The life you have led doesn't need to be the only life you have.
Anna QuindlenRead
This is how I learn most of what I know about my children and their friends: by sitting in the driver's seat and keeping quiet.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Listening quietly is a key way to understand children and their perspectives.
In this quote, Anna Quindlen emphasizes the importance of observation and listening in parenting. By sitting quietly and allowing children to express themselves, parents can gain deeper insights into their thoughts, feelings, and interactions without intrusion, fostering a better understanding of their children and their social world.
Themes
ListeningParentingUnderstandingChildrenEducation
In practice
Example use cases
During a parenting workshop, a speaker might refer to this quote to illustrate the value of observation in understanding children.
More from Anna Quindlen
All quotes βThe future is built on brains, not prom court, as most people can tell you after attending their high school reunion. But you'd never know it by talking to kids or listening to the messages they get from the culture and even from their schools.
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I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.
Anna QuindlenRead
With reference to the younger generation..."If the experience of their exhausted, insomniac, dispirited elders makes them decide they'd prefer not to go straight from the classroom to the cubicle to the coffin, it doesn't mean they're lazy. It means they're sane."
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Ideas are only lethal if you suppress and don't discuss them. Ignorance is not bliss, it's stupid. Banning books shows you don't trust your kids to think and you don't trust yourself to be able to talk to them.
Anna QuindlenRead
I conveniently forgot to remember that people only have two hands, or, as another parent once said of having a third child, it's time for a zone defense instead of man-to-man.
Anna QuindlenRead
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