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Erik Erikson Quotes about Children

All Erik Erikson Quotes Children quotes Choices Identity Life
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,

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 Erikson
Children, Creativity, Artist

There is in every child at every stage a new miracle of vigorous unfolding.

Erik Erikson
Children, Miracle, Psychology
Erik H. Erikson (1993). “Childhood and Society”, p.255, W. W. Norton & Company

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 Erikson
Children, Mistake, Accomplishment
"Childhood and Society". Book by Erik Erikson, 1950.

Children cannot be fooled by empty praise and condescending encouragement. They may have to accept artificial bolstering of their self-esteem in lieu of something better, but what I call their accruing ego identity gains real strength only from wholehearted and consistent recognition of real accomplishment, that is, achievement that has meaning in their culture.

Erik Erikson
Encouragement, Children, Real
Erik H. Erikson (1994). “Identity and the Life Cycle”, p.95, W. W. Norton & Company

The playing adult steps sideward into another reality; the playing child advances forward to new stages of mastery.

Erik Erikson
Children, Reality, Playing Outside
Erik H. Erikson (1993). “Childhood and Society”, p.222, W. W. Norton & Company

Healthy children will not fear life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death.

Erik Erikson
Life, Death, Children
Erik H. Erikson (1993). “Childhood and Society”, p.269, W. W. Norton & Company

It's a long haul bringing up our children to be good; you have to keep doing that — bring them up — and that means bringing things up with them: Asking, telling, sounding them out, sounding off yourself — finding, through experience, your own words, your own way of putting them together. You have to learn where you stand, and make sure your kids learn [where you stand], understand why, and soon, you hope, they'll be standing there beside you, with you.

Erik Erikson
Children, Mean, Kids

Someday, maybe, there will exist a well-informed, well considered and yet fervent public conviction that the most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child’s spirit; for such mutilation undercuts the life principle of trust, without which every human act, may it feel ever so good and seem ever so right is prone to perversion by destructive forms of conscientiousness.

Erik Erikson
Children, May, Principles
Erik H. Erikson (1993). “Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History”, p.70, W. W. Norton & Company

Do not mistake a child for his symptom.

Erik Erikson
Wisdom, Children, Mistake
Erik H. Erikson (1993). “Childhood and Society”, p.68, W. W. Norton & Company

The growing child must derive a vitalizing sense of reality from the awareness that his individual way of mastering experience (his ego synthesis) is a successful variant of a group identity and is in accord with its space-time and life plan.

Erik Erikson
Children, Successful, Reality
Erik H. Erikson (1994). “Identity and the Life Cycle”, p.21, W. W. Norton & Company

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