Child Quotes by Alison Gopnik

Adults tend to think they have much free will. Kids younger than six are less sure. They may be more realistic!

— Alison Gopnik

One of the most distinctive evolutionary features of human beings is our unusually long, protected childhood.

— Alison Gopnik

“If the child is a budding psychologist, we parents are the laboratory rats.”

— Alison Gopnik

I'm afraid the parenting advice to come out of developmental psychology is very boring: pay attention to your kids and love them.

— Alison Gopnik

Children have a very good idea of how to distinguish between fantasies and realities. It's just they are equally interested in exploring…

— Alison Gopnik

“The dominant view was that children were essentially defective adults. They were defined by the things they didn’t know and couldn’t do.”

— Alison Gopnik

If you just got enough expertise and enough special techniques and read up enough, then you could shape a child into the…

— Alison Gopnik

Caring for children has always been one of the deepest and most satisfying things that a human being does, and yet it…

— Alison Gopnik

Childhood is a fundamental part of all human lives, parents or not, since that's how we all start out. And yet babies…

— Alison Gopnik

We know that kids who grow up in an environment of warmth and support will thrive and function in whatever environment they…

— Alison Gopnik

We do nothing for children between the ages of zero and five. And we seem to be quite happy to have children…

— Alison Gopnik

From an evolutionary perspective children are, literally, designed to learn. Childhood is a special period of protected immaturity. It gives the young…

— Alison Gopnik

There is a tension between our desire to get our kids to turn out a particular way versus letting them develop to…

— Alison Gopnik

Some people say that parents don't matter, and that's not true at all. The irony is that we pay attention to all…

— Alison Gopnik

Children are the most amazing thing in the universe, as far as I'm concerned. If you're worrying about how it's going to…

— Alison Gopnik

“So our job as parents is not to make a particular kind of child. Instead, our job is to provide a protected…

— Alison Gopnik

We pass our values, ideas and moral character on to our children, but we do that knowing that our children are going…

— Alison Gopnik

Young children seem to be learning who to share this toy with and figure out how it works, while adolescents seem to…

— Alison Gopnik

If parents are the fixed stars in the child's universe, the vaguely understood, distant but constant celestial spheres, siblings are the dazzling,…

— Alison Gopnik