Quotes About Parenting

When American parents of Italian or Polish or Kenyan background tell their children to "stop acting like wild Indians," they are not intending to promote bigotry, but they are promoting it nonetheless. And when parents in rural areas of the Philippines tell their children to "stop acting like Jews," anti-Judaism is the unintended result. Disease cannot be cured when those infected are in denial.

Protect him, yes, with my life; spare him of learning responsibility and to take care of himself, no. During

In what neighborhood—town or city, rural area or village in the country—could I raise a brown boy and believe that no harm could ever come to him, where

Raising teenage sons and daughters is a long and tiresome journey. With God's help the final outcome will be worthwhile.

I raised my three teens with love, perseverance, tenacity, sweat, tears, prayers, lighting candles, and the list could go on.

The child identifies with the parent who has been betrayed because he is suffering immeasurable loss as well—the loss of trust in one or both parents, the loss of both parents' ability to be an attentive parent, the loss of faith in the cohesiveness of the family, and, of course, a loss of innocence.

Most children still want and expect their parents to be a faithful couple. Children are more likely to thrive when their parents are stable and focused on the family rather than on an outside romantic relationship.

When children of any age learn of a parent's infidelity, they usually find it extremely difficult—if not impossible— to trust that someone they love will not lie to them, reject or abandon them, or otherwise cause them pain somewhere down the road. They very often learn not to put their faith in love, and they may also learn that they are not worthy of receiving monogamous love, because according to the evidence, their betrayed parent clearly wasn't.

There was a time when we expected nothing of our children but obedience, as opposed to the present, when we expect everything of them but obedience. Source?

There was a time when we expected nothing of our children but obedience, as opposed to the present, when we expect everything of them but obedience.

Similarly—and more in line with the sorts of factors that may play a role in acquiring skills with practice—nine-month-old infants who paid more attention to a parent as that parent was reading a book and pointing to the pictures in the book grew up to have a much better vocabulary at five years of age than infants who paid less attention.

From the time we were little, you treated us as if our ideas mattered. You and Daddy encouraged us to form our own opinions, and listened when we expressed them. We were not just children in your eyes; we were people who deserved respect. That was a powerful lesson.

he conocido a Gil, que está haciendo lo que se supone que hacen los padres: convertirme en una persona más fuerte.

Frankie's chief virtue in my book is the way he talks about his kids.

Te das cuenta, verdad, de que Dios no se parece en nada a tu padre? Eso lo sabes, ¿verdad? Estoy a punto de llevar el coche al arcén. Dios, dice, es lo contrario de tu padre. Dios no está siempre enfadado contigo. Dios no te grita al oído, no te mortifica con tus imperfecciones. Esa voz que oyes continuamente, esa voz airada… Ése no es Dios. Ése sigue siendo tu padre.

Years later I would hear my father say the divorce had left him dating his children. That still meant picking us up every Sunday for a matinee and, if he had the money, an early dinner somewhere.

But I know my real fear about your growing older is not only about the millions of things that could happen. It is about how afraid I am of what I imagine as the inevitable separation that will come between us. I don't know why I am so convinced it will happen, but I am afraid that it will, and I am already mourning the loss of these days when you had no choice but to love me.

Our staunch ideals of how we will raise our children get significantly reshaped by those very kids once they're here in the world running us ragged, wearing down our defenses, leaving us no choice but to embark on that slippery slope and say, "Just this once!" to stop the whining.

for the most part, my peers, like me, have embarked on the eternal compromise that is dealing with a toddler. We are no longer inexperienced, we are no longer naively confident that our superb parenting skills will produce the perfectly well-behaved mini-adult, we are willing to admit that for the most part we simply want to get through the day. We have been broken in. So we pick our battles.

Pre-baby I used to fantasize about winning the lottery, or becoming deliriously famous and rich. Now I fantasize about sleep. I fantasize about slumber the way guys fantasize about sex. Hours of it, days of it. Sleeping on the couch, on the bed, on the floor, wherever I can find a comfortable spot. It is almost illicit, so decadent and unimaginable, it now seems to sleep when I want, where I want, and for as long as I want.

We look at babies and we see ourselves, only without all the baggage. We can look into a baby's face and somehow imagine that life will be different for them. That it will be better. Kinder. Free from pain.

The number of stressors has multiplied exponentially: traffic, money, success, work/life balance, the economy, the environment, parenting, family conflict, relationships, disease. As the nature of human life has become far more complicated, our ancient stress response hasn't been able to keep up.

If you don't get enough time-outs as a child, you get them as a grownup.

Give me the life of the boy whose mother is nurse, seamstress, washerwoman, cook, teacher, angel, and saint, all in one, and whose father is guide, exemplar, and friend. No servants to come between. These are the boys who are born to the best fortune.