Fred Rogers
Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning...They have to play with what they know to be true in order to find out more, and then they can use what they learn in new forms of play.Collection: Children
When our children see us expressing our emotions, they can learn that their own feelings are natural and permissible, can be expressed, and can be talked about. That's an important thing for our children to learn.Collection: Children
Listening is where love begins: listening to ourselves and then to our neighbors.Collection: Love Is
I'm proud of you for the times you came in second, or third, or fourth, but what you did was the best you have ever doneCollection: Done
It's not always easy for a father to understand the interests and ways of his son. It seems the songs of our children may be in keys we've never tried. The melody of each generation emerges from all that's gone before. Each one of us contributes in some unique way to the composition of life.Collection: Song
There are many things children accept as "grown-up things" over when they have no control and for which they have no responsibility--for instance, weddings, having babies, buying houses, and driving cars. Parents who are separating really need to help their children put divorce on that grown-up list, so that children do not see themselves as the cause of their parents' decision to live apart.Collection: Baby
Parents who expect change in themselves as well as in their children, who accept it and find in it the joy as well as the pains ofgrowth, are likely to be the happiest and most confident parents.Collection: Children
Love isn't a perfect state of caring.Collection: Caring
Most of us, I believe, admire strength... Sometimes, though, I wonder if we confuse strength with other words like aggression or even violence.Collection: Believe
When we leave our child in nursery school for the first time, it won't be just our child's feelings about separation that we will have to cope with, but our own feelings as well-from our present and from our past, parents are extra vulnerable to new tremors from old earthquakes.Collection: Children
I don't believe that children can develop in a healthy way unless they feel that they have value apart from anything they own or any skill that they learn. They need to feel they enhance the life of someone else, that they are needed. Who, better than parents, can let them know that?Collection: Children
I have really never considered myself a TV star. I always thought I was a neighbor who just came in for a visit.Collection: Stars
Our children are extensions of ourselves in ways our parents are not, nor our brothers and sisters, nor our spouses.Collection: Family
For children, play is exceedingly seriously & importantCollection: Children
It's important to know when we need to stop, reflect, and receive. In our competitive world, that might be called a waste of time.Collection: Important
Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.Collection: People
The gifts we treasure most over the years are often small and simple. In easy times and tough times, what seems to matter most is the way we show those nearest us that we've been listening to their needs, to their joys, and to their challenges.Collection: Simple
I doubt that we can ever successfully impose values or attitudes or behaviors on our children certainly not by threat, guilt, or punishment. But I do believe they can be induced through relationships where parents and children are growing together. Such relationships are, I believe, build on trust, example, talk, and caring.Collection: Trust
When I was a boy I used to think that STRONG meant having big muscles, great physical power; but the longer I live, the more I realize that real strength has much more to do with what is NOT seen. Real strength has to do with helping others.Collection: Strong
Listening is a very active awareness of the coming together of at least two lives. Listening, as far as I'm concerned, is certainly a prerequisite of love. One of the most essential ways of saying 'I love you' is being a receptive listener.Collection: Love You
There's no "should" or "should not" when it comes to having feelings. They're part of who we are and their origins are beyond our control. When we can believe that, we may find it easier to make constructive choices about what to do with those feelings.Collection: Believe
The kingdom of God is for the broken heartedCollection: Broken
Mutual caring relationships require kindness and patience, tolerance, optimism, joy in the other's achievements, confidence in oneself, and the ability to give without undue thought of gain.Collection: Relationship
It's our insides that make us who we are, that allow us to dream and wonder and feel for others. That's what's essential. That's what will always make the biggest difference in our world.Collection: Dream
As different as we are from one another, as unique as each one of us is, we are much more the same than we are different. That may be the most essential message of all, as we help our children grow toward being caring, compassionate, and charitable adults.Collection: Children
There's always someone who is trying to help.Collection: Trying
We need to help people to discover the true meaning of love. Love is generally confused with dependence. Those of us who have grown in true love know that we can love only in proportion to our capacity for independence.Collection: Confused
Call them rules or call them limits, good ones, I believe, have this in common: they serve reasonable purposes; they are practical and within a child's capability; they are consistent; and they are an expression of loving concern.Collection: Children
Part of the problem with the word 'disabilities' is that it immediately suggests an inability to see or hear or walk or do other things that many of us take for granted. But what of people who can't feel? Or talk about their feelings? Or manage their feelings in constructive ways? What of people who aren't able to form close and strong relationships? And people who cannot find fulfillment in their lives, or those who have lost hope, who live in disappointment and bitterness and find in life no joy, no love? These, it seems to me, are the real disabilities.Collection: Relationship
I believe it's a fact of life that what we have is less important than what we make out of what we have.Collection: Believe
Hopefully your choices can come from a deep sense of who you are.Collection: Choices
Peace means far more than the opposite of war.Collection: War
One of the most important things a person can learn to do is to make something out of whatever he or she happens to have at the moment.Collection: Important
Solitude is different from loneliness, and it doesn't have to be a lonely kind of thing.Collection: Lonely
I'm fairly convinced that the Kingdom of God is for the broken-hearted. You write of 'powerlessness.' Join the club, we are not in control. God is.Collection: Writing
I don't think anyone can grow unless he's loved exactly as he is now, appreciated for what he is rather than what he will be.Collection: Thinking
I wonder if we might pledge ourselves to remember what life is really all about—not to be afraid that we're less flashy than the next, not to worry that our influence is not that of a tornado, but rather that of a grain of sand in an oyster! Do we have that kind of patience?Collection: Oysters
If the grain of wheat could know fear, it would be paralyzed with anxiety at the thought of being dropped in the ground, covered over, put out of sight, doomed to inactivity, yet what a glorious harvest awaits it!Collection: Sight
What really matters is not just our own winning but helping other people to win, too.Collection: Helping Others
Forgiveness is a strange thing. It can sometimes be easier to forgive our enemies than our friends. It can be hardest of all to forgive people we love. Like all of life's important coping skills, the ability to forgive and the capacity to let go of resentments most likely take root very early in our lives.Collection: Letting Go
And those handmade presents that children often bring home from school: They have so much value! The value is that the child put whatever he or she could into making them. The way we parents respond to the giving of such gifts is very important. To the child the gift is really self, and they want so much for their selves to be acceptable, to be loved.Collection: Children
Who you are inside is what helps you make and do everything in life.Collection: Helping
It would have been sad for me to spend my life just trying to superimpose stuff on people rather than trying to encourage them to look within themselves for what's of value.Collection: Encouragement
My hunch is that if we allow ourselves to give who we really are to the children in our care, we will in some way inspire cartwheels in their hearts.Collection: Children
How many times have you noticed that it's the little quiet moments in the midst of life that seem to give the rest extra-special meaning?Collection: Quiet Moments
It's not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls. It's the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that the bedrock of our very being is good stuff.Collection: Knowing
A young apprentice applied to a master carpenter for a job. The older man asked him, "Do you know your trade?" "Yes, sir!" the young man replied proudly. "Have you ever made a mistake?" the older man inquired. "No, sir!" the young man answered, feeling certain he would get the job. "Then there's no way I'm going to hire you," said the master carpenter, "because when you make one, you won't know how to fix it.Collection: Jobs
The values we care about the deepest, and the movements within society that support those values, command our love. When those things that we care about so deeply become endangered, we become enraged. And what a healthy thing that is! Without it, we would never stand up and speak out for what we believe.Collection: Believe
I hope that you're learning how important you are, how important each person you see can be. Discovering each one's specialty is the most important learning.Collection: Important