If it is to be done well, child-rearing requires, more than most activities of life, a good deal of decentering from one’s own needs and perspectives. Such decentering is relatively easy when a society is stable and when there is an extended, supportive structure that the parent can depend upon.

Shift from modern nuclear family to the postmodern permeable family.

Taking the child’s point of view demands good will, time, and effort on the part of parents. The child is the clear beneficiary. Parents who make the effort to understand their children’s point of view are likely to treat children fairly and in an age-appropriate manner.

Play is not only our creative drive; it’s a fundamental mode of learning.

It's certainly part of the same group-think. They're doing the same thing -- branding -- with universities. We see economic values being weighed much more heavily than human values.

It's all very misguided. They're starting too early, and getting burned out.

Infants and young children are not just sitting twiddling their thumbs, waiting for their parents to teach them to read and do math. They are expending a vast amount of time and effort in exploring and understanding their immediate world. Healthy education supports and encourages this spontaneous learning.

Play is not only our creative drive; it's a fundamental mode of learning.

Decades of research has shown that play is crucial to physical, intellectual, and social-emotiona l development at all ages. This is especially true of the purest form of play: the unstructured, self-motivated, imaginative, independent kind, where children initiate their own games and even invent their own rules.

Friendships in childhood are usually a matter of chance, whereas in adolescence they are most often a matter of choice.