Optimal Play

Famous quotes containing the words optimal and/or play:

    In the most desirable conditions, the child learns to manage anxiety by being exposed to just the right amounts of it, not much more and not much less. This optimal amount of anxiety varies with the child’s age and temperament. It may also vary with cultural values.... There is no mathematical formula for calculating exact amounts of optimal anxiety. This is why child rearing is an art and not a science.
    Alicia F. Lieberman (20th century)

    He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.
    —Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)