Children cannot be fooled by ...

Children cannot be fooled by empty praise and condescending encouragement. They may have to accept artificial bolstering of their self-esteem in lieu of something better, but what I call their accruing ego identity gains real strength only from wholehearted and consistent recognition of real accomplishment, that is, achievement that has meaning in their culture.
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 Erik Erikson

Quotes from the same author

Mans true taproots are nourished in the sequence of generations, and he loses his taproots in disrupted developmental time, not in abandoned localities.
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 Erik Erikson
The sense of identity provides the ability to experience one's self as something that has continuity and sameness, and to act accordingly.
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 Erik Erikson
You've got to learn to accept the law of life, and face the fact that we disintegrate slowly.
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 Erik Erikson
Children love and want to be loved and they very much prefer the joy of accomplishment to the triumph of hateful failure. Do not mistake a child for his symptom.
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 Erik Erikson
The growing child must derive a vitalizing sense of reality from the awareness that his individual way of mastering experience (his ego synthesis) is a successful variant of a group identity and is in accord with its space-time and life plan.
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 Erik Erikson