Quotes About Parenting

The great model of the affection of love in human beings is the sentiment which subsists between parents and children.

By giving children lots of affection, you can help fill them with love and acceptance of themselves. Then that's what they will have to give away.

The best thing a parent can do for a child is to love his or her spouse.

I'm not a bad guy! I work hard, and I love my kids. So why should I spend half my Sunday hearing about how I'm going to Hell?

When kids hit 1 year old, it's like hanging out with a miniature drunk. You have to hold onto them. They bump into things. They laugh and cry. They urinate. They vomit.

I'm the fun dad, I am also the disciplinarian.

Who was it who had said you were only as happy as your unhappiest child?

I looked at Will and I saw the baby I held in my arms, dewily besotted, unable to believe that I had created another human being. I saw the toddler, reaching for my hand, the schoolboy weeping tears of fury after being bullied by some other child. I saw the vulnerabilities, the love, the history. That's what he was asking me to extinguish—the small child as well as the man—all that love, all that history.

That's the thing you don't know about children unless you have them—bath time, Lego, and fish fingers don't allow you to dwell on tragedy for too long.

You have to stop drawing on things!"Teena was yelling. "Paper only, okay? Not walls. Not faces. Not Mrs. Reynold's dog. Not my pants." "I was doing the days of the week pants" "I don't need days of the week pants!" She shouted. "And if I did I would spell Wednesday correctly!

More my son, I found myself thinking. You were never really there for him. Not emotionally. You were just the absence he was always striving to impress.

There had been only him, for me. I could see that very clearly. And, besides, I had Esmé.' Her smile broadens. 'A child really is a wonderful consolation.

things I learned about being a parent, while not actually being a parent: That whatever you did would probably be wrong.

These are the things I learned about being a parent, while not actually being a parent. That whatever you did you would probably be wrong. If you were cruel or dismissive or neglectful, you would leave scars upon your charge.

you were only as happy as your unhappiest child?

I looked at Will and I saw the baby I held in my arms, dewily besotted, unable to believe that I had created another human being. I saw the toddler, reaching for my hand, the schoolboy weeping tears of fury after being bullied by some other child. I saw the vulnerabilities, the love, the history.

It's crap, divorce,' he says. 'We tell ourselves the kids are fine, that it's better this way than two unhappy people shouting at each other, but we never dare ask them the truth.' 'The truth?' 'What they want. Because we know the answer. And it would break our hearts.

These are the things I learned about being a parent, while not actually being a parent: That whatever you did would probably be wrong. If you were cruel or dismissive or neglectful, you would leave scars upon your charge. But if you were supportive and loving, encouraging and praising them for even their smallest achievements—getting out of bed on time, say, or managing not to smoke for a whole day—it would simply ruin them in a different way.

olhei para will e enxerguei o bebê que segurei no colo, chorosamente encantada, incapaz de acreditar que havia gerado um outro ser humano. vi a criança pequena, esticando a mão para mim, o menino em idade escolar chorando de raiva porque outra criança zombou dele. enxerguei as vulnerabilidades, o amor, a história. era isso que ele estava me pedindo para extinguir - a criança e, ao mesmo tempo, o homem - todo aquele amor, toda aquela história.

There was no such thing as happiness, she thought, if one of your children was miserable. She

Just because they're wealthy doesn't make them better parents.

He's a singular person, Will. From the time he hit adolescence, I always had to fight the feeling that in his eyes I had somehow done something wrong. I've never been quite sure what it was.

It's just that the thing you never understand about being a mother, until you are one, is that it is not the grown man – the galumphing, unshaven, stinking, opinionated offspring – you see before you, with his parking tickets and unpolished shoes and complicated love life. You see all the people he has ever been all rolled up into one.

The last time you pick up your child. The last time you hug a parent. The last time you cook dinner in a house full of the people you love.