Play reaches the habits most needed for intellectual growth.

A child... who has learned from fairy stories to believe that what at first seemed a repulsive, threatening figure can magically change into a most helpful friend is ready to believe that a strange child whom he meets and fears may also be changed from a menace into a desirable companion.

A parent who from his own childhood experience is convinced of the value of fairy tales will have no difficulty in answering his child's questions; but an adult who thinks these tales are only a bunch of lies had better not try telling them; he won't be able to related them in a way which would enrich the child's life.

The parent must not give in to his desire to try to create the child he would like to have, but rather help the child to develop--in his own good time--to the fullest, into what he wishes to be and can be, in line with his natural endowment and as the consequence of his unique life in history.

As Anna Freud remarked, the toddler who wanders off into some other aisle, feels lost, and screams anxiously for his mother neversays "I got lost," but accusingly says "You lost me!" It is a rare mother who agrees that she lost him! she expects her child to stay with her; in her experience it is the child who has lost track of the mother, while in the child's experience it is the mother who has lost track of him. Each view is entirely correct from the perspective of the individual who holds it .

The child intuitively comprehends that although these stories are unreal, they are not untrue.

Raising children is a creative endeavor, an art rather than a science.