This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
T. Berry Brazelton, fully Thomas Berry Brazelton
Reading to children at night, responding to their smiles, with a smile, returning their vocalizations with one of your own, touching them, holding them – all of these further a child’s brain development and future potential, even in the earliest months. Research demonstrates that the early responsiveness of caring parents sets the tone for future self-esteem, trust, problem solving, ability to communicate successfully and motivation for future learning.
Ability | Children | Esteem | Future | Learning | Parents | Reading | Research | Self | Self-esteem | Smile | Trust |
[A] society that pulls the needs of its children dead is a society “progressing” rapidly toward moral ruin.
Tiny children want to learn to the degree that they are unable to distinguish learning from fun. They keep this attitude until we adults convince them that learning is not fun.
Children | Distinguish | Fun | Learning | Learn |
The primary business of school is to train children to co-operative and mutually helpful living; to foster in them the consciousness of mutual interdependence.
Business | Children | Consciousness | Business |
Adolescence begins when children stop asking questions – because they know all the answers.
Adolescence | Children |
Goldie Hawn, fully Goldie Jeanne Hawn
We humans have the capacity to change the world with acts of love and kindness. Let’s start by teaching our children the importance of compassion.
Capacity | Change | Children | Compassion | Kindness | Love | World |
Children who are not spoken to by… responsive adults will not learn to speak properly. Children who are not answered will stop asking questions. They will become incurious. And children who are not told stories and who are not read to will have few reasons for wanting to learn to read.
The school system can’t make up for family failure. The total education of our children is a cooperative effort requiring community solidarity. Apathetic parents who foster a permissive home atmosphere create a problem for everyone.
Children | Education | Effort | Failure | Family | Parents | System |
If you can’t hold children in your arms, please hold them in your hearts.
Children |
Our children give us the opportunity to become the parents we always wished we’d had.
Children | Opportunity | Parents |
Jean Grou, fully Jean Nicholas Grou
What is the greatest evil of suffering? Not the suffering itself but our rebellion against it, the state of interior revolt which so often accompanies it.
The best inheritance a parent can give to his children is a few minutes of their time each day.
Children | Day | Inheritance | Time | Parent |
We have surrendered our responsibility to shape the inner life of our children to others.
Children | Life | Life | Responsibility |
Timid men… prefer the calm despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty.
No man has a moral right to use his property, a creature of God, against the children of God. Racial discrimination even in the use of purely private property, is immoral at least as transgressing the supreme law of charity.