Quotes & Sayings About Inner Child

It's strange: I've done so many things up until I did 'Obvious Child,' including writing children's books and making 'Marcel the Shell.' To me, the through-line is incredibly clear: it all comes from wanting to be connected to my own inner voice and not wanting to be on somebody else's agenda if that means that I can't be myself. — Jenny Slate

INTROSPECTION: LOOKING WITHIN
What is there to say about the inner life? It is as complex as the watery byways of Venice, Delicate as the hands of an infant child, Curious and compact as the wisdom of an acorn. It is as magnificent as the profile of an African queen.
It eludes comprehension and yet it is ever present, Enveloping every moment of life.
One lives from the inside out. A gnarl of emotion, biography, memory, and spirit. Each blending and bending into the other Like knotted strands of crocheted comforter. It is a world I will never truly understand, And yet the only reality I can ever know.
What — Karyn D. Kedar

My inner child is not wounded. — Shannen Doherty

What makes me feel alive is community, connectedness. Certainly family, parenting, relationships, friendship. All the way into colleague relationships and relationship with spirit, relationship with one's own self and inner child, and animals, earth, planet. Fostering and nurturing and really focusing on connection - connection in relationship with other and my own self and God. When I don't feel connected in all those three areas, life is not very good. — Alanis Morissette

Living the basic good-mothering guidelines enables a mom to blend the responsibilities of parenthood with its joys; to know when to stand her grown and when to be flexible; and to absorb the lessons of the parenting gurus while also trusting her inner voice when it reasons that another cookie isn't worth fighting over, or that her child won't suffer irreparable trauma if, once in awhile, Mom puts her own needs first. — Sue Woodman

When the inner child finds a guardian angel, publishers are in heaven. — Wendy Kaminer

Inner child work is essential. It's the essence of growth as a whole person — Cheryl Richardson

It was only when I started to reconnect with my inner child four years into recovery (I was over four years clean and sober off drugs and alcohol) and started to attend a love addiction support group that I was able to trust again and have faith that there are just as many honest and trustworthy women as there are women who are not interested in monogamy.
However, it was after ten years of continuous recovery that I started to really dig deep into my childhood grief work and was finally able to reclaim my inner child. I started to take risks again. On a practical level, you can't get very far in this world if you resent and distrust the opposite sex and, sadly, many men and women suffer in this area. Rather than celebrating the opposite sex, they fear them. Empathy and self-compassion has helped me in this area too. — Christopher Dines

I had been reading children's books all my life and saw them not as minor amusements but as part of the whole literary mainstream; not as "juveniles" or "kiddie lit," one of the most demeaning terms in the scholastic jargon.
My belief was, and is, that the child's book is a unique and valid art form; a means of dealing with things which cannot be dealt with quite as well in any other way. There is, I'm convinced, no inner, qualitative difference between writing for adults and writing for children. The raw materials are the same for both: the human condition and our response to it. — Lloyd Alexander

I used to think that the term inner child was a ridiculous metaphor invented to remind responsibility-burdened adults to lighten up occasionally and just have fun. But it turns out that the inner child is very real. It is our past. And the only way to escape the past is to embrace it. So before going to bed that night, I put the photo in a frame and place it next to my bed. And I vow that from this day forward, that child will be protected. He will be loved. He will be accepted. He will be trusted. And all this will be given unconditionally. He will not be taught to hate and fear. He will not be criticized for failing to live up to unrealistic expectations. He will not be used as a Kleenex or aspirin for someone else's feelings of loneliness, fear, depression, or anxiety. — Neil Strauss

Most survivors grew up too fast. Their vulnerable child-selves got lost in the need to protect and deaden themselves. Reclaiming the inner child is part of the healing process. Often the inner child holds information and feelings for the adult. Some of these feelings are painful; others are actually fun. The child holds the playfulness and innocence the adult has had to bury. — Laura Davis

You are a child of the universe, "fearfully and wonderfully made." In the history of creation, there has never been anyone like you. Accept this reality about yourself- that you are a special, unique human being who has a place on this earth that no one else can fill. Acknowledge yourself as a glorious expression of your loving Creator. This healthy self-love will form the foundation of a joyful and satisfying life. Then, as you love and accept yourself, your inner light will shine outward to bless and heal your fellow human beings. — Douglas Bloch

High SQ demands the most intense personal integrity. It demands that we stand open to experience, that we recapture our ability to see life and others afresh, as though through the eyes of a child, to learn how to tap into our intuition and visualization, as a powerful means of using our inner knowing to "make a difference." It demands that we cease to seek refuge in what we know and constantly explore and learn from what we do not know. It demands that we live the questions rather than the answers. — Danah Zohar

Even a strong child, a powerful child, would be dependent on the adults around her. If her strength could unnerve him, how would her people, her family, react if they ever discovered what was contained inside that small husk? Would they accept the child who already was the strongest Queen in the history of the Blood, or would they fear the power? And if they feared the power, would they try to cut her off from it by breaking her? A Virgin Night performed with malevolent skill could strip her of her power while leaving the rest intact. But, since her inner web was so deep in the abyss, she might be able to withdraw far enough to withstand the physical violation - unless the male was able to descend deep enough into the abyss to threaten her even there. Was there a male strong enough, dark enough, vicious enough? There was ... one. - Saetan — Anne Bishop

The combination of the Main brain with its central nervous system, and the ancient Animal Brain with its somatic, enteric nervous system in the inner body - in the gut - and the constant dialog between them provides a self-correcting feedback system, which regulates the behavioral qualities of the organism when consciously cultivated - preferably in early youth. — Martha Char Love

No child is born with a really cold heart, and it is only in proportion as we lose that youthful heart that we lose the inner warmth in ourselves. — Lin Yutang

Witchcraft is fun. It offers us a chance to play, to act silly, to let the inner child come out. Out of foolishness and play, creativity is born. — Starhawk

I'd like to see people worry less about their inner child and more about their outer adult. — Ron Bennington

Children perceive frightening ghosts and monsters and dragons and they are terrified. Yet if they ask someone they trust for the meaning of what they perceive, and are willing to let their own interpretations go in favor of reality, their fear goes with them. When a child is helped to translate his 'ghosts' into a courtain, his 'monster' into a shadow and his 'dragon' into a dream he is no longer afraid, and laughs happily at his own fear.
You, my child, are afraid of your brothers and of your Father and of yourself. But you are merely deceived in them. Ask what they are of the Teacher of reality, and hearing His answer, you too will laugh at your fears and replace them with peace. For fear lies not in reality, but in the minds of children who do not understand reality. It is only their lack of understanding that frightens them, and when they learn to perceive truly they are not afraid. — Foundation For Inner Peace

The prayer intends that the new child will never become trapped, caught, or entangled in false inner networks of negativity, resentment, or destruction toward itself. The blessings also intend that the child will have a fluency of feeling in its life, that its feelings may flow freely and carry its soul out to the world and gather from the world delight and peace. — John O'Donohue

And if the child feels loved, the body is relaxed, the eyes are bright, there is a smile on the face; in some way the flesh becomes "transparent." A child that is loved is beautiful. But what happens when children feel they are not loved? There is tension, fear, loneliness and terrible anguish, which we can call "inner pain," the opposite of "inner peace." Children are too small and weak to be able to fend for themselves; they have no defense mechanisms. If a child feels unloved and unwanted, he or she will develop a broken self-image. I have never heard any of the men or women whom we have welcomed into our community criticize their parents, even though many of them have suffered a great deal from rejection or abandonment in their families. Rather than blaming their parents, they blame themselves. "If I am not loved, it is because I am not lovable, I am no good. I am evil. — Jean Vanier

Hesse, like so many gifted children, was so difficult for his parents to bear not despite but because of his inner riches. Often a child's very gifts (his great intensity of feeling, depth of experience, curiosity, intelligence, quickness - and his ability to be critical) will confront his parents with conflicts that they have long sought to keep at bay by means of rules and regulations. — Alice Miller

By developing a contaminated, stigmatized identity, the child victim takes the evil of the abuser into herself and thereby preserves her primary attachments to her parents. Because the inner sense of badness preserves a relationship, it is not readily given up even after the abuse has stopped; rather, it becomes a stable part of the child's personality structure. — Judith Lewis Herman

The wish to be super-strong is a healthy wish, a vital, compelling, power-producing desire. The more the Superman-Wonder Woman picture stories build up this inner compulsion by stimulating the child's natural longing to battle and overcome obstacles, particularly evil ones, the better chance your child has for self-advancement in the world. — William Moulton Marston

For years now, I have waited to grow up. The truth, that I've learned, is that age has no reality except in the physical world. Our essence, of being human, is resistant to the passage of time. Our core and inner selves can remain eternal. Which is to say that our spirits remain as youthful and vigorous as when we thought we were in full bloom. As for me, I'm still quite a child inside.. — Jose N. Harris

One hundred years of age doesn't mean you have to bury your inner child. You age better if you hold onto a little petulance and let it out now and again. — R.R. Virdi

To love is not to possess,
To own or imprison,
Nor to lose one's self in another.
Love is to join and separate,
To walk alone and together,
To find a laughing freedom
That lonely isolation does not permit.
It is finally to be able
To be who we really are
No longer clinging in childish dependency
Nor docilely living separate lives in silence,
It is to be perfectly one's self
And perfectly joined in permanent commitment
To another--and to one's inner self.
Love only endures when it moves like waves,
Receding and returning gently or passionately,
Or moving lovingly like the tide
In the moon's own predictable harmony,
Because finally, despite a child's scars
Or an adult's deepest wounds,
They are openly free to be
Who they really are--and always secretly were,
In the very core of their being
Where true and lasting love can alone abide. — James Kavanaugh

Most of the writers I know have somehow managed to stay in touch with that inner child who's never heard of such a thing as an internal editor. — JoAnn Ross

That certainly is one approach to take. My own is to acknowledge the inner child and try to work with my first fascination with science fiction. I have tried to build on its idea content and narrative drive rather than to discard them. — James Gunn

There are times ... when we are in the midst of life-moments of confrontation with birth or death, or moments of beauty when nature or love is fully revealed, or moments of terrible loneliness-times when a holy and awesome awareness comes upon us. It may come as deep inner stillness or as a rush of overflowing emotion. It may seem to come from beyond us, without any provocation, or from within us, evoked by music or by a sleeping child. If we open our hearts at such moments, creation reveals itself to us in all it's unity and fullness. And when we return from such a moment of awareness, our hearts long to find some way to capture it in words forever, so that we can remain faithful to it's higher truth.
... When my people search for a name to give to the truth we feel at those moments, we call it God, and when we capture that understanding in timeless poetry, we call it praying. — Mary Doria Russell

In the inner place where true artists create there exists a pure child. — Lawren Harris

But perhaps these are the very hours during which solitude grows; for its growing is painful as the growing of boys and sad as the beginning of spring. But that must not confuse you. What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours - that is what you must be able to attain. To be solitary as you were when you were a child, when the grownups walked around involved with matters that seemed large and important because they looked so busy and because you didn't understand a thing about what they were doing. — Rainer Maria Rilke

A child too, can never grasp the fact that the same mother who cooks so well, is so concerned about his cough, and helps so kindly with his homework, in some circumstance has no more feeling than a wall of his hidden inner world. — Alice Miller

The problem with inner child is that if it keeps showing too often, people label you as childish. — Shon Mehta

I would rather be the child of a mother who has all the inner conflicts of the human being than be mothered by someone for whom all is easy and smooth, who knows all the answers, and is a stranger to doubt. — Donald Woods Winnicott

Let us liberate ourselves from any form of control. Let us focus at the inner drum, where the rhythm aligns with that of our heart. The measure of responsibility, equals to the need for evolution. Just listen, the inner child, let it whisper in your ear. — Grigoris Deoudis

If you are never open to change things will remain the same, thereby driving you insane. — Clarine Williams

Do you ever plan to grow up, Veltan?" he asked.

"Not if I can avoid it, no. — David Eddings

The balanced adult retains an inner child. The secret is to know when to put him away. — Anthony North

Some people's inner child is a colicky baby. — Annamaria Alfieri

If you want to be a good parent please heal your own wounds, heal all of them and be confident that you've done so before you seriously consider having children. The unresolved child within you is the real child you need to embrace and heal and raise. — Daniel Mackler

The inner child runs rampant. They're just smaller, that's all. — Jim Carrey

Peace is a child's beautiful smile and a flower's freshness
Peace is an inner perception of joyfulness and happiness. — Debasish Mridha

Hello, inner child, I'm the inner babysitter! — Terry Pratchett

Education demands, then, only this: the utilization of the inner powers of the child for his own instruction. — Maria Montessori

Every father knows the disconcerting when you see your child as a weird, distorted double of yourself. It is as if for a moment your identities overlap. You see an idea, a conception of your boyish inner self ... made real and flesh.
He is you restarted, rewound; at the same time he is as foreign and unknowable as any other person. — William Landay

A 'good' father will tenderly cultivate his children. But a 'good' father who is also a 'brave' father will let the children without cultivate the child within. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Don't try to 'fix' the child's boredom - rather, let the child find his or her inner resources. — Julia Cameron

Have you ever watched a child learning to walk?
Before this week, I never had, but there's a certain grace to it. Well, if not grace, then tenacity. Fall down nine times
get up ten. And the tenth time you get where you're going, you don't stop, not for obstacles, not for other people telling you to stop. You don't listen to anything but that inner voice until you arrive where you want to be. — Ann Aguirre

A child screams with joy and a child screams with pain, and the difference is in the timbre of that scream. Decibels of joy strike the inner ear differently from those of pain. — Fred D'Aguiar

I went to West Texas and started writing a cycle of Americana poems after the space conjured images that, as a child, I only saw on television-John Wayne, cowboys, borderlines. But suddenly, I felt close to these once-foreign imageries and wondered how I'd changed. Each evening brought the darkest skies in the country, and I understood the expansiveness of our inner selves. Ultimately nothing divides us except the worlds and words we allow. — Nathalie Handal

It concerns me when I see a small child watching the hero shoot the villain on television. It is teaching the small child to believe that shooting people is heroic. The hero just did it and it was effective. It was acceptable and the hero was well thought of afterward. If enough of us find inner peace to affect the institution of television, the little child will see the hero transform the villain and bring him to a good life. He'll see the hero do something significant to serve fellow human beings. So little children will get the idea that if you want to be a hero you must help people. — Peace Pilgrim

Within us all is a radiant inner child bathed in joy. — Amy Leigh Mercree

Your inner child was showing. — Jean Oram

Umar, despite his strong character and impressive personality, had lost control of himself for a short while, his emotions seizing him so strongly that it brought out a heretofore unsuspected fragility, causing him to react like a child refusing the ruling of God, of reality, of life. By contrast, Abu Bakr, who was normally so sensitive, who wept so abundantly and so intensely when he read the Quran, had received the news of the Prophet's death with deep sorrow but also with extraordinary calm and unsuspected inner strength. At that particular moment, the two men's roles were inverted, thus showing that through his departure the Prophet offered us a final teaching: in the bright depths of spirituality, sensitivity can produce a degree of strength of being that nothing can disturb. Conversely, the strongest personality, if it forgets itself for a moment, can become vulnerable and fragile. The — Tariq Ramadan

Stop!" She advances on me with the most severe, stern look I've ever seen from her, and she yells in a strong voice. "No more. Get it out of your head, Kai! We are not running. This is happening whether you like it or not. It's time to get your game face on and get ready to kick some ass."
Holy ... I honestly didn't think her capable of this kind of verbal badassery. Even in handcuffs she has taken control, walloped me, and forced my whiney inner child into a corner. — Wendy Higgins

Each child with special needs such as this does not come into the world in order to make our lives difficult and make us suffer. They each come into this world for a reason and have their secret inner voice. It remains to us to offer our love; to 'bear one another's burdens'; to experience a collective humbling - to realize, that is, that we are not as powerful and important as we think; and to try to lighten that person's burden and understand their language. These children are better at speaking the language of God. — Metropolitan Nikolaos Of Mesogaia

The child of God has free access to the inner courts of heaven. "For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father." "Let us come boldly," says the apostle, "to the throne of the heavenly grace. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Most of us love a non-self, or something extrinsic and apart from our inner life; but a mother's love during the time she is a flesh-and-blood ciborium is not for a non-self but for one that is her very self, a perfect example of charity and love which hardly perceives a separation. Motherhood then becomes a kind of priesthood. She brings God to man by preparing the flesh in which the soul will be implanted; she brings man to God in offering the child back again to the Creator. — Fulton J. Sheen

Dreams are an extension of our inner child. — Fan T. C.

My new catchphrase is: 'Pull yourself together.' I've done the inner child, I've had analysis, I've decided that unless you're mentally ill and need support, it's up to you. — Sheila Hancock

Did I hurt your feelings again? Sorry. When this is all over I'll send some flowers to your inner child. — Richard Kadrey

as corrie was about to hang up, stacy said, "i hope he shoots at my car. i've got a couple of black talon rounds just itching to explore his inner psyche. — Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child

May you always see the world through the eyes of a child. — C.J. Heck

The child is an inner possibility, the possibility of renewal. — Marie-Louise Von Franz

Someone should keep reminding Mr. Average Man that he was born free, divine, strong; uncrushable by fate, society, or hell itself; and that he is a child of God, equal heir to all the bounties of God; and that goodness is riches, kindness is power, and freedom is glory. Above all, every man is born with an inner capacity to take him as far as his imagination can dream or envision-providing he is free to dream and envision. — Frank Capra

I no longer knew whether it was raindrops or my own tears that were flowing down my cheeks, and I hated to have to drag along this relic of a sniveling child. — Ingrid Betancourt

When a child is given a little leeway, he will at once shout, "I want to do it!" But in our schools, which have an environment adapted to children's needs, they say, "Help me to do it alone." And these words reveal their inner needs. — Maria Montessori

Whatcha doin', Freak Girl?"
"What does it look like, brainiac?" I shot back, even surprising myself with the force of my jab. "I'll give you three guesses. No, wait. Don't strain yourself. Wouldn't want to hurt your head." I waved a flyer in his face, channeling my inner mean girl. "See these? I'm hanging them ... on a ... wall!" I spoke the last part slowly, as if addressing a dim-witted child. Which wasn't far off the mark, now that I thought about it. "With tape," I added, waving at the dispenser. "You know-sticky, sticky! — Mari Mancusi

The modern adult, Jake had written, has really only one thing to say to its inner child: I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry — Glen Duncan

A smartphone is an e-toy designed for the lonely inner child hidden in each and everyone of us. — Saurabh Sharma

Each year they threw open the grounds of the manor house for a party attended by children from some of the roughest districts of Birmingham. They built a large hall known as The Barn in the park to provide tea and refreshments for up to seven hundred children. George Sr., with his love of nature, believed strongly that every child should have access to playing outside in clean air. Games were organized in the open fields, but the star attraction was the open-air baths. More than fifty children could bathe at any one time, and for the young visitors, most of whom had no access to a bath, it was thrilling. The sun on their backs, the sparkling water always inviting, the boys from the inner cities had no desire to leave and would stay in all day, until they were blue and shivering and cleaner than they had been in years. — Deborah Cadbury

And what does every child believe every adult capable of doing? Of actually being able to bend the world to an inner desire, exactly what the child is busily practicing in his passionate play. — Joseph Chilton Pearce

Your job as a parent is not to make your child's way smooth, but rather to help her develop inner resources so she can cope. — Ellyn Satter

I thought about adults. I wondered if that was true: if they were all really children wrapped in adult bodies ... — Neil Gaiman

The child is in me still and sometimes not so still. — Fred Rogers

A song for you
A song for me
Is how we relate our life to be — Patty Smith

If a child connects being hurt with being bad, weak, unable to cope, or constantly surrounded by threat, there is no room left for inner spiritual growth. For without a sense of safety, spirit remains out of reach; one is forever trying simply to feel secure in this world, yet that security cannot be achieved without overcoming the imprints of early childhood. — Deepak Chopra

The inner life is bruised by a running against the laws of the Kingdom. The bruises are guilt complexes, a sense of inferiority, of missing the mark, of being out of harmony with God and with oneself, a sense of wrongness. Divine forgiveness wipes out all that sense of inner hurt and condemnation. Brings a sense of at-homeness- at home with God and oneself and with life. The universe opens its arms and takes one in. You are accepted- by God, by yourself, and by life. All self-loathing, self-rejection, all inferiorities drop away. You are a child of God; born from above, you walk the earth, a conqueror, afraid of nothing. Healed at the heart, you can say to life: Come on, I'm ready for anything. — E. Stanley Jones

To be honest, I love watching some of the old cartoons and new ones that are popular. It's another way to make me happy and reminisce the good old times. Plus, it makes me forget the recreational world around me. If only the economy would let loose and not tire everyone out. I'm just saying. People have an inner child somewhere. I have one, too. So it's cool to have an inner child at times. It can brighten your day and see another view in life. — Simi Sunny

Inner child, what do you suggest? 'I WANT A TREEHOUSE!' Anything else to add? 'FARTY NOISE UNDER THE ARM!' — Russell Howard

My poor little child
Karin Boye
My poor child, so afraid of the dark,
who has met ghosts of another kind,
who always among those clad in white
glimpses those with evil faces,
now let me sing you gentle songs,
from fright they free, from force and cramp.
Of the evil they ask no repentance.
Of the good they ask not for battle.
See, you must know, that all that lives
is deep inside of equal kind.
Like trees and herbs it seeks to grow -
pulled forward by its inner laws.
And trees may fall and flowers wilt
and branches break, their power lost,
still the dream remains - awaits the call -
in every living drop of sap. (205) — Linda Olsson

Embrace your inner child! — D.L. Finn

There has to be a consequence to failure. Schools in the inner cities cannot be told, 'Oh, we want you to teach every child to learn how to read and, incidentally, if you fail to do that there's no consequence,' .. There has to be a consequence to failure, and the Title I money needs to follow the child. — Karl Rove

We are all children that need nurturing, love and care. So give your inner child that nurturing and love, give yourself back the joy of preparing healthy and nutritious meals, joy of experiencing food without TV, reading, working, rush. — Natasa Nuit Pantovic

I suggested that the system put all the potential offending [sexually abusive] alters in an internal prison. Jennifer said that would take too long. An alter popped out and said, "Just a minute," and then, after a brief silence, announced that they had "killed" all the offender alters; they were lying in the inside world dead, covered in blood! I was not very happy with such drastic measures, but accepted it for the interim, knowing I could rely on Jennifer to tell me if the risk recurred. I made a list of the "dead" alters.
The next morning Jennifer called; she had dreamed about sexually abusing a child. I asked her to look for more related memories before we met in the evening. She had to "reincarnate" all the dead alters to find the memories. (We already had a method for doing this, as some alters had previously experienced internal "death" in "disasters" in the inner world; when they were made new internal bodies, they became alive again.) — Alison Miller

I love and commit to nourishing my inner child. — Amy Leigh Mercree

She held herself until the sobs of the child inside subsided entirely. I love you, she told herself. It will all be okay. — H. Raven Rose

Without the fear of occasional gaffes, the willingness to be perfectly imperfect, and the heart of a child who creates chaos first thing in the morning for a parent; you are not allowing our inner child to grow. You grow in pain, not in years, and you must cross the bridge without knowing of the pain, the tears, or the trials and tribulations that you will come to have to face, but sweet child of mine, stay the happy child of mine. — Forrest Curran

In New York, just standing still on the sidewalk is a weird feeling. You have this incessant need to do things. Los Angeles is about kicking back, relaxing, your inner child, peace. — Esai Morales

If as an adult I have scolded and then silenced the child within me, I contend that I am neither an adult nor a child. Rather, I am just plain ignorant. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

If the point of the inner-child movement is to cure adult problems, it doesn't work. Reliving childhood traumas gives you a nice afterglow, but it lasts only for hours or days. There is no evidence it changes adult problems. — Martin Seligman

Some people think ignoring their inner child makes them seem grown-up. When I see someone ignoring a crying child, I think they're an asshole. — Jay Bell

The parent knows that the child cannot be artificially motivated to learn; they know that he is already motivated by the strongest driving force on earth: his inner intent. — Joseph Chilton Pearce

Unresolved dissonances between the characters and dispositions of the parents continue to reverberate in the nature of the child and make up the history of its inner sufferings. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The degree to which a surviving parent copes is the most important indicator of the child's long-term adaptation. Kids whose surviving parents are unable to function effectively in the parenting role show more anxiety and depression, as well as sleep and health problems, than those whose parents have a strong support network and solid inner resources to rely on. — Hope Edelman

But if you believe that adults can 'make' children learn well - in the absence of or in defiance of a child's inner sense of confident engagement with the power of discovery and mastery - then, in my view, you are placing that child at great risk of failure as a learner. — Kirsten Olson

Over the course of the 1970s conservatives made the endangered child into a kind of political and rhetorical abstraction, a way of thinking about the country and its citizens that could help advance a wide range of policy initiatives. They opposed the counterculture on the grounds that rock and roll caused adolescents to lose respect for family life. They promoted the War on Drugs with racially tinged morality tales about addicted inner-city mothers and, crucially, the "superpredator" "crack babies" to whom those mothers supposedly gave birth. (That particular epidemic was later shown to be a myth.)40 And when Anita Bryant led a campaign to allow Dade County to discriminate against homosexuals in hiring teachers for public schools, she named the effort "Save Our Children." The fear that tied all of these campaigns together was of the ease with which children could be victimized or else corrupted and turned against the society that was supposed to nurture them. — Richard Beck

When we practise self-compassion, we look after ourselves just as though we are nurturing a small child. In fact, a major part of grieving our original pain work (so that we can heal and be emotionally liberated) is to re-parent ourselves and reconnect with our inner child.

This is what the author, John Bradshaw, meant by 'reclaiming our inner child'. In recovery, we can begin to nurture our inner child and connect deeply with our heart and spirit. — Christopher Dines

Imagination is our inner-child and creativity, its playground. — Jaeda DeWalt