children

Everything is ceremony in the wild garden of childhood.

All children are artists, and it is an indictment of our culture that so many of them lose their creativity, their unfettered imaginations, as they grow older.

The finest inheritance you can give to a child is to allow it to make its own way, completely on its own feet.

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, 
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let our bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Children follow your footsteps, not your advice.

"Think about your childhood for a moment. What was your favorite outdoor place to play? What was that environment like? Do your memories evoke specific sights, scents, and sounds? What did you do there? What did it look like and feel like? Did this place change along with the seasons? What sort of games did you play and what did you discover there?

"Most of us have vivid memories of our favorite childhood play environment. This was the place where we began to discover the wonder of playful exploration. It was the place where we first interacted with the natural world. This place was our introduction to the environment, our community, and the cycles of life.

"The places that adults remember playing in as children are so often natural places - places with a stream, clumps of spongy moss, thick layers of slippery mud, fallen logs, or even a mound of dirt piled high in a vacant lot in the city. There is just something about connecting with the natural world that is so important for all people - particularly children. These are the kinds of experiences that nourish our souls.

"Unfortunately, these days many children don't have the kinds of opportunities that we had not so long ago. Our fast-paced culture now places greater emphasis on going, doing, and becoming, and less on wandering, searching, and discovering. With modern urban and suburban development, natural or wild areas are less available."

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. 

Are we not witnessing a situation where children are conciously rejecting their parents' value despite love and devotion given to them? The present situation has arisen because parents have failed to transmit a sustaining faith to their children. The basic reason for this failure is that the parents themselves lacked faith. Without faith, their love was an image not a reality, a statement of words not an expression of feelings

"The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn."

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently