Parenting

As far as rearing children goes, the basic idea I try to keep in mind is that a child is a person. Just because they happen to be a little shorter than you doesn’t mean they are dumber than you. A lot of people make that mistake, and forget how much value there is in raw intuition - and there’s plenty of that in every child.
They may not have verbal skills or manual skills yet, but that is no reason to treat them like they’re inferior little lumps whose destiny it is to grow up to be inferior Big Lumps like you.
We do all the regular stuff, like trying to keep them away from danger and out of trouble, but, after that, we have the responsibility of providing them with the basic data they’re never going to get in school.
To the extent that it is practical, we share with them our personal philosophies, and attempt to impart to them what we like and what we don’t like - so that we at least have some basis for understanding each other - but, in the final analysis, we realize that they are ‘organisms unto themselves’. Whatever they’re going to do in life, they’re going to do regardless of home instruction.

- Frank Zappa, The Real Frank Zappa Book