On Becoming Baby Wise, Book 2 Quotes

“With adults, beliefs precede actions, but with pretoddlers and toddlers, the opposite is true: actions precede beliefs. That is why parents should insist on right responses long before their children are capable of understanding why they are being required. Young children first learn how to act appropriately, and then they learn how to think appropriately. Just because a six-month-old baby is not capable of making moral decisions does not mean basic infrastructures for future moral behavior are not being established. They are!”
― Gary Ezzo, On Becoming Baby Wise: Book II Parenting Your Pretoddler Five to Fifteen Months

“While the difference here might appear minor, over the life of your child, negative and positive words have a cumulative effect, because such words shape a child’s outlook about self, others, and about life. Learn to speak life to your pretoddler by instructing in what you want him to do instead of what you do not want him to do.”
― Gary Ezzo, On Becoming Baby Wise: Book II Parenting Your Pretoddler Five to Fifteen Months

“At birth, a child has no functioning conscience, nor does a baby or pretoddler have the reasoning capacity to grasp right and wrong, good and evil. That does not mean parents should delay introducing required and acceptable behavior. For example, the fact that a child has no moral understanding of why food should not be intentionally dropped from his highchair does not mean parents should hold back instruction or fail to discourage the behavior.”
― Gary Ezzo, On Becoming Baby Wise: Book II Parenting Your Pretoddler Five to Fifteen Months

“Society depends on parents to instill in their children a healthy sense of self-restriction, and that is not as hard as some people make it out to be.”
― Gary Ezzo, On Becoming Baby Wise: Book II Parenting Your Pretoddler Five to Fifteen Months