#child

The Babar the Elephant book is sitting in front of me. I pick it up and start reading it. I remember reading it as a small Boy and enjoying it and imagining that I was friends with Babar, his constant Companion during all of his adventures. He went to the moon, I went with him. He fought Tomb Raiders in Egypt, I fought alongside him. He rescued his elephant girlfriend from Ivory Hunters on the Savanna, I coordinated the getaway. I loved that goddamn Elephant and I loved being his friend. In a childhood full of unhappiness and rage, Babar is one of the few pleasant memories that I have. Me and Babar, kicking some motherfucking ass. ↗

— James Frey

#childhood #elephants #reading #imagination

When we are no longer children we are already dead ↗

— Constantin Brancusi

#fantastic #fantasy #imagination #imagination

I was increasingly both horrified and sceptical about these memories - I had no recall of these things at all, though I couldn't imagine why I'd want to make it all up either. It felt as though it had all happened to somebody else, I was not there - it wasn't me - when those people did nasty things. But then, of course, it didn't feel like me, that's the whole point of dissociation - to create distance between the victim and her experience of the abuse. The alters were created for just that purpose: so that I'd not be aware that it happened to me, but rather to "others". The trouble is, in reality it was my body that took the abuse. It was only my mind that was divided, and sooner or later the amnesic barriers were bound to come down. And that's exactly what had begun to happen as I heard their stories. They triggered a vague and growing sense in me that this really is my story. ↗

— Carolyn Bramhall

#amnesia #amnesiac #childhood-abuse #dissociation #dissociative-identity-disorder

Because," explained Mary Rommely simply, "the child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe. She must start out by believing in things not of this world. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination. ↗

— Betty Smith

#imagination #imagination

Neither your mother nor I have any imagination at all and we certainly didn't bring you up to have one ↗

— John Boyne

#parents-and-children #imagination

[Children] just cannot be sad too long, it is not in them, as children mourn in little bits here and there like patchwork in their lives. ↗

— Nancy E. Turner

#death #play-therapy #therapy #death

The nutcracker sits under the holiday tree, a guardian of childhood stories. Feed him walnuts and he will crack open a tale... ↗

— Vera Nazarian

#christmas #holiday #holidays #nutcracker #nuts

The city became for me the ideal of what I wanted to be as a grown-up. Friendly, but never gushing, cool but not frigid or distant, distinguished without the awful stiffness. ↗

— Maya Angelou

#children-s-reminiscences #inspirational #inspirational

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live. ↗

— Gustave Flaubert

#amuse #children #instruction #like #live

Shouldn't we also ask ourselves what the consequences are of scrambling to provide the "most" of everything to our children in a world of fast dwindling resources? ↗

— John Taylor Gatto

#education #environment #parenthood #parenting #resources