He said mama, I couldn’t find the switch, but here is a rock you can throw at me. All of a sudden understood how the situation felt from the child’s point of view: shat if my wants to hurt me, it makes no difference what she does it with; she might as well do it with a stone.
The mother took the boy onto her lap and they both cried. Then she laid the rock on a shelf in the kitchen to remind herself forever: never violence. because violence begins in the nursery- one can raise children into violence.
-From a Peace Prize acceptance speech given by Astrid Lindgren, author of Pippi Longstocking, 1978