Leonard Sax QUOTES

1 " If we fail to provide boys with pro-social models of the transition to adulthood, they may construct their own. In some cases, gang initiation rituals, street racing, and random violence may be the result. "

― Leonard Sax , Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men

2 " Turn off the device and take your child for a walk through the woods or on a hike up a mountain. Go on a camping trip. Late at night, when it's absolutely dark, take your child's hand and ask her to look up at the stars. Talk with her about the vastness of space and the tininess of our planet in the universe. That's reality. That's perspective. "

― Leonard Sax , The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown-Ups

3 " Defining yourself in terms of how you rank is always dangerous and ultimately immature. It doesn't matter whether the rank has to do with your grades, your weight or where you finished in the 800 meter race. Becoming a mature adult means, among other things, that you define yourself relative to your own potential, not relative somebody else's standard. "

― Leonard Sax , Girls on the Edge: The Four Factors Driving the New Crisis for Girls: Sexual Identity, the Cyberbubble, Obsessions, Environmental Toxins

4 " The destructive effects of video games are not on boys' cognitive abilities or their reaction times, but on their motivation and their connectedness with the real world. "

― Leonard Sax , Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men

5 " I told mom that she was confusing happiness with pleasure. That's common today. A trip to the video arcade may be a source of pleasure, but it will not give lasting and enduring happiness. This mother's son derives pleasure from playing video games, but playing video games in an online world is unlikely to be a source of real fulfillment. The pleasure derived from a video game may last for weeks or even months. But it will not last many years, in my firsthand observation Of many young men over the past two decades. The boy either moves on to something else, or the happiness undergoes a silent and malignant transformation into addiction. The hallmark of addiction is decreasing pleasure over time. Tolerance develops. Playing the game becomes compulsive, almost involuntary. It no longer gives the thrill and pleasure it once did. But the addict can no longer find pleasure in anything else. Pleasure is not the same thing as happiness. The gratification Of desire yields pleasure, not lasting happiness. Happiness comes from fulfillment, from living up to your potential, which means more than playing online video games. "

― Leonard Sax , The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown-Ups

6 " The destructive effects of video games are not on boys' cognitive abilities or their reaction times, but on there motivation and their connectedness with the real world. "

― Leonard Sax , Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men

7 " Quoting an experienced school counselor: "You can't change a bully into a flower child, but you can change him into a knight. "

― Leonard Sax , Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about the Emerging Science of Sex Differences

8 " Today, for most kids in the United States and Canada, kids’ primary attachment is to other kids. “For the first time in history,” Neufeld observes, “young people are turning for instruction, modeling, and guidance not to mothers, fathers, teachers, and other responsible adults but to people whom nature never intended to place in a parenting role—their own peers. . "

― Leonard Sax , The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown-Ups

9 " Robert Grant, sixth headmaster at Shore, was fond of making one particular remark to the parents of students newly enrolled at the school. He liked to say, “I hope your child will be severely disappointed during his time at this school.” The parents were often confused. Why would the headmaster wish for my child to be severely disappointed? Grant would explain that if a student does not experience real disappointment at school, then he will be unprepared for disappointment when it comes in real life. "

― Leonard Sax , The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown-Ups

10 " Too often, parents today allow their desire to please their child to govern their parenting. If your relationship with your child is governed by your own desire to be loved by him or her, the odds are good that you will not achieve even that objective. "

― Leonard Sax , The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown-Ups

11 " The change in the early elementary curriculum and the consequent neglect of teaching socialization places a greater burden than ever before on the American parent. But just when kids need parents more than ever to teach them the whole package of what it means to be a good person in this particular culture, the authority of parents to do that job has been undermined. We now live in a culture in which kids value the opinion of same-age peers more than they value the opinion of their parents, a culture in which the authority of parents has declined not only in the eyes of children but also in the eyes of parents themselves. Parents today suffer from role confusion. "

― Leonard Sax , The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown-Ups

12 " Why is ADHD so much more common in the United States today than it was 30 or 40 years ago? And why is it so much more common today in the United States than elsewhere? My answer is “the medicalization of misbehavior. "

― Leonard Sax , The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown-Ups

13 " By exempting your child from all chores, as many affluent American families now do, you are sending the message, "Your time is too valuable to be spent on menial tasks," which easily morphs into the unintended message "You are too important to do menial tasks." And that unintended message puffs up the bloated self-esteem that now characterizes many American kids. "

― Leonard Sax , The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown-Ups

14 " Courtney isn’t independent. No 12-year-old truly is. Instead, Courtney has transferred her natural dependence from her parents, where it should be, to her same-age peers, where it shouldn’t be. Courtney’s top priorities now lie in pleasing her friends, being liked by her friends, being accepted by same-age peers. Her parents have become an afterthought, a means to other ends. "

― Leonard Sax , The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown-Ups

15 " You don't teach virtue by preaching virtue. You teach virtue by requiring virtuous behavior, so that virtuous behavior becomes a habit. "

― Leonard Sax , The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown-Ups

16 " When Aaron came home from the tryout, why didn’t he take up the coach’s challenge to return, to try harder? When Julia discovered that she wasn’t as smart as she thought, why did she collapse? The answer in both cases is that these kids are fragile. It doesn’t take much for them to give up and retreat, as Aaron did, or to fall apart, as Julia did. Fragility has become a characteristic of American children and teenagers to an extent unknown 25 years ago. That "

― Leonard Sax , The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown-Ups

17 " The child expects to look up to the parent, to be instructed by the parent, indeed to be commanded by the parent. If the parent instead serves the child, then that relationship falls out of its natural balance. You may not earn your child’s love at all—and the "

― Leonard Sax , The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown-Ups

18 " graduates of elite American universities who had little sense of what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of them decided to get a job working for a Wall Street investment bank or management consultancy. If you don’t know what your passion is or what you really want to do, they said, then “you might as well go to Wall Street and make a lot of money if you can’t think of anything better to do.”36 And I have heard similar comments from young graduates of selective colleges and universities. Nobody has ever taught them that what you do influences the kind of person you will become. "

― Leonard Sax , The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown-Ups

19 " What does it mean to assert your authority as a parent? It doesn’t necessarily mean being a tough disciplinarian. Among other things, it means ensuring that the parent-child relationship takes priority over the relationships between the child and her or his same-age peers. "

― Leonard Sax , The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown-Ups

20 " I know an American family that spent several years living in England. They had one son, who was an average student: not great, but not terrible. When the family returned home to the United States, the parents enrolled him in the local public school. Mom was startled by the continual drumbeat from teachers and other parents: “Maybe your son has ADHD. Have you considered trying a medication?” She told me, “It was weird, like everybody was in on this conspiracy to medicate my son. In England, none of the kids is on medication. Or if they are, it’s a secret. But I really don’t think many are. Here it seems like almost all the kids are on medication. Especially the boys. "

― Leonard Sax , The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown-Ups