How about a daily quote thread? If you like the idea, feel free to add a new quote each day. I'll start us off:

"In raising my children, I have lost my mind, but found my soul."
Lisa T. Shepherd, Parent

I think I just lost my mind! LOL!

To show a child what once delighted you, to find the child's delight added to your own -- this is happiness.

John Boynton Priestley (1894-1984) English author

Mountains cannot be surmounted except by winding paths.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I'm starting to feel like I'm the only quote junkie. Any takers for tomorrow?

I'll give you a bonus for today:

"I honor my personality flaws. Without them, I'd have no personality at all."

--Margot Black

LOL..Snort!

Dottie I think that was me that said that....LOL

That was my mom who told me:

Me: Mom, I want to be rich.
My Mom: Be content with being happy.

Can we quote one another here? That could get fun!

I do not see why not !

So, go ahead and quote ...

My fav is always 'Obstinate, headstrong girl!', pretty all purpose, even a little gt-oriented, now that I think about it .

I saw this bumper sticker today: What we need in schools is a 'Moment of Science'. Thought that was pretty good too. (nothing against the moment of silence...)

I got a big kick out of "Between the Loins" myself!

Actually, I keep trying to think of ways to work it into the conversation on the forum, but I haven't found a good opportunity. I think it should become some sort of rallying cry, akin to "For the grandchildren!"

Only very, very different, of course...

Here's one I like, by Carl Rogers:

"What I am is good enough, if I would only be it openly"

I like the Garth Brooks song "The Change". It seems schools want to make our kids conform instead of the other way around.

I still like the marshmallow one!

Here's one for today.

"Perhaps one has to be very old before one learns how to be amused rather than shocked."

--Pearl S. Buck

Yes, very, very different!

ROFL!!

I have not heard 'The Change', might have to check it out...

hahaha, glad it was enjoyed!

heres one:

"Know the truth, and the truth shall make your free"

"Tell the truth, and the truth shall make you free of foolish, cruel, and counter-productive educational policies"

sorry I don't know who said this, I'm not even sure if the same person said both, it seemed like it went together

Thanks Dottie, I knew it was someone great!

"All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy". Spike Milligan


and

"I'm on a seafood diet. I see food and I eat it." Les Dawson


These made me smile!

XX

Maybe a pair of Loons can be the symbol?

Then you can say, "Its between the Loons!"

OMG. Too funny.

I can't remember the author (but I can picture his cartoon work), but I do love this one:

"Appreciate me now: avoid the rush."

"Whether you believe you can, or believe you can't, you're right"

Can't remember who said it....

When you are advocating, remember this:

----- The pessimist sees difficulty in every -----
- opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity -
--- in every difficulty. --- Winston Churchill ---

"If I want my children to work hard, I better be the hardest working person they've ever met. If I want the children to be nice, I better be the kindest human being they ever met."
Rafe Esquith

I like that one inky!

xx

One that made me chuckle...

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."

--Groucho Marx

LOL! I like that one a lot!

�It is a strange trade that of advocacy. Your intellect, your highest heavenly gift is hung up in the shop window like a loaded pistol for sale.�
Thomas Carlyle

"The common man, finding himself in a world so excellent, technically and socially, believes it has been produced by nature, and never thinks of the personal efforts of highly endowed individuals which the creation of this new world presupposed.

Still less will he admit the notion that all these facilities still require the support of certain difficult human virtues, the least failure of which would cause the rapid disappearance of the whole magnificent edifice."

~Jos� Ortega y Gasset (1883�1955)

These are great. Does anyone subscribe to The Week magazine? I love it--there are great quote in each issue (I'm horrible about remembering them--sorry).

"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."
(Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton)

�When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.�
Helen Keller

Two for the day:

---- God grant me the serenity to accept the things that I-----
---- cannot change, the courage to change the things I can,----
------------ and the wisdom to know the difference-------------





---Confucius: To study and not think is a waste. To think ----
---and not study is dangerous. ----

jsut a couple

A person soon learns how little he knows when a child begins to ask questions.
-- Richard L. Evans

There are two lasting bequests we can give our children. One is roots. The other is wings.
-- Hodding Carter, Jr.

Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!
~ Theodor Geisel

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear. ~ Mark Twain

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

You do not have a soul, you have a body. You are a soul. ~ C.S. Lewis

"Sometimes someone confesses a sin to take credit for it." - John von Neumann

"Life is a story. You can choose your story. And a story with an imaginative overlay is the better story."
Yann Martel

Here's one for all you introverts out there:

"The dying process begins the minute we are born, but it accelerates during dinner parties." --Carol Mathau

HAHAHAHAHA! Love that!

"Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself."

~Kahlil Gibran

Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted.

Garrison Keillor

"I call everyone 'darling' because I can't remember their names."

--Zsa Zsa Gabor

"Standardization is for factories, not for schools. It is Okay to reject bad products in the factory, but something major is wrong when kids get treated like factory rejects."

Bill Cosby

My father did this! Even to my brothers! (I call everyone "sweetheart.")

Evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart.

Yann Martel

Take a stand, Make your mark.

Can't remember who said it.

From Calvin and Hobbes, I could not resist....

A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction to a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day.

Life's disappointments are harder to take when you don't know any swear words.

This one's tricky. You have to use imaginary numbers, like eleventeen ...

You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help.

sooooo quotable!

I think I like the Calvin and Hobbes quotes just a bit too much.

Whatsoever from one place doth fall
Is with the tide unto another brought.
For there is nothing lost
But may be found, if sought.

~Edmund Spenser

Except my car keys!

:p

Love the Spenser! Reminds me of my grad school days and reading "Fairie Queen."

Life is to short eat dessert first.

I either made it up, or heard it somewhere. But try it when you eat out.

Dreams...are very mysterious things. They float around in the night air like little clouds, searching for sleeping people.

Roald Dahl

"Labels are for jars, no children"

"Unless someone like you
cares a whole lot,
nothing is going to get better.
It's not."
Dr. Seuss

my grandmother use to say this , so I'm pretty sure it comes from the Bible:

Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day. Teach him to fish, and he will eat for a lifetime.

"What we measure with tests is not what tests
measure�not information, not spatial
perception, not reasoning ability. These are
only a means to an end. What intelligence
tests measure is something much more
important; the capacity of an individual to
understand the world about him and his
resourcefulness to cope with its challenges."

David Wechsler

�If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.�
Anne Bradstreet

Happy first day of spring!

Inky - thanks for the quote and for reminding us today is Equinox!!

I hope poetry will become part of my children's lives, your life, and then your children's, not only because of the pleasure it will bring, but because the power of ideas, and the ability to express them, is the greatest power we have.

Caroline Kennedy, From The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

You're welcome Austin

Keep them coming Inky!!

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.
Robert Frost

Enjoy National Poetry Month!

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

There are two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other teach us how to live.
John Adams

Keeping a child who can do sixth-grade work in a second-grade classroom is not saving that student's childhood but is instead robbing that child of the desire to learn.

Ellen Winner

Go Inky!!!

Love that one inky!

This is one of my all-time favorites:

"The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it."

Chinese proverb

Oh I like that one, Lily!

Yes, good one!

That's good. The importance of EQ as well as IQ.

Here's one of my favorites. I'm not sure who said it...
"If you're moving in the wrong direction, speeding up won't help."

Another favorite...
"It's not what you know that'll hurt you, it's what you know that ain't so."
Satchel Paige

yesterday is to forget. today is a gift. tomorrow's a mystery. let's not be affected with yesterday.. move on.. cause the 'present' is the gift.. tomorrow's somehow to wait for... mystery's there to give color to our life..

�Flowers are the earth laughing.�
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day!
And for tomorrow...
For the Bard's birthday...celebrated 4/23

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god!

Hamlet, by William Shakespeare

We can never teach children all they need to know, so we really must teach them how to think and how to love learning.

Marva Collins

The Possible's slow fuse is lit by the Imagination.
Emily Dickinson

Remember who you are.

Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they are yours. - Illusions, Richard Bach

"You just don't understand me, you don't understand the way I'm feeling. You hate me!"

- My DD4

Are you familiar with the song by Sweet Honey and The Rock that uses this verse? It is rich.

�A man's errors are his portals of discovery.�
James Joyce

I think this quote

�The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother's side, yet this very love must help the child grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent.�
Erich Fromm

explains this one

�Mothers are all slightly insane.�
J.D. Salinger

Happy Mothers Day!

Only a Mother's love is so unconditional and self sacrificing, no one would ever know unless they are to be a Mother themselves.
HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
Frederick Douglass

(and women)

Life isn't about how to survive the storm but how to dance in the rain.

�-You can't just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood.
-What mood is that?
-Last-minute panic.�

Calvin and Hobbes

Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning.
William A. Ward

How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes! ~Maya Angelou

Have a great Memorial Day weekend

"For what is genius, I ask you, but the capacity to be obsessed?"
Steven Millhauser

An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest. ~Benjamin Franklin

"I believe we need to keep challenging girls so they continually connect the relationship between efforts and results, that we keep encouraging them to take risks, make commitments, and achieve."
Susan Lemagie, M.D. from How Jane Won
...and boys too

today's fav. bumper sticker -

�Well-behaved women rarely make history�

I'm not familiar with the quotee, Laura Thatcher Ulrich.

...ah, it's actually a book she wrote, she's an historian

"Another hallmark of high-utility enrichment classes is that teachers insist that the failure-averse yet scholastically able child not just strive for A's but also take greater academic chances, albeit with adequate emotional support for such risks."

Alissa Quart, author of Hothouse Kids

"Children who can integrate information will be best prepared to be lifelong learners with flexible minds. This sort of flexibility depends, in part, on children not tying learning to obligation-rather, learning how to learn with a certain lightness and adaptability."

Alissa Quart

"A good father is one of the most unsung, unpraised, unnoticed, and yet one of the most valuable assets in our society." -- Billy Graham

Happy Father's Day weekend!

Shared joy is increased; shared pain is lessened.

-Spider Robinson

"When a student makes really silly blunders or is exasperatingly slow, the trouble is almost always the same; he has no desire at all to solve the problem, even no desire to understand it properly, and so he has not understood it. Therefore, a teacher wishing seriously to help the student should, first of all, stir up his curiosity, give him some desire to solve the problem."
George Polya

�So, Two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism�
E. M. Forster

Happy 4th of July!

Good one, Inky! Thanks!

"Never bribe children to learn; it sets the stage for them to depend on rewards of one kind or another to learn. This sets them up to be good performers and poor learners."
Madeline Levine, Ph.D. from The Price of Privilege

"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target
no one else can see."
- Arthur Schopenhauer

"Giftedness is an ongoing process and not a product. The process leads in a direction that differs from the direction of the majority, but which can also integrate with it and bring about change."
Annemarie Roeper

"The goal, after all, is to do what we can to facilitate the child's growing into the fulfilled, independent, emotionally sound person he or she was designed to be. When my children were younger, I focused on scores, too. It is natural, I think, to do so. But eventually, as they grew and matured and did what they wanted to do, I finally learned what it a joy it is to simply watch what they do, who they are, and where they are going still."
~Dr. Deborah Ruf

Ashleigh Brilliant

"Gifted" does not mean "reasonable."

Joy and Loss: The Emotional Lives of Gifted Children by Joshua Freedman and Anabel Jensen, Ph.D.

This made me laugh so hard....

This came to mind when a good friend lamented to me her struggle with her dd's ECA choices.

The difference between an adult and a child :-

Adults do what they have to do
Children do what they want to do

�I don't know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, 'well, if I'd known better I'd have done better,' that's all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, 'I'm sorry,' and then you say to yourself, 'I'm sorry.' If we all hold on to the mistake, we can't see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can't see what we're capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one's own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that's rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don't have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach.�

- Maya Angelou
(emphasis added)

Long one today. I enjoyed the latest additions from Wyldkat and S-T. Thanks!

If you can give your son or daughter only one gift, let it be enthusiasm. ~Bruce Barton

(These quotes keep me going. Thank you!)

Thanks, Inky. This was beautiful.

Not sure why it struck me this way but, unfortunately, it reminded me of my niece's teacher. She is constantly looking to see my niece fail at things. As if "catching" a gifted child being mediocre or even terrible at something, would invalidate her giftedness. Perhaps the teacher just never managed to overcome how she thinks about herself.

"Sometimes when the ideas are coming fast and heavy, it feels like my brain is dancing."
Boy, age 17 from Parenting Gifted Kids by James Delisle

You're welcome and I'm glad other people find them as nourishing as I do. Hope your niece is able to recognize that this says more about her teacher than your niece.

"The trick is to partition the whole past relationship with any school folk who are giving you a hard time and focus-focus-focus on the needs of the child and possible solutions. It's an odd trick, but I know you'll get the hang of it. You may not get the accommodations you are looking for, but at least your entire mind won't go crazy. Just that little walled off part that you can vent about here for the next 20 years. Hopefully somethings will have changed by then."
-Grinity

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. If at first you do succeed, try something harder."

Don't know who said it, but always liked it.

Have a happy day all!

I LOVE this! Thk you inky for posting and Grinity for saying it! I have to remind myself not to get overly emotional and FOCUS on what I want for my child. I hope I will what I want soon.

The forest is magnificent, yet it contains no perfect trees.
Gye Fram

"When we face obstacles early on, we discover how to separate our identi�ties from the task itself � that means the failure of meeting the goal or accomplishing the task does not equal failure of us as people."
-Tracy Inman

"Every decision is a value-laden decision. Even a nondecision is value-laden, meaning, when you don't think through a choice on behalf of your child but instead let social norms decide for you, you adopt the values those norms represent."
~Marybeth Hicks from Bringing Up Geeks

"For the gifted person, the person who really wants to learn something, too much instruction is insulting."
Mortimer Adler

"There is no scarcity in the world of ideas; when someone understands an idea, its beauty is not consumed or used up."
John Mighton

"Never argue with an idiot. He'll bring you down to his level and then beat you with experience."

Not sure who said this, but it was hanging on one of dh's professors' doors in grad school. It always made me laugh.

My ds reminds me of this on a daily basis!

"Intellectual activity is the same, whether at the frontier of knowledge or in the third-grade classroom...The difference is in degree, not in kind."
Jerome Bruner

"Watch your thoughts, they become words. Watch your words, they become your actions. Watch your actions, they become habits. Watch your habits, they become character. Watch your character, it becomes your destiny." -- Frank Outlaw

�Learning can only happen when a child is interested. If he�s not interested it�s like throwing marshmallows at his head and calling it eating.� - Barbara Lamping

I LOVE that qoute, Inky. I've seen it before, and I think it's dead-on!

My variation lately, based on my own experience, is "You can lead a child to homeschooling, but you can't make him learn."

If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice

Rush

�Energy and persistence alter all things.�
� Benjamin Franklin

"Some of the least glamorous yet most valuable character traits, such as patience, tenacity, foresight, courage, self-control, and acceptance are won in the trenches of parenthood."
-Wendy Mogel

�I don�t divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and the failures, those who make it or those who don�t. I divide the world into learners and non-learners.�
Benjamin Barber

"Those that speak do not know. Those who know do not speak."
Lao Tse

Read this somewhere once and had a bit of a chuckle:-

"It matters not what you eat between Christmas and New Year. It's what you eat between New Year and Christmas that matters."

Dusting off this thread...

"The key to happiness is not to be constantly positive; it is to be constantly honest."
Robert Holden

"The mind is like a parachute. It only works when it is open."

"The earth is what we all have in common."
Wendell Berry

Happy Earth Day!

"Closing the achievement gap by pushing down the top is like fostering fitness by outlawing marathons."
Helen Schinske

I like that one!

". . . For as much as the world has benefited from the contributions of gifted individuals, it is disturbing, to this writer, to realize that the population least likely to learn and achieve its potential is the highly gifted."
~ Joseph Cardillo

Saw this on the Davidson eNews Update and thought it was great!

This line of thinking in general makes me very uncomfortable. I'm really hesitant to put this level of expectation on any child. Also there is a fallacy involved - a child with no signs of giftedness at all all through school may turn out to make a huge contribution, and then be trumpeted as 'highly gifted.' There is little date linking Adult achievement with childhood LOG. Probably because of the frustrations these children routinely face in school, but maybe not.

Then I feel that this argument flips so quickly into 'see, they don't need special education - look at all they have achieved under the current system.

In the end I think that it's better to stick to the moral high ground and say: We want to help all children have a reasonable shot at going to school, developing good work habits, and being in classrooms that teach to their readiness level.

or - to put it anther way -
We don't want special treatment, we just want a level playing field. The average child gets lots of chances to learn how to learn at school. That's what we want for our kids too.

((hugs))
Thanks for giving me the change to make this point again - I love making it!

Grinity

A good point and it should be made often. I had a different take on the quote but can see how it could be interpreted another way. I wasn't looking at it as "we should meet the needs of the gifted because they have the most to offer to society." Instead I saw it as "the gifted are the most likely not to get their needs met even though they have much to offer." It's a subtle difference and I'm glad you pointed out how easy it is to cross the line into uncomfortable territory.

"A child's intellect is shown not so much in what he knows but in the questions he asks"
-
Anon

Elisa - LaoTze quote - thanks for reminding us of that!

Old English quote
"those that can, do: those that can't, teach"

How very true

"We are the ones we have been waiting for."
from the Poem for South African Women by Jones, June:
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/poem-for-south-african-women/

I really like this one and think that it does a good job of pointing out the flaws in the way the U.S. ids kids as gifted which relies a lot on what the child knows (high achievement).

"loving challenge is an acquired taste, so if we don't challenge everyone in school, then we lose the chance for folks to find out if they are some of the ones who enjoy challenge."
Grinity