Quotes About Parenting

Many mothers and father return each evening from their paid jobs only to serve as homework monitors, a position for which they never applied.

As Thomas Gordon pointed out, 'Parents who find unacceptable a great many things that their children do or say will inevitably foster in these children a deep feeling that they are unacceptable as persons.' That doesn't change just because the parents remember to say soothingly, 'We love you, honey; we just hate almost everything you do.

How we feel about our kids isn't as important as how they experience those feelings and how they regard the way we treat them.

Suppose you want your child to grow into someone who is (a) ethical, (b) able to sustain healthy relationships, (c) intellectually curious, and (d) fundamentally content with him- or herself. Anything you do with your children on a regular basis, then, should be evaluated in light of your ultimate goals.

S. Neill put it, promising a reward for an activity is "tantamount to declaring that the activity is not worth doing for its own sake."26 Thus, a parent who says to a child, "If you finish your math homework, you may watch an hour of TV" is teaching the child to think of math as something that isn't much fun.

I realized that this is what many people in our society seem to want most from children: not that they are caring or creative or curious, but simply that they are well behaved. A "good" child—from infancy to adolescence—is one who isn't too much trouble to us grown-ups.

It's more common to ignore the epidemic of punitive parenting and focus instead on the occasional example of permissiveness—sometimes even to the point of pronouncing an entire generation spoiled. It's revealing, and even somewhat amusing, that similar alarms probably have been raised about every generation throughout recorded history.

When unconditional love and genuine enthusiasm are always present, "Good job!" isn't necessary; when they're absent, "Good job!" won't help.

Obviously, things work best when parents and teachers are helping kids to become good people—and, better yet, when they're actively supporting one another's efforts.

Historians have shown that "parents in the Middle Ages worried about their kids no less than we worry about ours today," and by the nineteenth century there is evidence of bars being placed on windows to protect toddlers from falling out as well as "leading strings so that young children wouldn't wander off during walks.

The inevitable result of consistently employing power to control [your] kids when they are young is that [you] never learn how to influence." The more you rely on punishment, therefore, "the less real influence you'll have on their lives.

Some parents withdraw their love by simply refusing to respond to a child—that is, by making a point of ignoring him. They may not say it out loud, but the message they're sending is pretty clear: "If you do things I don't like, I won't pay any attention to you. I'll pretend you're not even here. If you want me to acknowledge you again, you'd better obey me.

As Thomas Gordon pointed out, 'The inevitable result of consistently employing power to control [your] kids when they are young is that [you] never learn how to influence.' The more you rely on punishment, therefore, 'the less real influence you'll have on their lives.

When you come right down to it, the whole process of raising a kid is pretty damned inconvenient, particularly if you want to do it well. If you're unwilling to give up any of your free time, if you want your house to stay quiet and clean, you might consider raising tropical fish instead.

Some who support more coercive strategies assume that children will run wild if they are not controlled. However, the children for whom this is true typically turn out to be those accustomed to being controlled—those who are not trusted, given explanations, encouraged to think for themselves, helped to develop and internalize good values, and so on. Control breeds the need for more control, which then is used to justify the use of control.

Empowered kids are in the best position to deal constructively with disempowering circumstances. And we, as parents, are in the best position to empower them - as long as we're willing to limit our use of power over them.

When you stand by and let bad things happen, your child experiences the twin disappointments that something went wrong and you did not seem to care enough about her to lift a finger to help prevent the mishap.

Our main question shouldn't be "How do I get my child to do what I say?" but "What does my child need - and how can I meet those needs?" In my experience, you can predict much of what happens in families just from knowing which of those questions is more important to the parents. You don't even have to know the answers they've found. The questions are what count.

My advice is to make a point of apologizing to your child about something at least twice a month. Why twice a month? I don't know. It sounds about right to me. (Almost all the specific advice in parenting books is similarly arbitrary. At least I admit it.)

I'm not interested in babies at all. Babies to me are like wasps: pointless, irritating and even one can ruin a picnic. They're just not my bag at all.

If I've been working a lot and I've been away from my kids, then I don't go to the gym. It's okay to miss a day. I tell myself not to feel bad about it, too, because then it's a waste if you choose not to do something and feel bad.

What I learned from my son's birth is that fearing the future is normal but a waste of time.

Before I had a child, I had goals. And I still have to accomplish those goals, but now that I have a child, I have more goals to accomplish. So I can't waste time.

Even as kids reach adolescence, they need more than ever for us to watch over them. Adolescence is not about letting go. It's about hanging on during a very bumpy ride.