It is a joy to be hidden, and disaster not to be found.

What is a normal child like? Does he just eat and grow and smile sweetly? No, that is not what he is like. The normal child, if he has confidence in mother and father, pulls out all the stops. In the course of time, he tries out his power to disrupt, to destroy, to frighten, to wear down, to waste, to wangle, and to appropriate . . . At the start he absolutely needs to live in a circle of love and strength (with consequent tolerance) if he is not to be too fearful of his own thoughts and of his imaginings to make progress in his emotional development.

There is no such thing as a baby, there is a baby and someone.

I don't mind saying in advance that in my opinion jealousy is normal and healthy. Jealousy arises out of the fact that children love. If they have no capacity to love, then they don't show jealousy.

It's only too easy to idealise a mother's job. We know well that every job has its frustrations and its boring routines and its times of being the last thing anyone would choose to do. Well, why shouldn't the care of babies and children be thought of that way too?

However, it can't be helped; mothers, if they do their job properly, are the representatives of the hard, demanding world and it is they who gradually introduce reality which is so often the enemy of impulse. There is anger with mother and hatred is somewhere even when there is absolutely no doubt of love that is mixed with adoration.

It is in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self.