Category Archives: Parenting Quotes
9 Quotes by Madeleine L’Engle on Children
Happy (almost) New Year!
In this little space of time between Christmas and New Year, it’s a terrific time for thinking and pondering, for planning and reflection …
And for spending time with children and family.
As a parent, when I think and reflect, my thoughts often turn to my children (who are growing up all too quickly).
This short video is a little bit from my heart about parenting, as well as a short reading from a book by Madeleine L’Engle on preparing our children for the future …
… with the gift of laughter.
Hope you enjoy it!
These quotes about children are from A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L’Engle.
Like it or not, we either add to the darkness of indifference and out-and-out evil which surround us or we light a candle to see by. We can surely no longer pretend that our children are growing up into a peaceful, secure, and civilized world. We’ve come to the point where it’s irresponsible to try to protect them from the irrational world they will have to live in when they grow up. The children themselves haven’t yet isolated themselves by selfishness and indifference; they do not fall easily into the error of despair; they are considerably braver than most grownups. Our responsibility to them is not to pretend that if we don’t look, evil will go away, but to give them weapons against it.
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But where, after we have made the great decision to leave the security of childhood and move on into the vastness of maturity, does anybody ever feel completely at home?
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The best way to guide children without coercion is to be ourselves.
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No wonder our youth is confused and in pain; they long for God, for the transcendent, and they are offered, far too often, either piosity or sociology, neither of which meets their needs, and they are introduced to churches which have become buildings that are a safe place to go to escape the awful demands of God.
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I can’t think of one great human being in the arts, or in history generally, who conformed, who succeeded, as educational experts tell us children must succeed, with his peer group…If a child in their classrooms does not succeed with his peer group, then it would seem to many that both child and teacher have failed. Have they? If we ever, God forbid, manage to make each child succeed with his peer group, we will produce a race of bland and faceless nonentities, and all poetry and mystery will vanish from the face of the earth.
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The creative impulse can be killed, but it cannot be taught…What a teacher can do…in working with children, is to give the flame enough oxygen so that it can burn. As far as I’m concerned, this providing of oxygen is one of the noblest of all vocations.
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An I Q cannot measure artistic ability. A potential Picasso may be a flop at objective vocabulary or number tests. An I Q does not measure a capacity for love…How do we teach a child – our own, or those in a classroom to have compassion: to allow people to be different; to understand that like is not equal; to experiment; to laugh: to love.
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We are lost unless we can recover compassion, without which we will never understand charity. We must find, once more, community, a sense of family, of belonging to each other.
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We must not take from our children—or ourselves—the truth that is in the world of the imagination.
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Thanks for reading!
Which of these quotes was your favorite? (Or do you have another favorite quote by Madeleine L’Engle on children and parenting?)
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Are All the Children In?
I think oft times as night draws nigh
Of the old farmhouse on the hill,
Of a yard all wide and blossom-starred
Where the children played at will.
And when the night at last came down
Hushing the merry din,
Mother would look around and ask,
“Are all the children in?”
Oh, it’s many, many a year since then,
And the house on the hill
No longer echoes to childish feet
And the yard is still, so still.
But I see it all, as the shadows creep,
And though many the years since then
I can still hear my mother ask,
“Are all the children in?”
I wonder if when the shadows fall
On the last short, earthly day,
When we say good-by to the world outside
All tired with our childish play,
When we step out into the other Land
Where mother so long has been,
Will we hear her ask, just as of old,
“Are all the children in?”
– Florence Jones Hadley
Ambitions for a Perfect Motherhood
Read the full post here
Positive Parenting Blog 