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About this quote

What does it mean?
Trusting children is essential but requires adults to first overcome their own upbringing where they were taught not to trust themselves.
In plain terms
To trust kids, adults must heal their own doubts about being trustworthy.
What can you take from it?
Heal your own trust issues to better support children.

Where it applies

  • classroom management
  • parent-child relationships
  • educational policy

Putting it to work

  • Reflect on personal trust experiences
  • Design child-centered curricula

Questions to consider

  • When did you learn to distrust yourself?
  • How does your trust style affect children?

Another view

Trust without boundaries can sometimes lead to unsafe situations.

More from John Holt

  1. The idea of painless, non-threatening coercion is an illusion. Fear is the inseparable companion of coercion, and its inescapable consequence.

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  2. The anxiety children feel at constantly being tested, their fear of failure, punishment, and disgrace, severely reduces their ability both to perceive and to r…

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  3. The true test of intelligence is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don't know what to do

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