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There is a tension between our desire to get our kids to turn out a particular way versus letting them develop to be their own person. If there were a pill that would make my child turn out the way I wanted, I'm not sure I'd take it.

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.
Would
Sure
Pill
Desire
Versus
Kids
Letting
Person
Tension
Wanted
Develop
Take
Particular
Children
Turn
Make
Child

More quotes by 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.
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We don't wife our husbands and we don't child our parents.
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The best scientific way to discover if one factor influences another is to do a controlled experiment.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Texts and e-mails travel no faster than phone calls and telegrams, and their content isn't necessarily richer or poorer.
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Caring, whether for children or the dying, shouldn't be instrumental. It should be an intrinsic, moral good.
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We're in a culture where everything is either consumption or production, so child care is either a very, very bad-paying form of work or a very expensive luxury that you purchase. There isn't a good place in our picture of the world for what caregiving is about. Even teenage babysitters have sort of disappeared from the scene.
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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.
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Teaching is a very effective way to get children to learn something specific - this tube squeaks, say, or a squish then a press then a pull causes the music to play. But it also makes children less likely to discover unexpected information and to draw unexpected conclusions.
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On the Web we all become small-town visitors lost in the big city.
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The youngest children have a great capacity for empathy and altruism. There's a recent study that shows even 14-month-olds will climb across a bunch of cushions and go across a room to give you a pen if you drop one.
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.
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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.
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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.
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Becoming an adult means leaving the world of your parents and starting to make your way toward the future that you will share with your peers.
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What teenagers want most of all are social rewards, especially the respect of their peers.
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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