QuoteProject
Parents must not only have certain ways of guiding by prohibition and permission, they must also be able to represent to the child a deep, almost somatic conviction that there is meaning in what they are doing.
Erik Erikson
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Parents should guide their children with both rules and a strong belief in the value of their guidance.

In this quote, Erik Erikson emphasizes the critical role of parents in not just establishing boundaries through prohibitions and permissions, but also in embodying a profound belief in the meaningfulness of their actions. This deep conviction is essential for instilling a sense of purpose and understanding in children, enabling them to grasp the importance of behavior and decision-making in their own lives.

Themes

ParentsGuidanceChildrenMeaningConviction

In practice

Example use cases

During a parenting workshop focused on effective communication with children.

More from Erik Erikson

Children love and want to be loved and they very much prefer the joy of accomplishment to the triumph of hateful failure. Do not mistake a child for his symptom.
Erik EriksonRead
Men have always shown a dim knowledge of their better potentialities by paying homage to those purest leaders who taught the simplest and most inclusive rules for an undivided mankind.
Erik EriksonRead
Nobody likes to be found out, not even one who has made ruthless confession a part of his profession. Any autobiographer, therefore, at least between the lines, spars with his reader and potential judge.
Erik EriksonRead
You've got to learn to accept the law of life, and face the fact that we disintegrate slowly.
Erik EriksonRead
You see a child play, and it is so close to seeing an artist paint, for in play a child says things without uttering a word. You can see how he solves his problems. You can also see what's wrong. Young children, especially, have enormous creativity, and whatever's in them rises to the surface in free play.
Erik EriksonRead
In the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity.
Erik EriksonRead

Similar quotes

It would be really cool to have my dad here to witness this, to see his grandchildren, to see this woman that I chose to share my life with, to just come walk on set and be like, 'Ah, this is how you make TV shows and movies.'
Sterling K. BrownRead
The art of motherhood involves much silent, unobtrusive self-denial, an hourly devotion which finds no detail too minute.
Honore De BalzacRead
The man the world knew as Billy Graham was always 'Daddy' to me. I was well into my teens before I fully comprehended that my father had a household name and a worldwide ministry.
Franklin GrahamRead
I believe in imagination. I did Kramer vs Kramer before I had children. But the mother I would be was already inside me.
Meryl StreepRead
Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.
George Bernard ShawRead
I don't believe there are devils enough in hell to pull a boy out of the arms of a godly mother.
Billy SundayRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.