind of anti what I portray on a weekly basis. — Vanessa L. Williams

There is a bond, it appears, between mother and child which endures as long as they do. It is independent of love; reason cannot weaken it; hate cannot destroy it. — Margaret Deland

Child! Turn your face to the light, to the science, to the reason, to the truth, to the peace! Child! Be modern, be compassionate, be individual, and be independent! Child! Don't be the man of anyone or any system, don't believe in any religious stories, and don't ever be silent against any oppressor! Child, turn your face to the light and walk towards the light! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

If this was the true self it was marvelous and what's more it seemed never to change but always to pick up from the last stop, to continue in the same vein, a vein I had struck when I was a child and went down in the street for the first time alone and there frozen into the dirty ice of the gutter lay a dead cat, the first time I had looked at death and grasped it. From that moment I knew what it was to be isolated: every object, every living thing and every dead thing led its independent existence. My thoughts too led to an independent existence. — Henry Miller

The promise of American capitalism is that it makes people richer, freer and more independent. But since the introduction of Fed, the currency in which Americans keep score has so addled the figures, we scarcely know if we are winning or losing. The dollar we knew as a child - in the 1950's - is only worth a tenth as much today. — Bill Bonner

At birth, the child leaves a person - his mother's womb - and this makes him independent of her bodily functions. The baby is next endowed with an urge, or need, to face the out world and to absorb it. We might say that he is born with 'the psychology of world conquest.' By absorbing what he finds about him, he forms his own personality. — Maria Montessori

A kid thinks her mother is just that
hers. A mother is also a woman, an independent being, who doesn't want to be reminded by anyone, child or otherwise, of her tree-trunk thighs. The world made women's private lives a public affair to people who knew them and even people who didn't. — J. Courtney Sullivan

You're saying Stevie's problems are because we taught him to believe in Santa Claus?" asked Step, incredulous. "On the contrary. I think Santa Claus is, by and large, quite beneficial, for when the child is finally allowed - or forced - to recognize the nonexistence of Santa Claus, then the child is able to go through the vital intellectual process of reconstructing reality in light of new evidence, complete with back-forming new stories to account for past events. This prepares the child for many other disillusionments and gives her vital and well-supported experience in maintaining her grip on reality independent of the stories told to her at any given time." "So Santa Claus is good," said Step. "Santa Claus is usually not maladaptive," said Dr. Weeks, — Orson Scott Card

There must be a solemn and terrible aloneness that comes over the child as he takes those first independent steps. All this is lost to memory and we can only reconstruct it through analogies in later life ... To the child who takes his first steps and finds himself walking alone, this moment must bring the first sharp sense of the uniqueness and separateness of his body and his person, the discovery of the solitary self. — Selma Fraiberg

In the Russian Orthodox Church there is the concept of the Holy Fool. It means someone who is a fool to the ways of the world, but wise to the ways of God. I think that Ted, from the moment he saw the baby, knew that he could not possibly be the father ... Perhaps he saw in that moment that if he so much as questioned the baby's fatherhood, it would mean humiliation for the child and might jeopardize his entire future ... Perhaps he understood that he could not reasonably expect an independent and energetic spirit like Winnie to find him sexually exciting and fulfilling.
... And so he decided upon the most unexpected, and yet the simplest course of all. He chose to be such a Fool that he couldn't see the obvious. — Jennifer Worth

The child's conquests of independence are the basic steps in what is called his 'natural development'. — Maria Montessori

The first aim of the prepared environment is, as far as it is possible, to render the growing child independent of the adult. — Maria Montessori

I think Santa Claus is, by and large, quite beneficial, for when the child is finally allowed
or forced
to recognize the nonexistence of Santa Claus, then the child is able to go through the vital intellectual process of reconstructing reality in light of new evidence, complete with back-forming new stories to account for past events. This prepares the child for many other disillusionments and gives her vital and well-supported experience in maintaining her grip on reality independent of the stories told to her at any given time. — Orson Scott Card

I began to watch places with an interest so exact it might have been memory. There was that street corner, with the small newsagent which sold copies of the Irish Independent and honeycomb toffee in summer. I could imagine myself there, a child of nine, buying peppermints and walking back down by the canal, the lock brown and splintered as ever, and boys diving from it.
It became a powerful impulse, a slow intense reconstruction of a childhood which had never happened. A fragrance or a trick of light was enough. Or a house I entered which I wanted not just to appreciate but to remember, and then I would begin. — Eavan Boland

Don't you wish to marry?" At Pandora's lack of response, she pressed impatiently, "Well?"
Pandora glanced at Kathleen for guidance. "Should I say the conventional thing or the honest thing?"
Lady Berwick replied before Kathleen was able. "Answer honestly, child."
"In that case," Pandora said, "No, I don't wish to marry, ever. I like men quite well - at least the ones I've been acquainted with - but I shouldn't like to have to obey a husband and serve his needs. It wouldn't make me at all happy to have a dozen children, and stay at home knitting while he goes out romping with his friends. I would rather be independent. — Lisa Kleypas

The child seeks for independence by means of work; an independence of body and mind. — Maria Montessori

The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother's side, yet this very love must help the child grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent. — Erich Fromm

I dare say you marvel sometimes at my independent way of walking through the world just as if nature had made me of your sex instead of poor Eve's. Trust me, my beloved friend, the mind has no sex but what habit and education give it, and I who was thrown in infancy upon the world like a wreck upon the waters have learned, as well to struggle with the elements as any male child of Adam. — Frances Wright

He saw the cause of his unhappiness in the family
the family as a social institution, which does not permit the child to become an independent individual at the proper time. — August Strindberg

I'm an independent thinker. And I'm not the poster child for any movement. I'm trying to support whatever's right no matter where it is. — Mos Def

It is a fact that if an impulse from one or the other sphere comes up and is not lived out, then it goes back down and tends to develop anti-human qualities. What should have been a human impulse becomes a tiger-like impulse.
For instance, a man has a feeling impulse to say something positive to someone and he blocks it off through some inhibition. He might then dream that he had a spontaneous feeling impulse on the level of a child and his conscious purpose had smashed it. The human is still there, but as a hurt child. Should he do that habitually for five years, he would no longer dream of a child who had been hurt but of a zoo full of raging wild animals in a cage.
An impulse which is driven back loads up with energy and becomes inhuman. This fact, according to Dr. Jung, demonstrates the independent existence of unconscious. — Marie-Louise Von Franz

The child's conquest of independence begins with his first introduction to life. While he is developing, he perfects himself and overcomes every obstacle that he finds in his path. A vital force is active within him, and this guides his efforts towards their goal. It is a force called the 'horme', by Sir Percy Nunn. — Maria Montessori

I've long believed that one of the mainsprings of our own liberty has been the widespread ownership of property among our people and the expectation that anyone's child, even from the humblest of families, could grow up to own a business or a corporation. Thomas Jefferson dreamed of a land of small farmers, of shopowners, and merchants. Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Homestead Act that ensured that the great western prairies of America would be the realm of independent, propertyowning citizens-a mightier guarantee of freedom is difficult to imagine. — Ronald Reagan

There's always the syndrome of the parent-child relationship: when someone has known you since you were very young, it doesn't matter how much more independent, how much older or more mature you get - there is still that element, the dynamic of the relationship that is very hard to successfully transform, and that has nothing to do with the music-making, in the end. — Helene Grimaud

My sister is bold, independent, and not afraid to wear overalls. Some of her first words as a child were "that's not fair," and she's been committed to social justice ever since. She's my hero. — Lena Dunham

To lead a child (or anyone else!), even inadvertently, away from faithfulness, away from loyalty and bedrock belief simply because we want to be clever or independent is license no parent nor any other person has ever been given. — Jeffrey R. Holland

There is something very intriguing about, for example, the sense of accomplishment that a small child has, which you might be able to reduce to aggression and libido, but which might also have some independent existence. — Peter Gay

I want to have the illegitimate child of independent film making and the budget to make it. That's my aspiration. — Duncan Jones

A person raised in a healthy family is equipped to live a confident and independent life; someone from an unhealthy family is filled with fear and self-doubt. He has difficulty with the prospect of life without someone else. The devaluing messages of control and manipulation create dependency so those who most need to leave their family of origin are the least equipped to do so. — Christina Enevoldsen

We'd all like to see our poems walking alone in the world. Like children reared to be independent adults. Some parents raise a child conservatively (that is, with no exposure to the darker things awaiting them beyond the door), but you can see how that's a mistake right? There's no way to know how best to prepare a child for the future. No way to know how to write a publishable poem -- I'm not saying safe poems don't get published. Or that sheltered children can't succeed. Just that you write the best poems you can and send them out. Sometimes they return home weeping. Sometimes they make their own way. — Terrence K. Hayes

I have an only child. She's so independent and good with adults. — Tim Allen

A child is being properly educated only when he is learning to become independent of his parents. — Hyman Rickover

I remember being in Japan when Destiny's Child put out 'Independent Women,' and women there were saying how proud they were to have their own jobs, their own independent thinking, their own goals. It made me feel so good, and I realized that one of my responsibilities was to inspire women in a deeper way. — Beyonce Knowles

I was a very quiet child, quite introverted, really. Independent, yes; I didn't need a lot of supervision. Less so than I did when I got older, maybe. But I was a bookish child, not surprisingly. I could sit quite happily in a corner for hours and entertain myself with books. — John Boyne

If no one had ever challenged religious authority, there'd be no democracy, no public schools, women's rights, improvements to science and medicine, evolution of slavery and no laws against child abuse or spousal abuse. I was afraid to challenge my religious beliefs because that was the basis of creation - mine anyway. I was afraid to question the Bible or anything in it, and when I did, that's when I became involved with PFLAG and realized that my son was a perfectly normal human being and there was nothing for God to heal because Bobby was perfect just the way he was. — Mary Griffith

The child can only develop fully by means of experience in his environment. We call such experience 'work'. — Maria Montessori

When Patanjali says "non-attachment", he is not anti-love. Really, he is for love. Non-attachment means be natural, loving, flowing, but don't get obsessed and addicted. Addiction is the problem. Then it is like a disease. You cannot love anybody except your child - this is addiction. Then you will be in misery. Your child can die; then there is no possibility for your love to flow. Even if your child is not going to die, he will grow. And the more he grows, the more he will become independent. And then there will be pain. Every mother suffers, every father suffers. — Rajneesh

The preacher must have, bonds of a servant with the spirit of a king, a king in high, royal, independent bearing, with the simplicity and sweetness of a child. — E. M. Bounds

Take away the love and the laughter, narrate the stories as if the characters had acted with malice and self-absorption, and everybody was in a bleak independent film about alcoholism and schizophrenia and child abuse. — Nick Hornby

We must clearly understand that when we give the child freedom and independence, we are giving freedom to a worker already braced for action, who cannot live without working and being active. — Maria Montessori

Under the urge of nature and according to the laws of development, though not understood by the adult, the child is obliged to be serious about two fundamental things ... the first is the love of activity ... The second fundamental thing is independence. — Maria Montessori

How can anyone think so insanely that the human life has the same value and mankind, the same morality, independent of numbers? It is lucid to me that everytime a new child is born, the value of every human in world decreases slightly. It is obvious to me that the morality of the population explosion is wholly unlike than when man was a sparse, noble species in its beginning. — Pentti Linkola

It's good of you to teach the child. A woman needs to be as independent as she can be ore else the world will use her skirts as handkerchiefs and then toss her in the garbage. — Suzanne Hayes

I fought for years to free myself of all my cultural, economic and political chains, to be free of owning or being owned. I refused. God, how hard it is to refuse sometimes. Especially during times of hardship, refusal requires willpower. And each refusal expands the boundaries of one's loneliness. You know how it goes," I said, running out of breath. "I did not belong to my town. I had no regular city or country address, no regular job, no steady lover, husband, child or family. I was infinitely independent and unfettered. I was hungry but free. — Buket Uzuner

When your children are very young it is impossible to imagine a life where they will not live with you, where you will not see them every day or know what they are doing. As they grow up, you gradually untangle your 'self' from their 'selves' until the day arrives when you look at your child and realize the role you play in their life is no longer a central one. It's hard to recognize that your child is independent, but it's also incredibly liberating."
-- from Unlikely Destinations: The Lonely Planet Story — Maureen Wheeler

My parents separated when I was very small. I grew up with my mother, and I was a single child then. She was very independent, doing her things and having fun alone and working. — Gael Garcia Bernal

Except when he has regressive tendencies, the child's nature is to aim directly and energetically at functional independence. — Maria Montessori