"What has thirty years of working with children, reading child development standards, helping parents with their children, tutoring children, helping mamas birth their babies, keeping up with the latest on brain development, observing parents, observing teachers, observing children, and living with children taught me?
Quite a lot. Much of it unexpected. Here are some things.
Children are far more noble than most adults are comfortable with.
Adults say children are beastly in order to justify their beastly behavior towards children.
Children are in a different stage of development than adults (much like butterflies and caterpillars, only backwards) and their values, needs, and capacities are perfectly suited to their growth and development as human beings. These values, needs, and capacities are completely different from and irritating to most adults even though they are advantageous to the species.
Babies understand a lot more than most adults think they do. Humility and wonder is in order.
Adults will let other adults get away with "mistakes" that children get punished for.
Children watch everything. Children hear everything. They are especially attentive to the secrets you think you're keeping. And they know a good many of them. And they tell them to trusted adults.
It is a simple matter to make a fair guess about how a family acts in private by watching how a young child behaves towards other children and listening to what the child says to other children when the parents aren't nearby.
Children raised with compassion and mercy will show others compassion and mercy. Children whose rights have been honored and who have seen their parents honor the rights of others will act accordingly.
Nothing will make a person less certain about rearing children than having children of their own. They will make mistakes and err on the side of "looking good" in front of other parents when they should really err on the side of being compassionate, tender, and merciful to their children."
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