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Parenting Quotes


"I also believe that parents, if they love you, will hold you up safely, above their swirling waters, and sometimes that means you'll never know what they endured, and you may treat them unkindly, in a way you otherwise wouldn't."


"Children need love most when they don't deserve it."


"Our parents thought we might be corrupted by one another into becoming whatever it was they most feared: an incorrigible masturbator, a winsome homosexual, a recklessly impregnatory libertine. On our behalf they dreaded the closeness of adolescent friendship, the predatory behaviour of strangers on trains, the lure of the wrong kind of girl. How far their anxieties outran our experience."


"When you discipline a child you prepare them for a responsible and accountable adulthood."


"Realise your Stewardship role as a parent " you raise children to offer a quality gift to society. Even your spouse should not be treated as an object or possession you own; support them to be the best of what they were created to be. Do your part and trust God for the rest. If you have empowered them, trust them to be responsible."


"My parents wanted me to solace them for sorrows they denied having had."


"I want a girl because I want to bring her up so that she shan't make the mistakes I've made. When I look back upon the girl I was I hate myself. But I never had a chance. I'm going to bring up my daughter so that she's free and can stand on her own feet. I m not going to bring a child into the world, and love her, and bring her up, just so that some man may want to sleep with her so much that he's willing to provide her with board and lodging for the rest of her life."


"Open the door for communication and interact with your children. Provide the answers (if you don't know, look for them or get expert advice). Guide them on how to deal with other sources of information " friends, TV, other media, society or the internet. Coaching empowers them to make their own informed, quality decisions."


"How can I help this son of mine see when I can't see? The parent must always self-parent first, self-preach before child-teach, because who can bring peace unless they've held their own peace?"


"A particularly difficult line to navigate is the one between fear and love, especially for parents, who want more than anything to protect their children from suffering."


"Darling, my darling, don't think that I don't love you or that I didn't love you, but it's precisely because I love you that I couldn't have become what I am today if you were still here. It's impossible to have a child and despise the world as it is, because that's the world we've put the child into. The child makes us care about the world, think about it's future, willingly join in its racket and its turmoils, take its incurable stupidity seriously."


"Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John."


"There was a danger in asking too much of a child, but the danger of asking too little was almost equal."


"She's my daughter. The only one I have and the only child I'll ever have. I see the fear in her eyes, I sense her hesitancy, but when I get her to smile it makes up for all those moments in between. I got this one chance. My last chance. I don't want to blow what little time I have left with her so no, I don't want anyone rocking her world."


"You have to be grateful to existence that it has chosen you to be a passage for a few beautiful children. But you are not to interfere in their growth, in their potential. You are not to impose yourself upon them. They are not going to live in the same times, they are not going to face the same problems. They will be part of another world. Don t prepare them for this world, this society, this time, because then you will be creating troubles for them. They will find themselves unfit, unqualified."


"Children need your LOVE especially when they don't deserve it."


"I think that the best thing we can do for our children is to allow them to do things for themselves, allow them to be strong, allow them to experience life on their own terms, allow them to take the subway... let them be better people, let them believe more in themselves."


"We pretend that we know our children, because it's easier than admitting the truth--from the minute that cord is cut, they are strangers. It's far easier to tell yourself your daughter is still a little girl than to see her in a bikini and realize she has the curves of a young woman; it's safer to say you're a good parent who has all the right conversations about drugs and sex than to acknowledge there are a thousand things she would never tell you."


"I ...understand how a parent might hit a child- it's because you can look into their eyes and see a reflection of yourself that you wish you hadn't."


"It takes dedicated parents to produce consecrated children."


"Never tell a child that something it's too hard."


"I want to remember warming your two a.m. bottle, clipping your locks, watching you be baptized, bathing you in the big porcelain sink, how I often laid you against my chest and felt the cradlesong of your tiny breaths as you fell asleep . . ."


"Hey, great idea: if you have kids, give your partner reading vouchers next Christmas. Each voucher entitles the bearer to two hours' reading time *while the kids are awake*. It might look like a cheapskate present, but parents will appreciate that it costs more in real terms than a Lamborghini."


"I don't think my parents liked me. They put a live teddy bear in my crib."


"Sometimes parents don't find what they're looking for it their child, so they plant seeds for what they'd like to grow there instead. I've witnessed this with the former hockey player who takes his son out to skate before he can even walk. Or in the mother who gave up her ballet dreams when she married, but now scrapes her daughter's hair into a bun and watched from the wings of the stage. We are not, as you'd expect, orchestrating their lives; we are not even trying for a second chance. We are hoping that if this one thing takes root, it might take up enough light and space to keep something else from developing in our children: the disappointment we've already lived."


"As long as Nelson was socked into baseball statistics or that guitar or even the rock records that threaded their sound through all the fibers of the house, his occupation of the room down the hall was no more uncomfortable than the persistence of Rabbit's own childhood in an annex of his brain; but when the stuff with hormones and girls and cars and beers began, Harry wanted out of fatherhood."


"What is a parent, really, but somebody who picks up the things a child leaves behind - a trail made of stripped off clothing, orphaned shoes, tiny bright plastic game pieces, and nostalgia - and who hands back each of these when its needed?"


"A child comes in your Life to correct your Karma, learn instead of putting your Karma on the child!"


"Train your Children with Patience, Correct them in Love, Don't Discipline them out of hatred."


"I think people who have good parents come into the world with a strength, yes, and an advantage."


"Just because a child doesn't have both parents raising him or her, doesn't mean that child becomes half the person they were meant to be. One wonderful parent can love enough for two, and love will always be the biggest influence in a child's life."


"The parent must always self-parent first, self-preach before child-teach, because who can bring peace unless they've held their own peace?"


"A few days after we came home from the hospital, I sent a letter to a friend, including a photo of my son and some first impressions of fatherhood. He responded, simply, 'Everything is possible again.' It was the perfect thing to write because that was exactly how it felt."


"Roger speaking to Brianna: It's too important. You don't forget having a dad."You do remember your father?"No. I remember yours."


"Each child is a unique person, so raise your child taking this fact intoconsideration."


"Start working on your child's mind. Start building your child's character. Raise your child as a human being, instead of raising boys and girls. Raise human beings with the religion of love in their hearts. Raise human beings with the language of compassion on their lips. Raise human beings with the color of joy on their face. Raise human beings with the force of bravery in their nerves. And these brave conscientious souls with the flames of compassion in their hearts shall one day change the course of human history."
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