Child Initiated Play Quotes

No intelligent radical can fail to realize the need of the rational education of the young. The rearing of the child must become a process of liberation by methods which shall not impose ready-made ideas, but which should aid the child's natural self-unfoldment. The purpose of such an education is not to force the child's adaptation to accepted concepts. but to give free play to his [and her] originality, initiative, and individuality. Only by freeing education from compulsion and restraint can we create the environment for the manifestation of the spontaneous interest and inner incentives on the part of the child. Only thus can we supply rational conditions favorable to the development of the child's natural tendencies and his latent emotional and mental faculties. Such methods of education, essentially aiding the child's imitative quality and ardor for knowledge, will develop a generation of healthy intellectual independence. It will produce men and women capable, in the words of Francisco Ferrer, “of evolving without stopping, of destroying and renewing their environment without cessation; of renewing themselves also; always ready to accept what is best, happy in the triumph of new ideas, aspiring to live multiple lives in one life.

Every whole person has ambitions, objectives, initiatives, goals. This one particular boy’s goal was to be able to press his lips to every square inch of his own body. His arms to the shoulders and most of the legs beneath the knee were child’s play. After these areas of his body, however, the difficulty increased with the abruptness of a coastal shelf. The boy came to understand that unimaginable challenges lay ahead of him. He was six.

666 HOW TO JOIN ILLUMINATI SECRET SOCIETY FOR MONEY. Get Rich Quick Join 666 now. JOIN THE BROTHERHOOD Money, Power, Fame and Love. For those who are interested in making money, every good thing comes with money, comes with extra effort. All u need do is a “Spiritual work” and every wicked power delaying your progress wants clear and good things will come to you like, money, favour from people, open doors, business breakthrough, good job. Note: It’s not a child’s play, it’s for those who are desperate and ready to make a change in their life. We are seeki¬ng that speci¬al wisdo¬m and knowl¬edge that would set us free from the bonda¬ge to dull and drear¬y every¬day life, while stren¬gthen¬ing us in body, mind and spiri¬t, and bring-ing us the mater¬ial rewar¬ds of wealt¬h, love, and succe¬ss. The Karis¬hika Broth¬erhoo¬d is a true broth¬erhoo¬d of secre¬t knowl¬edge and power¬. Me¬mber s¬hip into our frate¬rnity is free and norma¬lly throu¬gh a thoro¬ugh scree¬ning. We are here to liber¬ate those who need wealt¬h, riche¬s, power¬, prosp¬erity¬, prote¬ction and succe¬ss in all ramif¬icati¬on. Broth¬erhoo¬d offer¬s all initi¬ate membe¬rs growt¬h, wealt¬h, fame, power¬, prosp¬erity and succe¬ss in all areas of heart desir¬es. We don’t deman¬d human sacri¬fice, the use of any human parts or early perso¬nal death as a preco¬nditi¬on for you to becom¬e our membe¬r. W¬ant to join occul¬t in Switzerland how can I join secre¬t socie¬ty or cult to make money¬ how can join occul¬t for riche¬s I want to be rich but I don’t know how etc. how do I do money ritua¬l ho¬w do I join good occul¬t that will not affec¬t me and my famil¬y forev¬er w¬e are now here for you. K¬indly conta¬ct us on +41767918253 or email: info786@pm.me Contact Person Agent Adam Address: Kronenstrasse 25 9230 Flawil Switzerland

So it was that Mister Povondra started his collection of newspaper cuttings about the newts. Without his passion as a collector much of the material we now have would otherwise have been lost. He cut out and saved everything written about the newts that he could find; it should even be said that after some initial fumblings he learned to plunder the newspapers in his favourite café wherever there was mention of the newts and even developed an unusual, almost magical, virtuosity in tearing the appropriate article out of the paper and putting it in his pocket right under the nose of the head waiter. It is well known that all collectors are willing to steal and murder if that is what's needed to add a certain item to their collection, but that is not in any way a stain on their moral character. His life was now the life of a collector, and that gave it meaning. Evening after evening he would count and arrange his cuttings under the indulgent eyes of Mrs. Povondra who knew that every man is partly mad and partly a little child; it was better for him to play with his cuttings than to go out drinking and playing cards. She even made some space in the scullery for all the boxes he had made himself for his collection; could anything more be asked of a wife?

In attunement, it is the infant who leads and the mother who follows. “Where their roles differ is in the timing of their responses,” writes John Bowlby, one of the century’s great psychiatric researchers. The infant initiates the interaction or withdraws from it according to his own rhythms, Bowlby found, while the “mother regulates her behaviour so that it meshes with his... Thus she lets him call the tune and by a skillful interweaving of her own responses with his creates a dialogue.” The tense or depressed mothering adult will not be able to accompany the infant into relaxed, happy spaces. He may also not fully pick up signs of the infant’s emotional distress, or may not be able to respond to them as effectively as he would wish. The ADD child’s difficulty reading social cues likely originates from her relationship cues not being read by the nurturing adult, who was distracted by stress. In the attunement interaction, not only does the mother follow the child, but she also permits the child to temporarily interrupt contact. When the interaction reaches a certain stage of intensity for the infant, he will look away to avoid an uncomfortably high level of arousal. Another interaction will then begin. A mother who is anxious may react with alarm when the infant breaks off contact, may try to stimulate him, to draw him back into the interaction. Then the infant’s nervous system is not allowed to “cool down,” and the attunement relationship is hampered. Infants whose caregivers were too stressed, for whatever reason, to give them the necessary attunement contact will grow up with a chronic tendency to feel alone with their emotions, to have a sense — rightly or wrongly — that no one can share how they feel, that no one can “understand.” Attunement is the quintessential component of a larger process, called attachment. Attachment is simply our need to be close to somebody. It represents the absolute need of the utterly and helplessly vulnerable human infant for secure closeness with at least one nourishing, protective and constantly available parenting figure. Essential for survival, the drive for attachment is part of the very nature of warm-blooded animals in infancy, especially. of mammals. In human beings, attachment is a driving force of behavior for longer than in any other animal. For most of us it is present throughout our lives, although we may transfer our attachment need from one person — our parent — to another — say, a spouse or even a child. We may also attempt to satisfy the lack of the human contact we crave by various other means, such as addictions, for example, or perhaps fanatical religiosity or the virtual reality of the Internet. Much of popular culture, from novels to movies to rock or country music, expresses nothing but the joys or the sorrows flowing from satisfactions or disappointments in our attachment relationships. Most parents extend to their children some mixture of loving and hurtful behavior, of wise parenting and unskillful, clumsy parenting. The proportions vary from family to family, from parent to parent. Those ADD children whose needs for warm parental contact are most frustrated grow up to be adults with the most severe cases of ADD. Already at only a few months of age, an infant will register by facial expression his dejection at the mother’s unconscious emotional withdrawal, despite the mother’s continued physical presence. “(The infant) takes delight in Mommy’s attention,” writes Stanley Greenspan, “and knows when that source of delight is missing. If Mom becomes preoccupied or distracted while playing with the baby, sadness or dismay settles in on the little face.

The experiment is called the Strange Situation, and you can see variations of it on the Internet. A mother and her toddler are in an unfamiliar room. A few minutes later, a researcher enters and the mother exits, leaving the youngster alone or with the researcher. Three minutes later, the mother comes back. Most children are initially upset at their mother’s departure; they cry, throw toys, or rock back and forth. But three distinct patterns of behavior emerge when mother and child are reunited—and these patterns are dictated by the type of emotional connection that has developed between the two. Children who are resilient, calm themselves quickly, easily reconnect with their moms, and resume exploratory play usually have warm and responsive mothers. Youngsters who stay upset and nervous and turn hostile, demanding, and clingy when their moms return tend to have mothers who are emotionally inconsistent, blowing sometimes hot, sometimes cold. A third group of children, who evince no pleasure, distress, or anger and remain distant and detached from their mothers, are apt to have moms who are cold and dismissive. Bowlby and Ainsworth labeled the children’s strategies for dealing with emotions in relationships, or attachment styles, secure, anxious, and avoidant, respectively.

In some cultures, apprentice shamans receive a call as well as shamanic knowledge, powers, and spirit relationships from shaman elders or shamans within their own families. Benefactors may set up arduous training designed to foster specific achievements or trials and initiations that the apprentice must successfully complete. They may lead an apprentice through specific cultural rites of passage. Benefactors may also transmit knowledge, powers, and spirit relationships to the apprentice at the moment of their death. A shaman who has passed may return to an apprentice in dreams, as might that shaman's helping spirits. Potential shamans selected by shaman elders are usually (though not always) chosen at a young age, when the elders notice something special or extraordinary about them. Sometimes something special happens during or shortly after their day of birth or the child is heard talking or seen behaving in certain ways that indicate spirit connection or possession. Sometimes the initiate experiences unique, profound visions or dreams or successfully performs healing without training. The initiate might display an undeniable compulsion to learn shamanism at a young age when other children are focused on play or learning to hunt or fight, or an initiate might be able to easily memorize long stories or songs. Elder shamans are always on the watch for individuals showing signs of contact with the spirits.

the scientific rulers will provide one kind of education for ordinary men and women, and another for those who are to become holders of scientific power. Ordinary men and women will be expected to be docile, industrious, punctual, thoughtless, and contented. Of these qualities, probably contentment will be considered the most important. In order to produce it, all the researches of psycho-analysis, behaviourism, and biochemistry will be brought into play…. All the boys and girls will learn from an early age to be what is called “co-operative”, i.e., to do exactly what everybody is doing. Initiative will be discouraged in these children, and insubordination, without being punished, will be scientifically trained out of them…. Except for the one matter of loyalty to the world State and to their own order, members of the governing class will be encouraged to be adventurous and full of initiative. It will be recognized that it is their business to improve scientific technique, and to keep the manual workers contented by means of continual new amusements…. In normal cases, children of sufficient heredity will be admitted to the governing class from the moment of conception. I start with this moment rather than birth since it is from this moment and not merely the moment of birth that the treatment of the two classes will be different. If, however, by the time the child reaches the age of three it is fairly clear that he does not attain the required standard, he will be degraded at that point. [T]here would be a very strong tendency for the governing classes to become hereditary, and that after a few generations not many children would be moved from either class into the other. This is especially likely to be the case if embryological methods of improving the breed are applied to the governing class, but not to the others. In this way the gulf between the two classes as regards native intelligence will become continually wider and wider…. Assuming that both kinds of breeding are scientifically carried out, there will come to be an increasing divergence between the two types, making them in the end almost different species. (pp. 181–188, emphasis added)

As a nine-year-old, the circadian rhythm would have the child asleep by around nine p.m., driven in part by the rising tide of melatonin at this time in children. By the time that same individual has reached sixteen years of age, their circadian rhythm has undergone a dramatic shift forward in its cycling phase. The rising tide of melatonin, and the instruction of darkness and sleep, is many hours away. As a consequence, the sixteen-year-old will usually have no interest in sleeping at nine p.m. Instead, peak wakefulness is usually still in play at that hour. By the time the parents are getting tired, as their circadian rhythms take a downturn and melatonin release instructs sleep—perhaps around ten or eleven p.m., their teenager can still be wide awake. A few more hours must pass before the circadian rhythm of a teenage brain begins to shut down alertness and allow for easy, sound sleep to begin. This, of course, leads to much angst and frustration for all parties involved on the back end of sleep. Parents want their teenager to be awake at a “reasonable” hour of the morning. Teenagers, on the other hand, having only been capable of initiating sleep some hours after their parents, can still be in their trough of the circadian downswing. Like an animal prematurely wrenched out of hibernation too early, the adolescent brain still needs more sleep and more time to complete the circadian cycle before it can operate efficiently, without grogginess. If this remains perplexing to parents, a different way to frame and perhaps appreciate the mismatch is this: asking your teenage son or daughter to go to bed and fall asleep at ten p.m. is the circadian equivalent of asking you, their parent, to go to sleep at seven or eight p.m. No matter how loud you enunciate the order, no matter how much that teenager truly wishes to obey your instruction, and no matter what amount of willed effort is applied by either of the two parties, the circadian rhythm of a teenager will not be miraculously coaxed into a change. Furthermore, asking that same teenager to wake up at seven the next morning and function with intellect, grace, and good mood is the equivalent of asking you, their parent, to do the same at four or five a.m. Sadly, neither society nor our parental attitudes are well designed to appreciate or accept that teenagers need more sleep than adults, and that they are biologically wired to obtain that sleep at a different time from their parents. It’s very understandable for parents to feel frustrated in this way, since they believe that their teenager’s sleep patterns reflect a conscious choice and not a biological edict. But non-volitional, non-negotiable, and strongly biological they are. We parents would be wise to accept this fact, and to embrace it, encourage it, and praise it, lest we wish our own children to suffer developmental brain abnormalities or force a raised risk of mental illness upon them.

Gregory of Nyssa, the fourth-century Greek theologian…, had the (to us) strange insight that desire relates crucially to what might be called the “glue” of society. The erotic desire that initially draws partners together sexually has aIso to last long enough, and to be so refined in God, as to render back to society what originally gave those partners the possibility of mutual joy: that means (beyond the immediate project of child-rearing and family) service to the poor and the outcast, attention to the frail and the orphans, a consideration of the fruit of the earth and its limitations, a vision of the whole in which all play their part, both sacrificially and joyously. It may seem odd now to say that that is where eros should tend; for we have so much individualized and physicalized desire that we assume that sexual enactment somehow exhausts it (and so to run out completely in old age, as bodily strength withers).

Do encourage movement: “Let’s swing our arms to the beat of this music. I always feel better when I stretch, don’t you?” Movement always improves sensory processing. Do encourage the child to try a new movement experience: “If you’re interested in that swing, I’ll help you get on.” Children with dyspraxia may enjoy new movement experiences but need help figuring out how to initiate them. Do offer your physical and emotional support: “I’m interested in that swing. Want to try it with me? You can sit on my lap, and we’ll swing together.” The child who is fearful of movement may agree to swing at the playground if he has the security of a loving lap. (Stop if he resists.) Do allow your child to experience unhappiness, frustration, or anger: “Wow, it really hurts when you don’t get picked for the team.” Acknowledging his feelings allows him to deal with them, whereas rushing in to make it better every time he’s hurt prevents him from learning to cope with negative emotions. Do provide appropriate outlets for negative emotions: Make it possible to vent pent-up feelings. Give her a ball or a bucketful of wet sponges to hurl against the fence. Designate a “screaming space” (her room, the basement, or garage) where she can go to pound her chest and shout. Do reinforce what is good about your child’s feelings and actions, even when something goes wrong: “You didn’t mean for the egg to miss the bowl. Cracking eggs takes practice. I’m glad you want to learn. Try again.” Help her assess her experience positively by talking over what she did right and what she may do better the next time. How wonderful to hear that an adult is sympathetic, rather than judgmental! Do praise: “I noticed that you fed and walked the dog. Thanks for being so responsible.” Reward the child for goodness, empathy, and being mindful of the needs of others. “You are a wonderful friend,” or “You make animals feel safe.” Do give the child a sense of control: “If you choose bed now, we’ll have time for a long story. If you choose to play longer, we won’t have time for a story. You decide.” Or, “I’m ready to go to the shoe store whenever you are. Tell me when you’re ready to leave.” Impress on the child that others don’t have to make every decision that affects him. Do set reasonable limits: To become civilized, every child needs limits. “It’s okay to be angry but not okay to hurt someone. We do not pinch.

play with. There are many benefits of child-initiated play: •  Confidence: children gain in confidence as choice is a feature of child-initiated play. •  Concentration: children tend to show high levels of concentration during

Children also choose where to play and who, if anyone, they wish to play with. There are many benefits of child-initiated play: •  Confidence: children gain in confidence as choice is a feature of child-initiated play. •  Concentration: children tend to show high levels of concentration during

Adult-led play often influences child-initiated play as, once children have learnt a new skill or game, they are likely to incorporate it into their own play or choose to repeat it.

To Yahweh" “YHWH is definitely a verb form. We can take comfort in the certain knowledge that God is a verb, not a noun or an adjective.” – The Gifts of the Jews, Thomas Cahill God is the spray on your lip from the freshly-poured ginger ale. No, God is the arrival on your lip of the spray. The arcing. The spree. God is definitely not that weird sexuality of wild bird rehabilitators. God is, instead, waves blown back hard from the shore. At night. Perhaps he is the rumbling scaring done by the haunted freight train, the shrill ghouls in the back cars climbing over each other to escape. God is weequashing: The spearing of eels or fish from a canoe by torchlight. God is the inventing of words like weequashing. She is not the fire darkening down. She is the goldfinch singing the whisper song. And the birthing of a second child, to feel your body blooming. To feel head, then shoulders, thighs then cord tumbling. To live. To life! To give the initial downbeat to the tympanis. To cure mice by placing them in a cello. To do whatever the scarecrow did with his brains. And to make that acrid or burned quality of the smell of space. To crow, to fly, to gild and gnaw. To mean. Shape, shear, smear and shine. Play and improvise. To last.

1. Give your toddler some large tubular pasta and a shoelace.  Show her how to thread the shoelace through the pasta. 2. Take an empty long wrapping paper tube and place one end on the edge of the sofa and the other end on the floor.  Give him a small ball such as a Ping Pong ball to roll down the tube.   3. Give her some individually wrapped toilet tissues, some boxes of facial tissue or some small tins of food such as tomato paste.  Then let her have fun stacking them.     4. Wrap a small toy and discuss what might be inside it.  Give it to him to unwrap. Then rewrap as he watches.  Have him unwrap it again.    5. Cut  such fruits as strawberries and bananas into chunks.  Show her how to slide the chunks onto a long plastic straw.  Then show her how you can take off one chunk at a time, dip it into some yogurt and eat it.   6. Place a paper towel over a water-filled glass.  Wrap a rubber band around the top of the glass to hold the towel in place.  Then place a penny on top of the paper towel in the centre of the glass.  Give your child a pencil to poke holes in the towel until the penny sinks to the bottom of the glass.   7. You will need a small sheet of coarse sandpaper and various lengths of chunky wool.  Show him how to place these lengths of wool on the sandpaper and how the strands stick to it.   8. Use a large photo or picture and laminate it or put it between the sheets of clear contact paper.  Cut it into several pieces to create a puzzle.   9. Give her two glasses, one empty and one filled with water.  Then show her how to use a large eyedropper in order to transfer some of the water into the empty glass.   10. Tie the ends/corners of several scarves together.  Stuff the scarf inside an empty baby wipes container and pull a small portion up through the lid and then close the lid.  Let your toddler enjoy pulling the scarf out of the container.   11. Give your child some magnets to put on a cookie sheet.  As your child puts the magnets on the cookie sheet and takes them off, talk about the magnets’ colours, sizes, etc.   12. Use two matching sets of stickers. Put a few in a line on a page and see if he can match the pattern.  Initially, you may need to lift an edge of the sticker off the page since that can be difficult to do.    13. You will need a piece of thin Styrofoam or craft foam and a few cookie cutters.  Cut out shapes in the Styrofoam with the cookie cutters and yet still keep the frame of the styrofoam intact.  See if your child can place the cookie cutters back into their appropriate holes.        14. Give her a collection of pompoms that vary in colour and size and see if she can sort them by colour or size into several small dishes. For younger toddlers, put a sample pompom colour in each dish.   15. Gather a selection of primary colour paint chips or cut squares of card stock or construction paper.  Make sure you have several of the same colour.  Choose primary colours.  See if he can match the colours.  Initially, he may be just content to play with the colored chips stacking them or making patterns with them.

Mikulincer and Shaver created a model of attachment-system functioning and dynamics,4 which I’ve adapted into a flowchart showing how the different attachment experiences arise. First, if a child experiences a threat—whether perceived or actual, physical or emotional—they will try to find protection by seeking closeness to an attachment figure. If their attachment figure is available and responsive, and meets their needs, the child feels safe and can go back to playing or exploring. But if their attachment figure is unresponsive or inaccessible, and the child is left without a safe haven to turn to, they may adapt by either deactivating (turning down) or hyperactivating (turning up) their attachment needs. As children, when we feel afraid, threatened or in need, and seeking closeness with our parents is not a viable option because they’re not available or because turning towards them doesn’t make things better, we learn to rely more on ourselves. We become more self-reliant and we minimize our attachment needs. When we deactivate our attachment system, we suppress our attachment-based longings—not because we don’t still want closeness and connection, but in order to adapt and survive. If we experience discomfort or danger and closeness to a parent is still somewhat of a viable option, we might learn that we can get their attention by intensifying our attachment cries. If our caretakers did not respond to our initial bids, but ramping up our demands and hyperactivating our attachment system did get their attention in some form, we then learn that this is an effective strategy. Later in this chapter, we’ll talk about how these strategies—deactivating, hyperactivating, or vacillating between the two—relate to the three different insecure attachment styles. FIGURE 1.1 An adaptation of Mikulincer and Shaver’s model of attachment-system activation and functioning in adulthood.5

Under the model of original monotheism we can draw three basic inferences. Figure 1.4. Decay of religions First, there is one decisive change—the move away from monotheism. This change has to be seen as a falling away, perhaps best understood as decay or corruption. Human beings turn away from God to something else: other gods, spirits, nature, even themselves. Apparently the God of the sky seemed too remote. In times of personal crises—a sick child, crop failure, marital problems—people believed that they needed more immediate help. Invoking the aid of fetishes or spirits seemed more potent. Thus God receded behind other spiritual powers. In biblical terms people worshiped the creation instead of the Creator. Second, there is no clear pattern in which this departure typically takes place. Monotheism could turn into henotheism, polytheism or animism. But one thing is certain: as monotheism was left behind, ritual and magic increased. This is not to say these elements do not occur within a fairly stable monotheistic context (of course they do!). However, once human beings abandon faith in one almighty, all-knowing God, the role that they play in attempting to find their own way in a world apparently dominated by spiritual forces becomes far more central, leading to an increase in spiritual manipulation techniques, such as magic and ritual. Third, once monotheism is abandoned, change usually continues to occur. Again, there is no mandatory sequence in which things rearrange themselves, but an increase in ritual and magic is most likely to be a part of it. Every once in a while throughout history, reform movements have called a culture back to a renewed awareness of God. Zoroastrianism and Islam are clear examples of such events. When they happen, even though there may be initial enthusiasm, chances are that there will also be an increase in tension between the idealists who are promoting the return to monotheism and those who do not feel free to give up their traditional faiths. This phenomenon may give rise to a serious tension between the ideal version of the religion and how its adherents actually practice it (they usually cling to rituals and veneration of spirits). In contrast to the neat pyramid associated with the evolutionary view (fig. 1.1), monotheism carries the liability of a tendency toward magic and ritual (fig. 1.3).

When a child is stuck in a lie, I find it effective to walk through how I would respond if she shared the truth. Let’s say you get a call from your daughter’s school notifying you that she didn’t do her writing homework for the past week. You get home and ask her about it, and she says over and over, “I did do it! I did! I don’t want to talk about it!” After an initial pause, when you feel you have a tiny opening, you might say: “Oh . . . okay . . . well, all I’m saying is that if a kid in this family did have a few days of not doing homework, I would really try to understand. Because every kid in this family, if they didn’t do homework, would have some reason for this. It makes me think about when I was seven and didn’t do writing homework for a bunch of days. Something about writing felt so tricky and it was so hard for me to work on it. Anyway, if it did happen, I’d sit with you and talk it out. You wouldn’t be in trouble . . .” Then play it cool. Don’t look at your child and say, “So you didn’t do it, right?” Just move on.

relations.50 The idea of collective child-rearing was not unique to kibbutzim. It has been periodically attempted as a desired social disruption since antiquity. Plato believed that raising children communally would result in children treating all men as their fathers and thus more respectfully.51 Communist societies have also been associated with collective child-rearing; the family is seen as a threat to state ideology because it fosters a sense of belonging to a family unit, and totalitarian ideology requires that family allegiance be subordinated to allegiance to the party or state. Liberal political theory has also struggled with the issue of the family being an obstacle to an egalitarian society (for example, because child care and family life generally impose greater constraints on women).52 But attempts to fundamentally restructure or minimize the bond between parent and child have very rarely, if ever, endured.53 While mild forms of collective child-rearing are found in cultures all around the world (and in some other mammalian species, as we will see in chapter 7), they typically involve forms of alloparental care, whereby relatives share child-care duties. Dormitory sleeping arrangements for infants (of the kind initially attempted by the kibbutzim) are extremely rare. A 1971 survey of 183 societies around the world found that none maintained such a system.54 As in many utopian communities, the organization of child-rearing was motivated largely by adult imperatives. If men and women were to be treated truly equally, collective parenting might be seen as an obvious structural necessity, regardless of its implications for individual children and their development. Historian Steven Mintz noted in Huck’s Raft, his sweeping work on American childhood, that almost every innovation in child welfare in the United States, including orphanages and subsidized child care, has been driven primarily by adult concerns. Of secondary importance were philosophical and pragmatic convictions about what was best for children.55 As radical as communes may be in some key respects, they generally play by adult rules in regard to children, whose needs and concerns have never been, as far as I can tell, the primary motivation for any utopian community (even though some of them had amazing schools and treated children kindly). Setting up utopias seems to be like sex in at least one way: it is oriented to adult satisfaction.

Above all, he kept it an internal conflict, not a conflict between him and her.… And if she or anyone else comments on her quietness or hesitancy, Jim’s prompt reply is, ‘That’s just your style. Other people have different styles. But this is yours. You like to take your time and be sure.’ Jim also knows that part of her style is befriending anyone whom others tease, doing careful work, noticing everything going on in the family, and being the best soccer strategist in her league.” One of the best things you can do for an introverted child is to work with him on his reaction to novelty. Remember that introverts react not only to new people, but also to new places and events. So don’t mistake your child’s caution in new situations for an inability to relate to others. He’s recoiling from novelty or overstimulation, not from human contact. As we saw in the last chapter, introversion-extroversion levels are not correlated with either agreeableness or the enjoyment of intimacy. Introverts are just as likely as the next kid to seek others’ company, though often in smaller doses. The key is to expose your child gradually to new situations and people—taking care to respect his limits, even when they seem extreme. This produces more-confident kids than either overprotection or pushing too hard. Let him know that his feelings are normal and natural, but also that there’s nothing to be afraid of: “I know it can feel funny to play with someone you’ve never met, but I bet that boy would love to play trucks with you if you asked him.” Go at your child’s pace; don’t rush him. If he’s young, make the initial introductions with the other little boy if you have to. And stick around in the background—or, when he’s really little, with a gentle, supportive hand on his back—for as long as he seems to benefit from your presence. When he takes social risks, let him know you admire his efforts: “I saw you go up to those new kids yesterday. I know that can be difficult, and I’m proud of you.