Children thrive in a variety of family forms; they develop normally with single parents, with unmarried parents, with multiple caretakers in a communal setting, and with traditional two-parent families. What children require is loving and attentive adults, not a particular family type.
~ Sandra Scarr, developmental psychologist.

Children learn to care by experiencing good care. They come to know the blessings of gentleness, or sympathy, of patience and kindness, of support and backing first through the way in which they themselves are treated.
~ James L. Hymes, Jr., U.S. child psychologist and author.

When children are treated with respect, they conclude that they deserve respect and hence develop self-respect. When children are treated with acceptance, they develop self-acceptance; when they are cherished, they conclude that they deserve to be loved, and they develop self-esteem.
~ Stephanie Martson, U.S. family therapist, author. The Magic of Encouragement.

Children from humble families must be taught how to command just as other children must be taught how to obey.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), German philosopher, classical scholar, critic of culture.

Children allowed to develop at their own speed will usually win the race of life.
~ Fred O. Gosman, U.S. author. How to Be a Happy Parent . . . in Spite of Your Children, ch. 2 (1995).

Compliant children are very easily led when they are young, because they thrive on approval and pleasing adults. They are just as easily 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, U.S. parent educator and author.

ON CHILDREN
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They came through you but not from you.
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you,
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
~ Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931), Lebanese-U.S. poet and painter. “On Children,” Prophet, 1923.

Your children are not here to fill the void left by marital dissatisfaction and disengagement. They are not to be utilized as a substitute for adult-adult intimacy. They are not in this world in order to satisfy a wife’s or a husband’s need for love, closeness or a sense of worth. A child’s task is to fully develop his/her emerging self. When we place our children in the position of satisfying our needs, we rob them of their childhood.
~ Aaron Hess (20th century), U.S. psychotherapist.

Children laugh an average of three hundred or more times a day; adults laugh an average of five times a day, we have a lot of catching up to do.
~ Heather King, U.S. new mother, executive. Crib Notes (1994).

Small children give you headache; big children heartache.
~ Russian proverb.

Children have no covers on their mouths.
~ Chinese proverb.

Children use all their wiles to get their way with adults. Adults do the same with children.
~ Mason Cooley (b. 1927), U.S. aphorist.

Children pick up words as pigeons peas,
And utter them again as God shall please
~ Old English Proverb.

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
~ James Baldwin (1924–1987), U.S. author. repr. In Nobody Knows My Name (1961).

Young children...are often uninterested in conversation It is not that they don’t have ideas and feelings, or need to express them to others It is simply that as one eight-year-old boy once told me, “Talking is okay, but I don’t like to do it all the time the way grown-ups do; I guess you have to develop the habit.”
~ Robert Coles, U.S. child psychiatrist.

Children need money. As they grow older they need more money. They need money for essentially the same reasons that adults need money. They need to buy stuff....They need it regardless of whether they get good grades, violate a family rule, or offend a parent.
~ Donald C. Medeiros, U.S. professor, psychology.