16 Haim Ginott Quotes

Haim Ginott quotes

1. Treat a child as though he already is the person he's capable of becoming.

2. I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated, a child humanized or de-humanized.

3. Teachers are expected to reach unattainable goals with inadequate tools. The miracle is that at times they accomplish this impossible task.

4. Children are like wet cement. Whatever falls on them makes an impression.

1. A modern teacher educates children to value their emotions.

2. How can we help a child change from undependable to dependable, from a mediocre student to a capable student, from someone who won't amount to very much to someone who will count for something. The answer is at once both simple and complicated: We treat a child as if he already is what we would like him to become.

3. Whenever I hear about a child needing something, I ask myself, 'Is it what he needs or what he wants?' It isn't always easy to distinguish between the two. A child has many real needs which can and should be satisfied. His wants are a bottomless pit. He wants, for example, to sleep with his parents. He needs to be in his own bed. At Christmas he wants every toy advertised on television. He needs only one or two.

4. Adolescence can be a time of turmoil and turbulence, of stress and storm. Rebellion against authority and against convention is to be expected and tolerated for the sake of learning and growth.

5. If you want your children to improve, let them overhear the nice things you say about them to others.

6. Each of us carries within himself a collection of instant insults.

7. Only if a child feels right can he think right.

8. I have great faith in 'ordinary parents.' Who has a child's welfare more at heart than his ordinary parent? It's been my experience that when parents are given the skills to be more helpful, not only are they able to use these skills, but they infuse them with a warmth and a style that is uniquely their own.

9. Many teenagers are tormented by terrors they deem private and personal. They do not know that their anxieties and doubts are universal.

10. Teenagers crave independence. The more self-suf-ficient we make them feel, the less hostile they are toward us.

11. When children feel understood, their loneliness and hurt diminish. When children are understood, their love for their parent is deepened. A parent's sympathy serves as emotional first aid for bruised feelings. When we genuinely acknowledge a child's plight and voice her disappointment, she often gathers the strength to face reality.

12. While parents possess the original key to their offspring's experience, teachers have a spare key. They, too, can open or close the minds and hearts of children.