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Owning our past allows us to own our future.

Alison Gopnik

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Alison Gopnik
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: June 16
Psychologist
University Teacher
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
A. Gopnik
A Gopnik
Gopnik
Gopnik A
Gopnik A.
Owning
Allows
Future
Past

More quotes by Alison Gopnik

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Being a grandmother is a wonderful thing, so my advice is skip the children. Go straight to the grandchildren.
Alison Gopnik
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To support the people we care about is intrinsic, it is not instrumental. It's not something we do because we're hoping to get some other outcome.
Alison Gopnik
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Instead of just saying, I love my baby and I pick him up because he's adorable and it's so nice to cuddle with him, we practice attachment parenting. We let our children play outside and have age-appropriate freedoms and are labeled free-range parents.
Alison Gopnik
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Adults tend to think they have much free will. Kids younger than six are less sure. They may be more realistic!
Alison Gopnik
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You read a bunch of books and you get a bunch of how-tos, and you take a bunch of classes and you learn a bunch of techniques. You set yourself goals and benchmarks. I think people have imported that into their experience of taking care of children.
Alison Gopnik
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Developmental scientists like me explore the basic science of learning by designing controlled experiments.
Alison Gopnik
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Because we imagine, we can have invention and technology. It's actually play, not necessity, that is the mother of invention.
Alison Gopnik
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Some people say that parents don't matter, and that's not true at all. The irony is that we pay attention to all these things that don't matter, and not to what does matter, such as parents having enough resources to provide an environment where their children have both security and freedom.
Alison Gopnik
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We don't wife our husbands and we don't child our parents.
Alison Gopnik
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Babies and young children are like the research and development division of the human species, and we grown-ups are production and marketing.
Alison Gopnik
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We provide a secure, stable space for children to grow up in, so children will be able to take risks and have adventures and do things that are unexpected. If there isn't a risk that your children can fail, then you haven't succeeded as a parent.
Alison Gopnik
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The largest and most powerful computers are still no match for the smallest and weakest humans.
Alison Gopnik
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I'm afraid the parenting advice to come out of developmental psychology is very boring: pay attention to your kids and love them.
Alison Gopnik
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Ineffective or weak brain connections are pruned in much the same way a gardener would prune a tree or bush, giving the plant a desired shape.
Alison Gopnik
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The brain is highly structured, but it is also extremely flexible. It's not a blank slate, but it isn't written in stone, either.
Alison Gopnik
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We know that kids who grow up in an environment of warmth and support will thrive and function in whatever environment they find themselves. What we need to do is to do more to help poor kids have such an environment.
Alison Gopnik
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We don't measure the quality of our other relationships by how well the other person turns out, for instance whether my husband is a better person after 10 years than he was when I first met him.
Alison Gopnik
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Caring, whether for children or the dying, shouldn't be instrumental. It should be an intrinsic, moral good.
Alison Gopnik
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Childhood is a fundamental part of all human lives, parents or not, since that's how we all start out. And yet babies and young children are so mysterious and puzzling and even paradoxical.
Alison Gopnik
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Caring for children has always been one of the deepest and most satisfying things that a human being does, and yet it is hard to keep a healthy attitude toward it in our competitive, outcome-oriented society.
Alison Gopnik