One of the best ways of keeping your temper in an argument, as most of us know only too well, is not to listen to anything the other person has to say.

Society chooses to disregard the mistreatment of children, judging it to be altogether normal because it is so commonplace.

People who, as children, were intellectually far beyond their parents and therefore admired by them, but who also therefore had to solve their own problems alone. These people, who give us a feeling of their intellectual strength and will power, also seem to demand that we, too, ought to fight off any feeling of weakness with intellectual means. In their presence one feels one cannot be recognized as a person with problems just as they and their problems were unrecognized by their parents, for whom he always had to be strong.

Almost everywhere we find . . . the use of various coercive measures, to rid ourselves as quickly as possible of the child withinus--i.e., the weak, helpless, dependent creature--in order to become an independent competent adult deserving of respect. When we reencounter this creature in our children, we persecute it with the same measures once used in ourselves.

Wherever I look, I see signs of the commandment to honor one's parents and nowhere of a commandment that calls for the respect of a child.

Problems cannot be solved with words, but only through experience.

All children are born to grow, to develop, to live, to love, and to articulate their needs and feelings for their self-protection