Parenting Quotes - Page 18

To be quite frank, I don't know nor understand how one can stand up and say I'm a 'perfect father'! I reckon myself to be a great dad in my children's eyes and maybe the kids I interact with just by passing by and cracking a few jokes that eventually put a smile on their faces. I call myself a 'great dad' cause my CREATOR chose me to bring an innocent and beautiful life to this world because the Heavens above believed that: 1. I'd never compromise my child's happiness over anything or anyone! 2. I'd do whatever possible, within reason of course to ensure that my son sees LOVE, HOPE, FAITH, HAPPINESS, LAUGHTER, OPULENCE, THE HEAVENS and definitely a FATHER whenever he looks at me or through my eyes! 3. I'm a GREAT-DAD until my children say otherwise.

I'm not important, having a child is not an amazing feat, and my child, while extraordinarily important to and beloved by her parents, is not particularly special in the scheme of things.

The answer to violence is the improvement of childhood.

If we, as mothers, are not careful we can begin to find our identity in our children and their behavior

Intensive mothering is the ultimate female Olympics: We are all in powerful competition with each other, in constant danger of being trumped by the mom down the street, or in the magazine we're reading. The competition isn't just over who's a good mother--it's over who's the best. We compete with each other; we compete with ourselves. The best mothers always put their kids' needs before their own, period. The best mothers are the main caregivers. For the best mothers, their kids are the center of the universe. The best mothers always smile. They always understand. They are never tired. They never lose their temper. They never say, "Go to the neighbor's house and play while Mommy has a beer." Their love for their children is boundless, unflagging, flawless, total. Mothers today cannot just respond to their kids' needs, they must predict them--and with the telepathic accuracy of Houdini. They must memorize verbatim the books of all the child-care experts and know which approaches are developmentally appropriate at different ages. They are supposed to treat their two-year-olds with "respect." If mothers screw up and fail to do this on any given day, they should apologize to their kids, because any misstep leads to permanent psychological and/or physical damage. Anyone who questions whether this is the best and the necessary way to raise kids is an insensitive, ignorant brute. This is just common sense, right?

Gardening and making your own soap and home-birthing your babies are fine, but these are inherently limited actions. If we want to see genuine food safety, if we want to see sustainable products, if we want to see a better women's health system, and if we want these things for everyone, not just the privileged few with the time and education to DIY it, then we need large social changes.

Children do not experience our intentions, no matter how heartfelt. They experience what we manifest in tone and behavior.

Healing, it turns out, is a journey. It doesn’t happen all at once.

Who we are and how we engage with the world are much stronger predictors of how our children will do than what we know about parenting.

It comes from looking at the heart of things, from stopping to smell not only the roses but the bushes as well. It is a quality of attention to ordinary life that is so loving and intimate it is almost worship.

Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people who have them.

Children make theories when they are confused or anxious.

Force your kids to pursue success and they shall be drowned into the abyss of characterlessness, but let them pursue excellence and they shall rise as glorious Gods.

Breasts are a scandal because they shatter the border between motherhood and sexuality.

(Taft's mother's) losing her firstborn had convinced her that children are treasures lent not given and that they may be recalled at any time. Parents, she firmly believed, could never love their children too much.

From the time he was young, he dressed the way you told him to dress; he acted the way you told him to act; he said the things you told him to say. He's been listening to somebody else tell him what to do... He hasn't changed. He is still listening to somebody else tell him what to do. The problem is, it isn't you any,ore; it's his peers.

How often does a man know, without question, that he has done well? I do not think it happens often in anyone's life, and it becomes even rarer once one has a child.

Parenting requires a delicate balance of letting your child be your spiritual teacher while you maintain the clarity and boundaries to be her Earthly teacher.

To reform the world - means to reform upbringing...

Dex's mother knew she should be afraid for her daughter. This, she'd been told, was the tragedy of being a girl. To live in fear–it was the fate of any parent, maybe, but the special provenance of a mother to a daughter, one woman raising another, knowing too well what could happen. This was what lurked inside the luckiest delivery rooms, the ones whose balloons screamed It's a girl!: pink cigars and flowered onesies and fear.

Fifteen-year-old girls produce children with sixteen-year-old boys in the backseat of cars and in the stairwells of apartment buildings. Why can't two loving adults who have contemplated parenthood and are prepared to offer love, patience, and devotion come up with enough chromosomal matter to stick together and create a child?

A stodgy parent is no fun at all. What a child wants and deserves is a parent who is SPARKY

Nurturing a child’s sense of personal worth and therefore hope and dreams for a wonderful future is perhaps the most important responsibility of every grownup in a child’s life.

That took the view that every misbehavior, every cruelty perpetuated by one kid on another should be let slide in the name of letting kids be kids? (Let them be kids, really let them, and you will end up with a tribe of bulimic eugenicists with huge amounts of credit card debt.)

We must return to optimism in our parenting. To focus on the joys, not the hassles; the love, not the disappointments; the common sense, not the complexities.

Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.

This is why we can't have nice things...

Don't be sad that I'm autistic. Love me for who I am. All of me. Some things are difficult for me but I'm okay as I am.

While our life remains more chaotic than not, we continue to land on our blistered feet, drag each other out of the quicksand, beg for forgiveness as we wander out of the doghouse, and dig for the humor beneath our grief. So our family, four-pawed members included, continues to bound forward celebrating our canine connection and sharing hope with all who need healing.

She is doing that on purpose, he thought as he tried to force his own smile away from his wide, damp jaws. She is being adorable as some sort of hideous ruse, to spite me. What a mean baby!...Do not fall in love with that baby...

Children learn best when they like their teacher and they think their teacher likes them.

As a parent who raised his children in dysfunction, I know the parental wounds my children received were not intentional; often they were my best expression of love, sometimes coming out sideways, not as I intended.

My father did not teach me how to live. He lived and let me watch him do it.

Raise your children to love and embrace others. Tell them they are beautiful; they may grow up to be stars one day, and "beautiful" will never mean as much in a magazine as it will coming from you.

Isn’t it wonderful to give birth to your own kind?

I myself," said Gibbon, "am slightly underdone in the personal worthlessness line. It was Papa's fault. He used no irony. The communications mix offered by the parent to the child is as you know twelve percent do this, eighty-two percent don't do that, and six percent huggles and endearments. That is standard. Now, to avoid boring himself or herself to death during this monition the parent enlivens the discourse with wit, usually irony of the cheaper sort. The irony ambigufies the message, but more importantly establishes in the child the sense of personal lack-of-worth. Because the child understands that one who is talked to in this way is not much of a something. Ten years of it goes a long way. Fifteen is better. That is where Pap fell down. He eschewed irony.

Through the blur, I wondered if I was alone or if other parents felt the same way I did - that everything involving our children was painful in some way. The emotions, whether they were joy, sorrow, love or pride, were so deep and sharp that in the end they left you raw, exposed and yes, in pain. The human heart was not designed to beat outside the human body and yet, each child represented just that - a parent's heart bared, beating forever outside its chest.

The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults.

Parental Alienation is an emotional act of violence that is aimed at an adult, but critically wounds a child.

Sex is an open secret parents try to hide to their children

Always be nice to your children because they are the ones who will choose your rest home.

That's a parents' job, isn't it? To raise a child strong enough to leave and break our hearts?

Do you guys have sunscreen?” I ask.“No,” Scottie says. “Do we have water?”“Did you bring any?” Alex asks.“No,” I say.Alex pops her head up. “Did you bring snacks for us?”“We can walk to town.”How do mothers manage to bring everything a child could need?

May you always have angels to walk with you on the right path.

Why shall we talk?To provide the right amount of clarity between family members in their home environment, and to spread the ambiance of honesty and trust between them on the way that uplifts the value of the family in their hearts, and to make it the safe haven for adults and children together.

Healthy boys grow into healthy men.

Siddhartha began to understand that it was not happiness and peace that had come to him with his son but, rather, sorrow and worry. But he loved him and preferred the sorrow and worry of love to the happiness and peace he had known without the boy.

Being a parent is like being a catcher. You gotta handle whatever is thrown your way.

Children are people, and they should have to reach to learn about things, to understand things, just as adults have to reach if they want to grow in mental stature. Life is composed of lights and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows. Most things are good, and they are the strongest things; but there are evil things too, and you are not doing a child a favor by trying to shield him from reality. The important thing is to teach a child that good can always triumph over evil.

Never take advice about never taking advice. That is an old vice of men - to dish it out without being able to take it - the blind leading the blind into more blindness.

Regard those who respect you.Esteem those who honor you.Cherish those who love you.Reward those who adore you.

The life of a mother is the life of a child: you are two blossoms on a single branch.

I remember thinking that no one had ever told me how much I would love my child; now, of course, I realized something else no one tells you: that a child is a grenade. When you have a baby, you set off an explosion in your marriage, and when the dust settles, your marriage is different from what it was.

I would have made a terrible parent. The first time my child didn't do what I wanted, I'd kill him.

Let’s be Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. Atticus’s children, Scout and Jem, carefully watch their father’s behavior as the house next door to theirs burns to the ground. As the fire creeps closer and closer to the Finches’ home, Atticus appears so calm that Scout and Jem finally decide that “it ain’t time to worry yet.” We need to be Atticus. Hands in our pockets. Calm. Believing. So that our children will look at us and even with a fire raging in front of them, they’ll say, “Huh. Guess it’s not time to worry yet.

Because we don't know the state of our children's souls, and because they might simply want to please us by praying to be saved, we must continue to give them the Law and encourage them to ask God for faith to believe that He is as good as He says He is.

Some parents bring their children up and, I suppose, others let them down.

We are our own children's "perfect" parents, and within us lie all the simple, yet profound qualities of inner perfection.

The greatest challenge of parenting is in the inner work it requires: the strength and confidence in believing that we are not in control of, but the answer for our children.

It’s a fool who thinks having a kid is a right, which is the biggest crock of fish heads I’ve ever heard.