Quotes About Parenting

Many couples will fight in front of their children but reconcile in private. This skews a child's perceptions, even at early ages, for the child always sees the wounding but never the bandaging. Parents who practice bandaging each other after a fight, deliberately and explicitly, allow their children to model both how to fight fair and how to make up.

Write this across your heart before your child comes into the world: Parenting is a not a race. Kids are not proxies for adult success. Competition can be inspiring, but brands of it can wire your child's brain in a toxic way. Comparing your kids with your friends' kids will not get them, or you, where you want to go.

But what you do in your child's first five years of life—not just the first year—profoundly influences how he or she will behave as an adult.

One of the reasons veteran parents don't focus on the hardness of having babies is that "hard" is not the whole story. It's not even the major part. The time you will actually spend with your kids is breathtakingly short. They will change very quickly. Eventually, your child will find a sleep schedule, turn to you for comfort, and learn from you both what to do and what not to do.

There are four nutrients you will want in your behavioral formula, adjusting them as your baby gets older: breast-feeding, talking to your baby, guided play, and praising effort rather than accomplishment.

If you don't have a lot of energy, and you are called upon to give to your youngest several times a minute (preschoolers demand some form of attention 180 times per hour, behavioral psychologists say), you quickly exhaust your reservoir of good will toward your spouse.

You want to get your kid into Harvard? You really want to know what the data say? I'll tell you what the data say! Go home and love your wife!

Parents who consistently apply attention—especially in these early years—statistically raise the happiest kids.

Your meta-emotion philosophy turns out to be very important to your children's future. It predicts how you will react to their emotional lives, which in turn predicts how (or if) they learn to regulate their own emotions. Because these skills are directly related to a child's social competency, how you feel about feelings can profoundly influence your child's future happiness. You have to be comfortable with your emotions in order to make your kids comfortable with theirs.

Having a first child is like swallowing an intoxicating drink made of equal parts joy and terror, chased with a bucketful of transitions nobody ever tells you about. I know firsthand:

The only time I ever felt qualified to be a parent was before I had kids.

Here's something you can try at home if you are eight months pregnant or if you have a baby younger than 5 months old. If the infant has already arrived, place him on his back. Then gently lift up both of his legs, or both of his arms, and let them drop back to the bed of their own weight. His arms will usually fling out from the sides of his body, thumbs flexed, palms up, with a startled look on his face. This is called the Moro reflex.

The fact is, the amount of TV a child should watch before the age of 2 is zero.

What you praise defines what your child perceives success to be.

think that grown-ups create children. The reality is that children create grown-ups. They become their own person, and so do you. Children give so much more than they take.

Write this across your heart before your child comes into the world: Parenting is not a race. Kids are not proxies for adult success. Competition can be inspiring, but brands of it can wire your child's brain in a toxic way. Comparing your kids with your friends' kids will not get them, or you, where you want to go.

You can maximize your child's brain power in plenty of wonderful ways. After breast-feeding, focus on open-ended play, lots of verbal interaction, and praising effort—fertilizers statistically guaranteed to boost your child's intellect from almost any starting point.

Yes, your children are constantly observing you. They are profoundly influenced by what they record. And that can quickly turn from funny to serious, especially when mommy and daddy start fighting.

Why would anyone willingly take on this line of work? The interview for the job, that single act of sex, is certainly fun. But then you get hired to raise a child.

Every time I lectured to a group of parents-to-be about baby brain development,

les ruego que traten de conocer a sus hijos. Eso significa dedicarles mucho tiempo. La única forma de descubrir qué funciona y qué no funciona es conocer su comportamiento y saber cómo cambia con el tiempo.

These inferences are the signature characteristic of something called Theory of Mind. We activate it all the time. We try to see our entire world in terms of motivations, ascribing motivations to our pets and even to inanimate objects. The skill is useful for selecting a mate, for navigating the day-to-day issues surrounding living together, for parenting. Theory of Mind is something humans have like no other creature. It is as close to mind reading as we are likely to get.

My original fear that my daughter was going to die before BettyJane and myself has now been replaced with the fear that she is going to outlive us.

The essence of successful discipline is not technique; rather, it is self-confidence.