Children Quotes by Mary Blakely

Mary Blakely

A “snapshot” feature in USA Today listed the five greatest concerns parents and teachers had about children in the ’50s: talking out of turn, chewing gum in class, doing homework, stepping out of line, cleaning their rooms. Then it listed the five top concerns of parents today: drug addiction, teenage pregnancy, suicide and homicide, gang violence, anorexia and bulimia. We can also add AIDS, poverty, and homelessness. . . . Between my own childhood and the advent of my motherhood–one short generation–the culture had gone completely mad.

Children

Suicide

Teacher

Mary Blakely

A mother is neither cocky, nor proud, because she knows the school principal may call at any minute to report that her child had just driven a motorcycle through the gymnasium.

Children

Cocky

Mother

Mary Blakely

Although a firm swat could bring a recalcitrant child swiftly into line, the changes were usually external, lasting only as long as the swatter remained in view….Permanent transformation had to be internal….The habits of self discipline, as laborious and frustrating as they were to achieve, offered the only real possibility of keeping children safe from their own excesses as well as the omnipresent dangers of society.

Children

Real

Self

Mary Blakely

Certainly, words can be as abusive as any blow. . . . When a three-year-old yells, “You’re so stupid! What a dummy!” it doesn’t carry the same weight as when a mother yells those words to a child. . . . Even if you don’t physically abuse young children, you can still drive them nuts with your words.

Children

Mother

Stupid

Mary Blakely

How can one explain all the time and thought that goes into raising a child, all the opportunities for mistakes, all the chances to recover and try again? How does one break the news that nothing permanent can be formed in an instant–children are not weaned, potty trained, taught manners, introduced to civilization in one or two tries–as everyone imagined.

Children

Mistake

Opportunity

Mary Blakely

However diligent she may be, however dedicated, no mother can escape the larger influences of culture, biology, fate . . . until we can actually live in a society where mothers and children genuinely matter, ours is an essentially powerless responsibility. Mothers carry out most of the work orders, but most of the rules governing our lives are shaped by outside influences.

Children

Mother

Responsibility

Mary Blakely

One year, I’d completely lost my bearings trying to follow potty training instruction from a psychiatric expert. I was stuck on step on, which stated without an atom of irony: “Before you begin, remove all stubbornness from the child.” . . . I knew it only could have been written by someone whose suit coat was still spotless at the end of the day, not someone who had any hands-on experience with an actual two-year-old.

Children

Hands

Two

Mary Blakely

Since civilizing children takes the better part of two decades–some twenty years of nonstop thinking, nurturing, teaching, coaxing, rewarding, forgiving, warning, punishing, sympathizing, apologizing, reminding, and repeating, not to mention deciding what to do when–I now understand that one wrong move is invariably followed by hundreds of opportunities to be wrong again.

Children

Moving

Teaching

Follow The Behaviour University in order to get the greatest quotes from the greatest people of all time so that you can tap into your own greatness.

R. Kent Hughes

Jane Goodall

Milton Berle

Ingmar Bergman

Robert Huber

Baby

Baseball

Book

Bottles

Boys

Busy

Children

Civilization

Cocky

Compelling Reason

Crush

Daughter

Dream

Equal Pay

Expectations

Fate

Father

Goal

Hands

Home

Hurt

Kids

Labels

Looks

Mean

Men

Mistake

Mother

Mouths

Moving

Needs

Night

Normal

Opportunity

Periods

Real

Responsibility

School

Self

Sex

Should

Should Have

Solitude

Son

Stupid

Suicide

Teacher

Teaching

Teenager

Too Late

Too Much

Trying

Two

War

World

Writing

Yale

Years

Children Quotes by Mary Blakely

A mother is neither cocky, nor proud, because she knows the school principal may call at any minute to report that her child had just driven a motorcycle through the gymnasium.

Get Social with TBU