Kindergarten Quotes

My first job was baby-sitting. I had a great time because I love kids. Sometimes, when I'm having a bad day, I'm like: "Oh, you know what? I'm going to chuck it in and become a kindergarten teacher!" ~ Anne Hathaway

Like representative government, soccer has been imported from England and democratized in the United States. It has become the great social and athletic equalizer for suburban America. From kindergarten, girls are placed on equal footing with boys. In the fall, weekend soccer games are a prevalent in suburbia as yard sales. Girls have their own leagues, or they play with boys, and they suffer from no tradition that says that women will grow up professionally to be less successful than men.

'In the United States, not only are girls on equal footing, but the perception now is that American women can be better than American men,' said Donna Shalala, the Secretary of Health and Human Services. 'That's a turning point, a huge breakthrough in perception. ~ Jere Longman

I skipped kindergarten because I was reading at a pretty high level. That's a weird and cocky thing to say, but I was real sharp, and I knew that early on. ~ Hannibal Buress

I wasn't someone who needed an infant. It wasn't important to me to make bottles or see first steps or hear first words. Kindergarten, grade school....I didn't need to do any of that. I wanted to be a father, but being a father is about a lifetime of parenting, not just little-kid stuff. ~ Jessica Park

Neurosexism promotes damaging, limiting, potentially self-fulfilling stereotypes. Three years ago, I discovered my son's kindergarten teacher reading a book that claimed that his brain was incapable of forging the connection between emotion and language. And so I decided to write this book. ~ Cordelia Fine

Surfboards were everywhere. When I got my first new board, I was probably in kindergarten. ~ Brandon Cruz

I was an early reader, reading even before kindergarten, and since we did not have books in my home, my older brother, Alexander, was responsible for our trip every week to the public library to exchange books already read for new ones to be read. ~ Rosalyn Sussman Yalow

I built, of blocks, a town three hundred thousand strong, whose avenues were paved with a wine-colored rug and decorated by large leaves outlined inappropriately in orange, and on this leafage I'd often park my Tootsie Toy trucks, as if on pads of camouflage, waiting their deployment against catastrophes which included alien invasions, internal treachery, and world war. It was always my intention, and my conceit, to use up, in the town's construction, every toy I possessed: my electronic train, of course, the Lincoln Logs, old kindergarten blocks - their deeply incised letters always a problem - the Erector set, every lead soldier that would stand (broken ones were sent to the hospital), my impressive array of cars, motorcycles, tanks, and trucks - some with trailers, some transporting gas, some tows, some dumps - and my squadrons of planes, my fleet of ships, my big and little guns, an undersized group of parachute people (looking as if one should always imagine them high in the sky, hanging from threads), my silversided submarines, along with assorted RR signs, poles bearing flags, prefab houses with faces pasted in their windows, small boxes of a dozen variously useful kinds, strips of blue cloth for streams and rivers, and glass jars for town water towers, or, in a pinch, jails. In time, the armies, the citizens, even the streets would divide: loyalties, friendships, certainties, would be undermined, the city would be shaken by strife; and marbles would rain down from for ~ William H. Gass

I dig in the sand, and I play with pretty pictures, so I never really left kindergarten. ~ Sarah Parcak

What you have when everyone wears the same playclothes for all occasions, is addressed by nickname, expected to participate in Show And Tell, and bullied out of any desire form privacy, is not democracy; it is kindergarten. ~ Judith Martin

Blessed with Mom and Dad's remarkable genes, raised on big words and big, iconoclastic attitudes, Larry and I, before entering kindergarten, knew who we were, what we wanted, and how we would get there. ~ Dan Hill

I told her I'd made a huge mistake and that sparkles was definitely a letter. The kindergarten teacher was like, please don't ever talk about the alphabet again. ~ Audrey Bell

Didgeridooing?" Megan asked from over my shoulder.

"Profanity filter on my mobile," I said.

"You use a profanity filter? What is this, kindergarten?"

"Nah," I said. "It's hilarious. Makes people sound really stupid. ~ Brandon Sanderson

Then you're aping him. Valentine was one of the most arrogant and disrespectful men I've ever met. I suppose he brought you up to be just like him."
"Yes," Jace said, unable to help himself, "I was trained to be an evil mastermind from a young age. Pulling the wings off flies, poisoning the earth's water supply - I was covering that stuff in kindergarten. I guess we're all just lucky my father faked his own death before he got to the raping and pillaging part of my education, or no one would be safe. ~ Cassandra Clare

All I really need to know ... I learned in kindergarten. ~ Robert Fulghum

I had, bluntly, the worst fucking headache I had ever had in my life. I'm trying to think of the best way to describe it. Try this. Imagine a migraine, on top of a hangover, while sitting in a kindergarten of thirty screaming children, who are all taking turns stabbing you in the eye with an ice pick. ~ John Scalzi

My children have been learning lessons about entrepreneurship since they were in kindergarten, and these lessons are paying off: even though they are only 22, 18, and 15, they have already collectively launched three nonprofit organizations and several new businesses. ~ Naveen Jain

The child affixes one of her little pictures to my refrigerator.
She asks, Can you detect the radiation?

There is a house, one tree, and grass in dark slashes. A sun
shining. Beneath, in her child letters, she has written Chernobyl.

At kindergarten they must be having nuclear energy week.

One could look at the picture and say everything is in order.
No, I say, I cannot see the radiation.

The radiation poison, she says, sits
inside the apple and the apple looks pretty. Then singsongs,

Bury the apple and bury the shovel that buried the apple
and put the apple-burier person in a closet forever.

We are both thinking Then bury the burier.
Both thinking of her picture with no people.

The poison sits inside the people and the people
still look pretty, she says. ~ Darcie Dennigan

They're only crayons. You didn't fear them in Kindergarten, why fear them now? ~ Hugh MacLeod

I've always known I was gay, but it wasn't confirmed until I was in kindergarten.
It was my teacher who said so. It was right there on my kindergarten report card: PAUL IS DEFINITELY GAY AND HAS VERY GOOD SENSE OF SELF. ~ David Levithan

Massachusetts is seeing a surge in the number of unvaccinated children. Last year nearly 1,200 kids entered kindergarten with religious or philosophical vaccine exemptions, roughly double the total about a decade ago. ~ Deborah Blum

In Chile, everything from "kindergarten to cemeteries and community swimming pools were put out for bid." Between 1985 and 1992, over two thousand government industries were sold off throughout Latin America. Much of this property passed into the hands of either multinational corporations or Latin America's "superbillionaires," a new class that had taken advantage of the dismantling of the state to grow spectacularly rich. ~ Greg Grandin

Once when Monty was in kindergarten, I had read to him and was trying to get him to go to sleep. He said he didn't want to close his eyes because "It's dark in there. ~ Charles M. Schulz

I think girls from a young age know what they want, and boys kind of have to keep up and catch up to them. Even in kindergarten, girls are pretty much the ones that like the boy first and the boys are like, 'Oh, I want to play with my trucks.' They think it's not cool. I think girls are definitely more ahead than boys. ~ Madeline Carroll

Children without access to quality early education programs start kindergarten with an 18-month disadvantage, and that gap continues to widen. By the time they are in fourth grade, many cannot do math or read at grade level. ~ Mark Shriver

The men of the family had to be vigilant. It was their job to protect the women. That's the way it was, whether the women liked it or not. The family's honor was at stake. No one told him this in so many words, but he understood what his mother expected of him. To be an honorable man. He was his mother's favorite and he knew it. Natalie and Fern were more daddy's girls. He had ten years before he had to worry about Fern. She was just in kindergarten. By then he'd be, what-- twenty-seven, almost twenty-eight? He'd probably be married, maybe with his own kids. Jeez, that was a scary thought. ~ Judy Blume

Every now and then, I'm lucky enough to teach a kindergarten or first-grade class. Many of these children are natural-born scientists - although heavy on the wonder side and light on scepticism. They're curious, intellectually vigorous. Provocative and insightful questions bubble out of them. They exhibit enormous enthusiasm. I'm asked follow-up questions. They've never heard of the notion of a 'dumb question'.
But when I talk to high school seniors, I find something different. They memorize 'facts'. By and large, though, the joy of discovery, the life behind those facts, has gone out of them. They've lost much of the wonder, and gained very little scepticism. They're worried about asking 'dumb' questions; they're willing to accept inadequate answers; they don't pose follow-up questions; the room is awash with sidelong glances to judge, second-by-second, the approval of their peers. ~ Carl Sagan

God is the ultimate recycler. We have a good planet here. It has its troubles, yes. We have overpopulation, we have pollution, we have global warming, we have the Thursday night television lineup," more laughter, "and, of course, we have the infected. We have a lot of problems on Earth, and it might seem like a great idea to hold the Rapture now - why wait? Let's move on to Heaven, and leave the trials and tribulations of our earthly existence behind us. Let's get while the getting's good, and beat the rush.

"It might seem like a great idea, but I don't think it is, for the same reason I don't think it's a great idea for a first grader to stand up and say that he's learned enough, he's done with school, thanks a lot but he's got it from here. Compared to God, we're barely out of kindergarten, and like any good teacher, I don't believe He intends to let us out of class just because we're finding the lessons a little difficult. I don't know whether I believe in the Rapture or not. I believe that if God wants to do it, He will… but I don't believe that it's coming in our lifetime. We have too much work left to do right here. ~ Mira Grant

It's a scientific fact that there are only a handful of jobs you're allowed to have if you're one of the leads in a romantic comedy: dog walker, architect, kindergarten teacher, cupcake chef, florist, special needs veterinarian, suspiciously well-paid magazine writer, and independent bookstore owner. So it stands to reason that the likelihood of meeting your soul mate in one is high. ~ Una LaMarche

I was a very shy child. I remember being in a kindergarten open house with my mother and children saying 'Hi' to me, and I still remember feeling this way - but I don't know why - but I wouldn't even say 'Hi' back. I was that shy. ~ Jim Parsons

You see, ever since the first day of kindergarten, I had been hoping and waiting for some mind-blowingly fantastic, world-altering event to finally shatter the endless monotony of my public education. I had spent hundreds of hours gazing out at the calm, conquered suburban landscape surrounding my school, silently yearning for the outbreak of a zombie apocalypse, a freak accident that would give me super powers, or perhaps the sudden appearance of a band of time-traveling kleptomaniac dwarves. I ~ Ernest Cline

So when a certain awareness arises within you, somewhere you begin to feel the meaninglessness of the cycle. It is all nice, we are enjoying it, but just going on and on does not make sense. When that awareness comes, that is when you start talking about mukti. Mukti means you want to become free from the process of life and death. Not because you are suffering. Suffering people cannot attain mukti. You are fine, you are joyful, but you have had enough of the kindergarten, you want to move on. However beautiful your school life was, don't you want to go to college? Yes? That is all. You have seen enough of it. Now you want to move on. ~ Sadhguru

MOMA's values were blown through the American education system, from high school upwards-and downwards, too, greatly raising the status of "creativity" and "self-expression" in kindergarten. By the 1970s, the historical study of modern art had expanded to the point where students were scratching for unexploited thesis subjects. By the mid-eighties, twenty-one-year-old art-history majors would be writing papers on the twenty-six-year-old graffitists. ~ Robert Hughes

Dante said, "I tried talking Nora into a ride, but she keeps blowing me off."
"That's because she has a hard-A boyfriend. He must have been
homeschooled, because he missed all those valuable lessons we learned in kindergarten, like sharing. He finds out you took Nora for a ride, he'll wrap this shiny new Porsche around the nearest tree. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

I still do have the little lunch bag that my mother made out of a towel and embroidered with my name on it for when I went to kindergarten. ~ Maira Kalman

I knew more about produce from the sea than any of my schoolmates, and my reports in school, from kindergarten on, amused and shocked my classmates and teachers. I told them how we ate with chopsticks, had rice and seaweed for breakfast, raw fish, octopus, and sea urchin eggs for supper, and cakes made from sharks. ~ Eugenie Clark

Books were an antidepressant, a powerful SSRI. She'd always been one of those girls with socked feet tucked under her, her mouth slightly open in stunned, almost doped-up concentration. All written words danced in a chain for her, creating corresponding images as clear as the boy from Iran's bouncing family. She had learned to read before kindergarten, when she'd first suspected that her parents weren't all that interested in her. Then she'd kept going, plowing through children's books with their predictable anthropomorphism, heading eventually into the strange and beautiful formality of the nineteenth century, and pushing backward and forward into histories of bloody wars, into discussions of God and godlessness. What she responded to most powerfully, sometimes even physically, were novels. Once Greer read Anna Karenina for such a long, unbroken bout that her eyes grew strained and bloodshot, and she had to lie in bed with a washcloth over them as if she herself were a literary heroine from the past. Novels had accompanied her throughout her childhood, that period of protracted isolation, and they would probably do so during whatever lay ahead in adulthood. Regardless of how bad it got at Ryland, she knew that at least she would able to read there, because this was college, and reading was what you did. ~ Meg Wolitzer

The business students who build a ten-inch tower would have built a twenty-seven-inch tower when they were in kindergarten. Where did those extra seventeen inches go? What happened to the students in the intervening years? The business students, like most of the rest of us, lost a lot of their capacity to cooperate. ~ Kevin Ashton

Our pre-kindergarten programs have shown a better work force and have attracted more businesses into the state. We implemented our Smart Start program in 1993. In my first two terms in the 1970s, we focused on elementary and high schools. We realized we were starting too late. We knew to be effective we had to start even earlier. ~ James Hunt

They're talking about Kobe and how great it is that he's playing with the team. Well, isn't that what you're supposed to do? Now he's the savior because he's playing that way? He's no god. He does what he's supposed to be doing, which is what we learned in kindergarten. Share the ball and play. And that's what we do better than they do ~ Jack McCallum

And contrary to popular kindergarten doctrine, talk to as many strangers as possible. ~ Tim Sullivan

My mom dressed me in silk to go to elementary school. In kindergarten, they sent me home because I couldn't do finger painting in my dress. ~ Allegra Versace

Liberal moms like soccer because it's a sport in which athletic talent finds so little expression that girls can play with boys. No serious sport is co-ed, even at the kindergarten level. ~ Ann Coulter

This habit starts awfully early. Social psychologist Marilynn Brewer, who has been studying the nature of stereotypes for many years, once reported that her daughter returned from kindergarten complaining that "boys are crybabies."25 The child's evidence was that she had seen two boys crying on their first day away from home. Brewer, ever the scientist, asked whether there hadn't also been little girls who cried. "Oh yes," said her daughter. "But only some girls cry. I didn't cry." Brewer's little girl was already dividing the world, as everyone does, into us and them. Us is the most fundamental social category in the brain's organizing system, and it's hardwired. ~ Carol Tavris

Teachers - at kindergarten level, as at university level - form a noble army accomplishing daily feats, never praised, never decorated. An army without drums, without gleaming uniforms. This army, thwarting traps and snares, everywhere plants the flag of knowledge and morality. ~ Mariama Ba

My mom was never the type to write me long letters or birthday cards. We never got mani-pedis together, she never gave me a locket with our picture in it. She wouldn't tell me I looked beautiful, or soothe me when a boy broke my heart. But she was there. She kept me safe. She did her best to make me tough. She fed me the most delicious home-cooked meals. For lunch, she'd pack me rare sliced steak over white rice and steamed broccoli. She sent me to private school from kindergarten through twelfth grade. She is still there for me. She will always be there for me, as long as she's able. That's a great mom. ~ Ali Wong

In kindergarten I had to draw a picture of what I wanted to be when I grew up. I drew a rapper. I didn't really know what a rapper was or what they did - I just wanted to do it. ~ B.o.B

Religion, any religion, no matter what sort of wonderful religion, never be universal. So now education is universal, so we have to sort of find ways and means through education system, from kindergarten up to university level, to make awareness these good things, the values, inner values. ~ Dalai Lama

I took piano lessons as a kid, and my daughter's played piano since before she started kindergarten, so classical piano is something I really love. ~ Kristan Higgins

Jamie: Please don't pretend like you know me, ok?
Landon: But I do, I do. We've had all the same classes in the same school since kindergarten. Why you're Jamie Sullivan. You sit at lunch table 7. Which isn't exactly the reject table, but is definitely in self exile territory. You have exactly one sweater. You like to look at your feet when you walk. Oh, oh, and yeah, for fun, you like to tutor on weekends and hang out with the cool kids from "Stars and Planets." Now how does that sound?
Jamie: Thoroughly predictable, nothing I haven't heard before.
Landon: You don't care what people think about you?
Jamie: No. ~ Nicholas Sparks

Instead I sounded like a little girl on her first day of kindergarten. My name is Bee, and I like coloring and horsies. ~ Kate Avery Ellison

I loved putting on stories as plays when I was just six. I was the director, the actress and the set designer; I cast my girlfriends in parts, and I suggested to the local kindergarten teachers that we do free performances for the children. ~ Mili Avital

Race me back. Beat me there, and I'll tell you." I blinked. "What kind of kindergarten crap is that?" His grey eyes flashed with anger. "You want to know what it's like? Beat me down the beach." "Of all the ridiculous, immature nonsense," I said. Then I hooked a foot behind Thomas's calf, shoved him down to the sand, and took off down the beach at a dead sprint. ~ Jim Butcher

Mona began firing with deadly accuracy, also with a stream of Spanish words that Cosmo suspected were not taught in kindergarten. ~ Eoin Colfer

Lissa and I had been friends ever since kindergarten, when our teacher had paired us up together for writing lessons. Forcing five-year-olds to spell Vasilisa Dragomir and Rosemarie Hathaway was beyond cruel, and we'd - or rather, I'd - responded appropriately. I'd chucked my book at out teacher and called her a fascist bastard. I hadn't known what those words meant, but I'd known how to hit a moving target.
Lissa and I had been inseparable ever since. ~ Richelle Mead

Friends aren't people you can whip up like a batch of cookies. Dana and I were friends since kindergarten. Good friends take time. ~ Dawn Malone

I was always trying on clothes, always really into fashion, ever since probably kindergarten. ~ Jacquelyn Jablonski

Barbara is on what is called the woman's trip to the exclusion of almost everything else. When she and Tom and Max and Sharon need money, Barbara will take a part-time job, modeling or teaching kindergarten, but she dislikes earning more than ten or twenty dollars a week. Most of the time she keeps house and bakes. "Doing something that shows your love that way," she says, "is just about the most beautiful thing I know." Whenever I hear about the woman's trip, which is often, I think a lot about nothin'-says-lovin'-like-something-from-the-oven and the Feminine Mystique and how it is possible for people to be the unconscious instruments of values they would strenuously reject on a conscious level, but I do not mention this to Barbara. ~ Joan Didion

Everyone in our culture wants to win a prize. Perhaps that is the grand lesson we have taken with us from kindergarten in the age of perversions of Dewey-style education: everyone gets a ribbon, and praise becomes a meaningless narcotic to soothe egoistic distemper. ~ Gerald Early

One of the first times I ever performed in front of a big group of people was at my kindergarten graduation. I did, like, a Michael Jackson impersonation as, like, a five year old. I had the suit and blazer, the glove and the fedora, and I just performed a whole Michael Jackson song. I'm sure it was 'Smooth Criminal.' ~ Chance The Rapper

Harper Lee and Truman Capote became friends as next-door neighbors in the late 1920s, when they were about kindergarten age. From the start, they recognized in each other "an apartness," as Capote later expressed it; and both loved reading. When Lee's father gave them an old Underwood typewriter, they began writing original stories together. ~ Charles J. Shields

Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten. Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with dry, uninspiring books on algebra, history, etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the 'creative bug' is just a wee voice telling you, 'I'd like my crayons back, please. ~ Hugh MacLeod

I understood where I had come from: from a dreary tangle of sadness and pretense, of longing, absurdity, inferiority and provincial pomposity, sentimental education and anachronistic ideals, repressed traumas, resignation, and helplessness. Helplessness of the acerbic, domestic variety, where small-time liars pretended to be dangerous terrorists and heroic freedom fighters, where unhappy bookbinders invented formulas for universal salvation, where dentists whispered confidentially to all their neighbors about their protracted personal correspondence with Stalin, where piano teachers, kindergarten teachers, and housewives tossed and turned tearfully at night from stifled yearning for an emotion-laden artistic life, where compulsive writers wrote endless disgruntled letters to the editor of Davar, where elderly bakers saw Maimonides and the Baal Shem Tov in their dreams, where nervy, self-righteous trade-union hacks kept an apparatchik's eye on the rest of the local residents, where cashiers at the cinema or the cooperative shop composed poems and pamphlets at night. ~ Amos Oz

When it comes to educating all of us about the most basic things in life, it seems to me we need more kindergartens and fewer graduate schools. ~ Andy Rooney

I retain a searing memory of the smell of fresh varnish on wooden floors, and the feeling that I was entering incarceration as I stepped through the door for my first day of kindergarten. ~ James Edwin Turner

The first children of my age that I knew were in kindergarten. They seemed very strange, they laughed and talked and seemed happy. I didn't like them. ~ Charles Bukowski

I conducted an off-site consisting of 25 parents in the Seattle area with an income of $200K+ and whose children are entering kindergarten. The headline is that Galer Street is considered a second-tier school, a fallback option for those who don't get accepted to their first-choice school. Our objective is to move the needle on Galer Street and kick it up into the First-Choice Cluster (FCC) for Seattle's elite. How do we achieve this? What is the secret sauce? ~ Maria Semple

Man is evil, by nature man is a beast. People have to be educated from childhood, from kindergarten, that there should be no hatred. ~ Marek Edelman

Bullying, to me, starts very small around the kindergarten age where the first thing we learn is to call each other names. Something so small can be so long lasting in someone's life. ~ Shane Koyczan

In kindergarten we all stand before a choice - Do we accept the accepted to be accepted or do we stay logical and keep thinking? ~ L.H.

I was bullied a lot as a kid in school from kindergarten up to third grade. I know what it feels like to be left out and to want to be different - more so, to want to not be different and want to just fit in. ~ Keke Palmer

Schools themselves aren't creating the opportunity gap: the gap is already large by the time children enter kindergarten and does not grow as children progress through school. The gaps in cognitive achievement by level of maternal education that we observe at age 18-powerful predictors of who goes to college and who does not - are mostly present at age 6when children enter school. Schooling plays only a minor role in alleviating or creating test score gaps. ~ Robert D. Putnam

This framing accents the importance of building a tidier system, one that incorporates the array of existing child care centers, then pushes to make their classrooms more uniform, with a socialization agenda "aligned" with the curricular content that first or second graders are expected to know. Like the common school movement, uniform indicators of quality, centralized regulation, more highly credientialed teachers are to ensure that instruction
rather than creating engaging activities for children to explore
will be delivered in more uniform ways. And the state signals to parents that this is now the appropriate way to raise one's three- or four-year-old. Modern child rearing is equated with systems building in the eyes of universal pre-kindergarten advocates
and parents hear this discourse through upbeat articles in daily newspapers, public service annoucement, and from school authorities. ~ Bruce Fuller

Every Cuban has a house to live in, no matter how meager. That house is provided by government. Every Cuban who gets sick can go to a doctor or a hospital and get medical attention while 45 million Americans don't have medical insurance. Every Cuban can get education from the kindergarten through college and they don't have to pay. What is Castro doing that we might benefit from-if we are not too arrogant and falsely proud to see what he is doing in a small nation and what we have not been able to do or not been willing to do in the greatest nation on the earth? ~ Louis Farrakhan

Did you get Mom a birthday present?" Helen asked.
"Yes," Gansey replied. "Myself."
"The gift that keeps on giving."
"I don't think that minor children are required to get gifts for their parents. I'm a dependent. That's the definition of dependent, is it not?"
"You, a dependent!" his sister said, and laughed. "You haven't been a dependent since you were four. You went straight from kindergarten to old man with a studio apartment. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

The next year was kindergarten. On Parents Night we filed in and sat on the little chairs. It was just after the United States had launched its war against Iraq, and the teacher began to describe the children's curriculum for the year, I raised my hand, ever the firebrand, and asked if she'd be teaching the kids about the Gulf War. There was a collective gasp as the other parents looked at me with horror. The teacher paled and said softly, "We're working on colors. ~ Candice Bergen

The first stop on this crazy train is Kindergarten Junction, and nobody gets off until it pulls into Harvard Station. ~ Maria Semple

Fair warning, as it turned out - kindergarten is all about learning which parts of you are welcome at school and which are not. ~ Karen Joy Fowler

Or what about attention deficit disorder, and the litany of negative, even catastrophic associations it carries? Fifteen years ago, it barely existed, but today it's being diagnosed left, right, and sideways. I'm not suggesting that some kids don't have it, or can't benefit from treatment, but ADD (and the fear of our children being diagnosed with it) has saturated our culture like a virus. And the result, of course, is millions of parents buying their children drugs. A parent's internal monologue may go something like this:

If my child doesn't take Ritalin, or Adderal or Concerta, he won't be able to concentrate in school. He'll fall behind. His grades will suffer. He'll be marginalized by his peers. He'll begin hanging out with other low-performing kids. He won't get into college. He'll drift from job to job. He may even end up in jail. All because I didn't address his ADD when he was in kindergarten.

Fear, in my experience, spreads faster than anything else - and the ads for those drugs have done a very nice job scaring the pants off us. ~ Martin Lindstrom

It was probably very difficult to go from Chinese and then suddenly go to kindergarten and start speaking English; it's very hard to transition back and forth when you are in that pivotal age. It's also hard to transition back, but if I was immersed in the country for a given amount of time, you are surrounded by it, everyone is speaking, you are learning new things, you are practicing all the time. ~ Lucy Liu

A tulip doesn't strive to impress anyone. It doesn't struggle to be different than a rose. It doesn't have to. It is different. And there's room in the garden for every flower. You didn't have to struggle to make your face different than anyone else's on earth. It just is. You are unique because you were created that way. Look at little children in kindergarten. They're all different without trying to be. As long as they're unselfconsciously being themselves, they can't help but shine. It's only later, when children are taught to compete, to strive to be better than others, that their natural light becomes distorted. ~ Marianne Williamson

I've had the same friends since I was in kindergarten. ~ J.J. Abrams

What exactly did we learn in kindergarten? Nothing we wouldn't have learned if we;d stayed home. Okay, we learned that sometimes, by the time you get to the bathroom, it's too late. ~ Jessica Zafra

extra," an incentive to help kids get their work done.
How my thinking has evolved over the years! About eight years ago, the director of kindergarten for my school district approached me to develop a new approach to learning centers that would better meet the needs of all students. We decided to try literacy work stations, ~ Debbie Diller

There is no such thing as doing the nuts and bolts of reading in Kindergarten through 5th grade without coherently developing knowledge in science, and history, and the arts ... it is the deep foundation in rich knowledge and vocabulary depth that allows you to access more complex text. ~ David Coleman

I've wanted to perform my entire life. I found a paper I wrote in kindergarten class about what I wanted to be when I grew up - and I wrote 'a famous singer!' ~ Heather Morris

I had a great education. From kindergarten to John Dewey High School in Coney Island, I am public-school educated. ~ Spike Lee

The world is a very, very fine place. It wasn't a mess. It didn't need to be conquered and ruled by man. In other words, the world doesn't belong to man - but it does need man to belong to it. Some creature had to be the first to go through this ... Some creature had to find the way, and if that happened, then ... there was no limit to what could happen here. In other words, man does have a place in the world, but it's not his place to rule ... Man's place is to be the first. Man's place is to be the first without being the last. Man's place is to figure out how it's possible to do that - and then to make room for all the rest who are capable of becoming what he's become. And maybe, when the time comes, it's man's place to be the teacher of all the rest who are capable of becoming what he's become. Not the only teacher, not the ultimate teacher. Maybe only the first teacher, the kindergarten teacher - but even that wouldn't be too shabby. ~ Daniel Quinn

For the last hour of our trip Jeremy ran through the do's and don'ts. Most of them were don'ts. The simple act of dining now came with even more rules than Miss Fishton had for the kindergarten sandbox. I couldn't raid the icebox. I couldn't ask anyone except Jeremy for between-meal snacks. I had to eat with utensils. I had to chew with my mouth shut. I had to sit with the other Pack youth. I couldn't touch any food before everyone older than I had taken their share. I couldn't take seconds until everyone older than I had taken seconds. I couldn't eat other people's scraps. I couldn't eat food I found on the floor. With all these rules I began to fear I might have to starve, rather than risk disobedience. I hoped it'd be a short weekend. ~ Kelley Armstrong

A lot of high-profile companies are recognizing the benefits of power napping ... It's like kindergarten all over again. ~ Stefanie Weisman

My friends and I started making films when I was still in kindergarten. ~ Elizabeth Olsen

My old kindergarten behaviors, so appalling when I was a kindergartner myself, are apparently quite acceptable in a teacher. ~ Karen Joy Fowler

When we talk about democracy, if the people's stomach is empty, democracy is also empty. Democracy can not be installed by fiat; it must be achieved by the people themselves. ~ Y. C. James Yen

I'm looking for Fat Hoochie Prom Queen," I declared.
He did not respond.
"It's a book," I said. "Not a person."
Nope. Nothing.
"At the very least, can you tell me the author?"
He looked at his computer, as if it had some way to speak to me without any typing on his part.
"Are you wearing headphones that I can't see?" I asked.
He scratched at the inside of his elbow.
"Do you know me?" I persisted. "Did I grind you to a pulp in kindergarten, and are you now getting sadistic pleasure from this petty revenge?
Stephen Little, is that you? Is it? I was much younger then, and foolish to have nearly drowned you in that water fountain. In my defense, your
prior destruction of my book report was a completely unwarranted act of aggression."
Finally, a response. The information desk clerk shook his shaggy head.
"No?" I said.
"I am not allowed to disclose the location of Fat Hoochie Prom Queen," he explained. "Not to you. Not to anyone. And while I am not Stephen
Little, you should be ashamed of what you did to him. Ashamed. ~ Rachel Cohn

Parents with a child born at the end of the calendar year often think about holding their child back before the start of kindergarten: it's hard for a five-year-old to keep up with a child born many months earlier. But most parents, one suspects, think that whatever disadvantage a younger child faces in kindergarten eventually goes away. But it doesn't. It's just like hockey. The small initial advantage that the child born in the early part of the year has over the child born at the end of the year persists. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

When Does Social Anxiety Appear?

Social anxiety can develop at any age. Many people remember feeling afraid during social situations as early as kindergarten. Others don't develop symptoms until they are adults. However, social anxiety most commonly appears in adolescence, between the ages of 15 and 20. When you think about the changes that are taking place in your life at this time, this fact makes a lot of sense.
As a teenager, you are expected to act more like an adult than a child. You are beginning to take on adult responsibilities and see yourself as a part of society. Meeting the expectations of others and making a good impression are very important. As a result, you may worry about what others think of you and be afraid of acting incorrectly. ~ Heather Moehn

Exactly one month after he was convicted, when the lights were dimmed and the detention officers made a final sweep of the catwalk, Peter reached down and tugged off his right sock. He turned on his side in the lower bunk, so that he was facing the wall. He fed the sock into his mouth, stuffing it as far back as it would go.
When it got hard to breathe, he fell into a dream. He was still eighteen, but it was the first day of kindergarten. He was carrying his backpack and his Superman lunch box. The orange school bus pulled up and, with a sigh, split open its gaping jaws. Peter climbed the steps and faced the back of the bus, but this time, he was the only student on it. He walked down the aisle to the very end, near the emergency exit. He put his lunch box down beside him and glanced out the rear window. It was so bright he thought the sun itself must be chasing them down the highway.
'Almost there,' a voice said, and Peter turned around to look at the driver. But just as there had been no passengers, there was no one at the wheel.
Here was the amazing thing: in his dream, Peter wasn't scared. He knew, somehow, that he was headed exactly where he'd wanted to go. ~ Jodi Picoult

Women retain their dependence needs long past the developmental point at which those needs are normal and healthy. Unbeknownst to others - and worse, unbeknownst to ourselves - we carry dependency within us like some autoimmune disease. We carry it with us from kindergarten through college and graduate school, into our careers, and into the convenient "arrangement" of our marriages. (...) Much of the time - for many of us, all of the time - our unwillingness to stand on our own two feet goes unnoticed because it's expected. Women are relational creatures. They nurture and need. This, we have been told for many, many years, is nature.
And although it cripples us, we have to let it go unquestioned. ~ Colette Dowling

The system - the American one, at least - is a vast and noble experiment. It has been polestar and exemplar for other nations. But from kindergarten until she graduates from college the girl is treated in it exactly like her brothers. She studies the same subjects, becomes proficient at the same sports. Oh, it is a magnificent lore she learns, education for the mind beyond anything Jane Austen or Saint Theresa or even Mrs. Pankhurst ever dreamed. It is truly Utopian. But Utopia was never meant to exist on this disheveled planet. ~ Phyllis McGinley

Don't talk about what you have done or what you are going to do. ~ Thomas Jefferson