Teach Your Children Well Quotes

“Until they enter elementary school most youngsters are motivated by the challenge itself, not by stars or grades or rewards. This is called mastery motivation and is the form of learning most likely to lead to both engagement and persistence, and ultimately to expertise.”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

“Remember, our very first job is to appropriately monitor our teen’s safety. After all, if we’re not successful at that, then any discussion of cognitive skills is irrelevant.”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

“Ken Ginsburg, one of the country’s leading experts on resilience, points out, “Resilience is not a character trait.”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

“But while our children learn from watching how we react to challenge and recover from crisis, they are not us. Genetics and temperament play a role in determining which coping skills come most easily to us. We naturally lean in to our strengths. An extroverted parent may reach for enthusiasm first, while an introverted child may opt for creativity. Both can be equally effective in solving problems.”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

“Rebecca is asserting her independence. Her thinking is simple and egocentric: “I can” or “I can’t”; “I will” or “I won’t.” Independence is about managing one’s self. Autonomy is a much broader, tougher, and more complex task than independence. It weaves together advanced thinking, self-reliance, self-regulation, intimacy, and connection. Autonomy is the capacity to be both independent and connected to others.”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

“Temperament has been shown to be extremely stable over the course of our lives. 10 This can be hard to appreciate when our kids are in the middle of this period of intense exploration and when change and heightened self-consciousness seem to be their perpetual companions.”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

“However, the needs of children were, are, and will be irreducible. They need to be unconditionally loved, allowed to have an active and curious childhood, encouraged to challenge themselves, disciplined when necessary, and valued for the unique set of skills, interests, and capacities they bring to this world. If we can return to these essentials of healthy child development, then more than any tutor, prep class, or prestige college can do, we will have prepared our children to lead satisfying, meaningful, and authentically successful lives.”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

“Enthusiastic kids who feel loved and valued for their particular skills and interests, who are both self-aware and aware of the needs of others, who can work hard, delay gratification when necessary, and reward themselves when appropriate, who find life both fun and meaningful, are kids who are most likely to be both happy and successful. Deeply happy and authentically successful.”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

“Flexibility is a frame of mind. It is what allows us to choose the best response from a raft of different possibilities. Flexibility in parenting does not mean you should become a pushover. There is a delicate tightrope to be walked between your child’s need for structure and the importance of considering content and context when you make decisions. But without flexibility, you are unlikely to be a successful parent and will certainly not be an empathic or introspective one.”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

“Our job is to produce and guide our children; not to reproduce ourselves. Nor should we want to. One of the absolute miracles of life is the profound uniqueness of each person.”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

“We are never free of our past, but we can be free of its unwanted intrusion into our relationship with our children and the ways in which we choose to parent. Being a parent gives us the extraordinary opportunity for a “do-over.” Once again we are in a parent-child relationship, but this time we hold the cards. We can use the best of what we learned from our own parents and change the things that were out of synch or hurtful. This time around, we get to choose.”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

“All of us have days when all our emotional resources are at our disposal and days when we feel depleted; we are all people in addition to being parents. Perfect is not something parents are, nor something they should strive to be. Striving for perfection is bound to end in disappointment and often in depression. We do, however, want to be the best parent we can be and we don’t want to have our histories necessarily dictate our parenting skills or choices.”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

“clear that she and her daughter were two separate people with very different life experiences, decide how much of her history to share with her daughter, and, finally, commit to changing her own behavior.”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

“Projection ranges from the devastating to the trivial, but all acts of projection reduce our anxiety and help us keep our image of ourselves intact. Remember that projection is an unconscious way we have of handling distress and anxiety, so we need to be gentle with ourselves when we start investigating the ways in which we protect ourselves from uncomfortable feelings.”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

“When we turn away from evidence that seems relatively straightforward to others we are using denial.”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

“In this respect, I think I was an effective parent—one who understood that family time was precious, and unrecoverable—and so in my own family a lot of time was spent in family rituals and encouraging each other’s particular skills and interests.”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

“It is hardly surprising that I have devoted a great deal of time and energy in my professional career to encouraging parents to be present with the child right in front of them rather than being overly focused on the future.”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

“Being human means being vulnerable but it also means having the capacity to modify our responses and to make different choices.”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

“If thirty years of being a psychologist has taught me anything, it is that it is much easier to talk about things than to change them.”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

“If thirty years of being a psychologist has taught me anything, it is that it is much easier to talk about things than to change them. But the potential for change is always present. We are at that moment of change now—with our children, our education system, and our willingness to alter some of our parenting habits in order to protect our children from the worst excesses of our culture.”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

“When we pay for tutors and turn a blind eye to irresponsible behavior, whether it’s cheating or not getting adequate sleep, are we fooling ourselves? When we tell our children we want them to have “options,” is that really another way of saying that we want them to get the best possible grades, so they can go to the best possible college and graduate school, to prepare them for the best possible jobs, which disproportionately seem to be in the field of finance?”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

“Money buys many things, but typically not a sense of either authenticity or meaning.”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

“We should never separate our values from the ways in which we encourage our children to become effective family members, friends, collaborators, and citizens.”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

“When you allow your child to palm off responsibility you encourage the idea that someone else is responsible both for the problem and for fixing it. This attitude is bound to make your child less competent and therefore lower his self-esteem. Even when others have a hand in your child’s distress, which will happen, teach your child to take responsibility for his own life.”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

“Educational projects like Odyssey of the Mind are a terrific example of how to encourage creative problem solving in kids. Do talk to your child’s school about bringing this type of program into the classroom.”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

“Probably the greatest intellectual accomplishment in adolescence is the ability to think hypothetically, to engage in “if/ then” thinking. “If I blow off my math test, then I may fail the course and have to go to summer school.” All of a sudden, blowing off the math test is about a whole set of consequences.”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

“Creativity is the language of childhood and we don’t want to miss a word.”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

“Kids start out meeting the world with wonder. It is our job to make sure that they don’t lose their inborn curiosity, imagination, and creativity.”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

“emotions don’t dictate choices.”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

“Having an involved father is a strong predictor of a child’s eventual level of empathy. Optimally this involvement should begin when children are starting elementary school. Moving from preschool to elementary school is a big transition for kids. Dads, who often take the lead on making the outside world enticing, appear to grease the wheels and make this transition easier. This effect is equally marked for young girls and boys alike.”
― Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"