Achtung Baby Quotes

“Germans have grappled with their Nazi past and actively looked for ways to ensure it never happens again, including changing how they raise and educate their children. If today’s Germans feel it is important to promote their children’s independence, then we Americans might do well to take a hard look at reasons why we do not.”
― Sara Zaske, Achtung Baby: An American Mom on the German Art of Raising Self-Reliant Children

“But it makes an odd sort of sense when viewed as part of the value Germans place on responsibility. Each child at the playground was expected to judge for herself what she could or could not do. Parents did not run around after their children telling them this slide was too fast or that climbing structure was too high. The children learned to manage the risk on their own and prepared themselves for each new challenge, like Sophia was starting to do with the dragon.”
― Sara Zaske, Achtung Baby: An American Mom on the German Art of Raising Self-Reliant Children

“Regardless, super strict, authoritarian parenting is widely rejected in today’s Germany. For example, in 2000, Germany outlawed corporal punishment of children entirely: spanking a child is considered a crime, whether in school or at home. In the United States, the practice is still allowed at home in all fifty states, and nineteen still allow corporal punishment in schools.”
― Sara Zaske, Achtung Baby: An American Mom on the German Art of Raising Self-Reliant Children

“In Frankfurt, Monika Seifert started kinderläden, day care centers, which emphasized “repression-free” education, a philosophy that deliberately set itself against the old “German virtues of obedience, diligence, modesty, and cleanliness.” Seifert’s anti-authoritarian theory basically held that children should rule themselves—or run wild, depending on your perspective.”
― Sara Zaske, Achtung Baby: An American Mom on the German Art of Raising Self-Reliant Children