The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers

by Maxwell King

To Fred Rogers, every child required special attention, because every child needed assurance that he or she was someone who mattered.

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news,” Rogers had told his young viewers, “my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers—so many caring people in this world.”

Rogers was a genius of empathy . . . fearless enough to be kind.”

“Fred was quite daring. People think of him as conservative, in the little fifties house with the cardigan sweater, but he was completely fearless in his use of the medium and as a teacher . . . I think he was brilliant—a genius.”

I want children to know that it’s hard to learn something new, and that grown-ups make mistakes.”

His lesson is as simple and direct as Fred was: Human kindness will always make life better.

It always helps to have people we love beside us when we have to do difficult things in life. —FRED ROGERS

“Nothing can replace the influence of unconditional love in the life of a child. . . . Children love to belong, they long to belong.”4

The real issue in life is not how many blessings we have, but what we do with our blessings. Some people have many blessings and hoard them. Some have few and give everything away. —FRED ROGERS

Like most good things, teaching has to do with honesty.”

Ninth, “Rephrase your idea a final time, relating it to some phase of development a preschooler can understand (i.e., growing): “Your favorite GROWN-UPS can tell you where it is SAFE to play. It is important to try to listen to them. And listening is an important part of growing.”

“Please, think of the children first. If you ever have anything to do with their entertainment, their food, their toys, their custody, their day care, their health, their education—please listen to the children, learn about them, learn from them.”

The result: The poor children in the study, published in 1995, had little more than a quarter of the vocabulary of the middle-class kids by the time they got to public school, and they arrived at kindergarten far behind and far less ready to learn. Most significantly, many of these kids never caught up: It was game over by kindergarten, just because they hadn’t evolved rich and modulated language skills.

‘No, you’re not horrible. What you said is not horrible. Nothing about you is horrible—except how you treat others. What you do.’