parenting
Every child understands a promise—if it is kept—and looks forward to the next promise.
The Cider House Rules (New York: William Morrow & Company, 1985), 26.
Daddy made for us himself elaborate kites that needed to be taken miles out of town to a pasture long enough (and my father was not afraid of horses and cows watching) for him to run with and get up on a long cord to which my mother held the spindle, and then we children were given it to hold, tugging like something alive at our hands. They were beautiful, sound, shapely box kites, smelling delicately of office glue for their entire short lives.
One Writer’s Beginnings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 4–5.
To enter the world of a child (or a cat) the least you must do is sit down on the ground without interrupting the child in whatever he is doing, and wait for him to notice you. It will then be the child who makes contact with you, and you (being older, and I hope not older in vain) with your higher intelligence will be able to understand his needs and his interests, which are by no means confined to the bottle and the potty. He is trying to understand the world he is living in, he is groping his way ahead from one experience to the next, always curious and wanting to know everything.
Design as Art (New York: Penguin Modern Classics, 2008), 93.
Of course it’s easy to see why they both overprotected me, why my father, before I could wear a new pair of shoes for the first time, made me wait while he took out his thin silver pocket knife and with the point of the blade scored the polished soles all over, carefully, in a diamond pattern, to prevent me from sliding on the polished floor when I ran.
One Writer’s Beginnings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 18–19.
In my parents I had the perfect combination—a resistant father and an encouraging mother. My mother convinced me I could do anything. And my father said, “Prove it.” He didn’t think I could make a living. Resistance produces muscularity. And it was the perfect combination because I could use my mother’s belief to overcome my father’s resistance. My father was a kind of a metaphor for the world, because if you can’t overcome a father’s resistance you’re never going to be able to overcome the world’s resistance. It’s much better than having completely supportive parents or completely resistant parents.
“Chip Kidd Talks with Milton Glaser,” The Believer, September 2003.
The problem with praising kids for their innate intelligence—the “smart” compliment—is that is misrepresents the neural reality of education. It encourages kids to avoid the most useful kind of learning activity, which is learning from mistakes. Unless you experience the unpleasant symptoms of being wrong, your brain will never revise its models. Before your neurons can succeed, they must repeatedly fail. There are no shortcuts for this painstaking process.
How We Decide (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009), 53–54.
Parenting tip: my 3-year-old will do anything a hand puppet asks him to.
Twitter, May 15th, 2010 1:19 PM via TweetDeck
Being with a three-year-old is like constantly being in the middle of a very bad breakup. Irrational tirades and operatic flights of rage are tempered with appeasing manipulation.
Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), 168.
If you want your kids to have strong self-esteem and confidence that they can solve hard problems, those qualities won’t magically materialize in high school. You have to design them into your family’s culture—and you have to think about this very early on. Like employees, children build self-esteem by doing things that are hard and learning what works.
“How Will You Measure Your Life?,” Harvard Business Review, July 1, 2010.
It’s not enough to make time for your children. There are certain stages in their lives when you have to give them the time when they want it. You can’t run your family like a company. It doesn’t work.
“What I’ve Learned: Andy Grove,” by Mike Sager, Esquire, May 1, 2000.