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Parenting Quotes


"The problem with parenting today? Children are not raised! They are just born and fed and clothed. Then upon them are placed ornaments for the eyes of others to see: superficial actions and ways, all of which pass away as sure as the sun sets every evening! Why are you not raising nobility? Why are you not raising Knights and Queens? Feed those souls, give them character!"


"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."



"Only when you are grown up, perhaps only when you have children yourself, do you fully understand that your own parents had a full and intricate existence before you were born."


"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?"


"Children are gifts. They are not ours for the breaking. They are ours for the making."


"Dads. Do you not realize that your child needs to feel your skin on his? Do you not realize the incredible and powerful bond that skin on skin contact with your daughter will give you? Do you not understand the permanent mental connections that are made when you stroke your son's bare back or rub your daughter's bare tummy while you tell bedtime stories? And if any idiot says anything about that being inappropriate, you're gonna get kicked in the face, first by me, and then by every other good dad out there. Touching your child is your duty as a father."


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


"The parent is protector and trainer, but never the ultimate teacher. Every parent is responsible for teaching their kid basic moral conduct, manners, the difference between love and hate, and right from wrong. However, after maturity, the child must set off to seek knowledge on their own. Religion is never to be forced. And you cannot threaten your child with hell and tell them your religion is the only right way. There is no one right way. The many ways to the Creator are as varied as the colors of a rainbow."


"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."


"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."


"Accept the children the way we accept trees-with gratitude, because they are a blessing-but do not have expectations or desires. You don't expect trees to change, you love them as they are."



"It's as if God gave you something-all those stories- and said, "Here you are. Try not to lose it." But children lose everything unless somebody is there to help them, and if your parents are too stupid to do it, maybe i ought to."


"The affection of parents makes infants feel safe in this dangerous world, and gives them boldness in experimentation and in exploration of their environments."


"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."


"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."


"Being a good mother, it seemed to me, meant you ran the risk of losing your child."


"When my son was a teenager, he would use the 'poker face' tactic when I was lecturing, nagging, or suggesting. As a parent, it was maddening because I could not read his reactions! His stoicism would sometimes deflate my efforts or make me surrender in laughter, changing the subject all together."


"When you become a father, it changes you.' Snorri spoke towards the fire's glow. 'You see the world in new ways. Those who are not changed were not properly men to begin with."


"I think when you become a parent you go from being a star in the movie of your own life to the supporting player in the movie of someone else's."


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


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


"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."


"Having children is something we think we ought to do because our parents did it, but when it is over the children are just other members of the human race, rather disappointingly."



"Call me infidel, call me atheist, call me what you will, I intend so to treat my children, that they can come to my grave and truthfully say: 'He who sleeps here never gave us a moment of pain. From his lips, now dust, never came to us an unkind word."


"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."


"If you are a parent, open doors to unknown directions to the child so he can explore. Don't make him afraid of the unknown,give him support."


"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."


"You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they're going."


"Do you have kids?" Anna asks.I laugh. "What do you think?""It's probably a good thing," she admits. "No offense, but you don't exactly look like a parent."That fascinates me. "What do parents look like?"She seems to think about this. "You know how the tightrope guy at the circus wants everyone to believe his act is an art, but deep down you can see that he's really just hoping he makes it all the way across? Like that."


"More people would be depressed, if parents tried to please their children as frequently and as badly as children try to please their parents."


"Dads. Do your faces light up when you first see your child in the morning or when you come home from work? Do you not understand that a child's entire sense of value can revolve around what they see in your face when you first see them?"


"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."


"It is as hard for our children to believe that we are not omnipotent as it is for us to know it, as parents. But that knowledge is necessary as the first step in the reassessment of power as something other than might, age, privilege, or the lack of fear. It is an important step for a boy, whose societal destruction begins when he is forced to believe that he can only be strong if he doesn't feel, or if he wins."


"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."


"And if you are a mom who has watched your child's father leave, my heart goes out to you. I also pray that you had no part in it. I pray that you didn't make it impossible for him while he was there. I pray that you didn't try and force him to live up to impossible expectations. And, I pray that if he is a good man and he wants to be there in his child's life that you love your child enough to let him. Even if that seems impossible to you."


"Do not do everything for your children " teach them personal responsibility and accountability. This includes using your home environment " the kitchen, the garden, making their room/bed, chores " as training platforms. Prepare them to be independent."


"The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded with this aggravation, that those whom he injures are always in his sight."
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