Guðrún > Guðrún's Quotes

“every relationship you are in will fail, until one doesn't ”
― Dan Savage

“Relationships are complicated, but happiness in a relationship isn't: It's just wanting exactly what you have. Wanting something else is dispiriting.”
― Carolyn Hax

“The way kids learn to make good decisions is by making decisions, not by following directions.”
― Alfie Kohn, Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason

“People will typically be more enthusiastic where they feel a sense of belonging and see themselves as part of a community than they will in a workplace in which each person is left to his own devices”
― Alfie Kohn, Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise and Other Bribes

“The attempt to escape from pain, is what creates more pain.”
― Gabor Maté

“The greatest damage done by neglect, trauma or emotional loss is not the immediate pain they inflict but the long-term distortions they induce in the way a developing child will continue to interpret the world and her situation in it. All too often these ill-conditioned implicit beliefs become self-fulfilling prophecies in our lives. We create meanings from our unconscious interpretation of early events, and then we forge our present experiences from the meaning we’ve created. Unwittingly, we write the story of our future from narratives based on the past...Mindful awareness can bring into consciousness those hidden, past-based perspectives so that they no longer frame our worldview.’Choice begins the moment you disidentify from the mind and its conditioned patterns, the moment you become present…Until you reach that point, you are unconscious.’ …In present awareness we are liberated from the past.”
― Gabor Maté, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

“Not why the addiction but why the pain.”
― Gabor Maté

“Too often we forget that discipline really means to teach, not to punish. A disciple is a student, not a recipient of behavioural consequences.”
― Daniel J. Siegel, The Whole-Brain Child: Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind

“As children develop, their brains "mirror" their parent's brain. In other words, the parent's own growth and development, or lack of those, impact the child's brain. As parents become more aware and emotionally healthy, their children reap the rewards and move toward health as well.”
― Daniel J. Siegel, The Whole-Brain Child: Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind

“At the most basic level, therefore, secure attachments in both childhood and adulthood are established by two individual's sharing a nonverbal focus on the energy flow (emotional states) and a verbal focus on the information-processing aspects (representational processes of memory and narrative) of mental life. The matter of the mind matters for secure attachments.”
― Daniel J. Siegel, The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are

“Children learn best when they like their teacher and they think their teacher likes them.”
― Gordon Neufeld, Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers

“Children do not experience our intentions, no matter how heartfelt. They experience what we manifest in tone and behavior.”
― Gordon Neufeld, Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers

“Unconditional parental love is the indespensible nutrient for the child's healthy emotional growth. The first task is to create space in the child's heart for the certainty that she is precisely the person the parents want and love. She does not have to do anything or be any different to earn that love - in fact, she cannot do anything, since that love cannot be won or lost...The child can be ornery, unpleasant, whiny, uncooperative, and plain rude, and the parent still lets her feel loved. Ways have to be found to convey the unacceptability of certain behaviors without making the child herself feel unaccepted. She has to be able to bring her unrest, her least likable characteristics to the parent and still receive the parent's absolutely satisfying, security-inducing unconditional love.”
― Gordon Neufeld

“Absolutely missing in peer relationships are unconditional love and acceptance, the desire to nurture, the ability to extend oneself for the sake of the other, the willingness to sacrifice for the growth and development of the other.”
― Gordon Neufeld, Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers