Quotes About Parenting

I try to be as calm and as reassuring and a rock to my daughter as I possibly can be. I try to teach her everything that I never knew when I was her age, and I try to give her all the advantages and the things that I didn't have when I was her age.

I was always the headstrong child in the family. My mother and father called me a rebel at 2 years old. But they always accepted me as an individual.

You have to give kids something to rebel against. You can't like their music - you have to call it noise. It's incumbent on a parent.

I think when your parents are as rebellious as mine were, it's difficult to top them. So what's the point?

There were definitely bands and musicians I liked that drove my mother insane. I probably liked them all the more for it! Bjork drove my mom nuts. What I listened to was actually pretty mom-friendly for the most part. I wasn't very rebellious.

I'm fortunate to have a baby girl who's super into everything that I say and do and really cooperative and just fun to be around. I couldn't imagine having a rebellious kid like me.

Nobody in our family's ever recalled seeing my mom and dad speak a harsh word to one another.

Whatever their age, most men have never received true fathering.

In February of 1996, about six months after I created eBay, I started receiving a spate of complaints. Everyone was complaining about each other. I felt very much like I was a parent who had to adjudicate the brothers beating each other up.

Like many other women, I could not understand why every man who changed a diaper has felt impelled, in recent years, to write a book about it.

Every song is like a kid. How can you have that many kids and have a favorite? Which one do I like to hang most with? Probably the one that I haven't hung most with recently.

My daughter is 8 years old, and just recently she came to me and said a girl called her fat. And I couldn't imagine that was going on in second grade. It just blows my mind that kids are already being influenced by the media and using words this way.

Becoming a mother has been the best thing ever for me. It's become my life's work. Not just parenting, but sharing information and encouraging other women to be receptive to the basic nature of motherhood.

If there were some recipe that would make all of our children really sane and civic-minded and hugely intelligent, I think we'd probably all do it. But I don't know that there is a recipe for creating that.

I didn't want to raise my kids in this weird, sycophantic society. If you have celebrity parents, it's not a good recipe for the kids, or anyone at any age.

My son Darrel could recite 'Straight Outta Compton' at two years old. He loved it! You can expose your kids to anything as long as you sit there and explain it to them.

I was able to be more reckless and now I still make mistakes, but having kids, you have a responsibility and these little people who are looking up to you for everything.

It's hard, but what's the point of having children unless you're there to raise them, I reckon.

You have to make the effort with children. You can't have them thinking that I reckon I'm special, otherwise they'll start thinking they're special. I want them to feel normal for as long as possible because God knows they'll reach an age when they'll be told they're not.

How can you be a recluse in a house full of children, even if you had the inclination to be, which I don't?

Once you have a child, you change so much along the way, you don't even recognize yourself by the time they're ready to move out!

I think there's a settled quality, there's a gravitas that comes with aging and with being a parent because you certainly come to recognize that there's nothing else that takes greater priority than raising your children.

I was with All Pro Dad, and I was coaching. People recognized me as a coach. They might see my face and say, 'What's going on there, is that something with the Colts or the Buccaneers?' Then they realize, 'This is something with my kids; let me explore.' So I think that helped, that name recognition.

I'm trying to get my kids - in particular, my step-daughter Mary, who's 12 - to recommend music to me. You reach a certain age and realise you haven't kept up, but I don't want to fall behind.