Except when he has regressive tendencies, the child's nature is to aim directly and energetically at functional independence.

Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.

It is the child who makes the man, and no man exists who was not made by the child he once was.

At one year of age the child says his first intentional wordhis babbling has a purpose, and this intention is a proof of conscious intelligenceHe becomes ever more aware that language refers to his surroundings, and his wish to master it consciously becomes also greater.Subconsciously and unaided, he strains himself to learn, and this effort makes his success all the more astonishing.

A child starts from nothing and advances alone. It is the child's reason about which the sensitive periods revolve. The reason provides the initial force and energy, and a child absorbs his first images to assist the reason and act on it.

Discipline must come through liberty. . . . We do not consider an individual disciplined only when he has been rendered as artificially silent as a mute and as immovable as a paralytic. He is an individual annihilated, not disciplined.

If children are allowed free development and given occupation to correspond with their unfolding minds their natural goodness will shine forth.