Quotes About Parenting

But I never figured out how Atticus knew I was listening, and it was not until many years later that I realized he wanted me to hear every word he said.

Atticus killed several birds with one stone when he read to his children, and would probably have caused a child psychologist considerable dismay: he read to Jem and Jean Louise whatever he happened to be reading, and the children grew up possessed of an obscure erudition. They cut their back teeth on military history, Bills to Be Enacted into Laws, True Detective Mysteries, The Code of Alabama, the Bible, and Palgrave's Golden Treasury.

You are too young to understand it," she said, "but sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of—oh, of your father.

Of course he shouldn't, but he'll never change his ways. Are you going to take out your disapproval on his children?

Atticus said to Jem one day, "I'd rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you'll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.

Well, it'd be sort of like shootin' a mockingbird, wouldn't it?" Atticus put his face in my hair and rubbed it. When he got up and walked across the porch into the shadows, his youthful step had returned. Before he went inside the house, he stopped in front of Boo Radley. "Thank you for my children, Arthur," he said.

He did not do the things our schoolmates' fathers did: he never went hunting, he did not play poker or fish or drink or smoke. He sat in the livingroom and read.

Sometimes I think I'm a total failure as a parent, but I'm all they've got. Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I've tried to live so I can look squarely back at him

Thank you from the bottom of my heart, but I don't want my boy starting out with something like this over his head. Best way to clear the air is to have it all out in the open. Let the county come and bring sandwiches. I don't want him growing up with a whisper about him, I don't want anybody saying, 'Jem Finch… his daddy paid a mint to get him out of that.

When Jean Louise and her brother were children, Atticus had occasional drawn them a sharp distinction between mere scatology and blasphemy. The one he could abide. He hated dragging God into it.

I was crude, but I didn't cuss her." When Jean Louise and her brother were children, Atticus had occasionally drawn them a sharp distinction between mere scatology and blasphemy. The one he could abide; he hated dragging God into it.

but when a man spends his relief checks on green whiskey his children have a way of crying from hunger pains. I don't know of any landowner around here who begrudges those children any game their father can hit.

I never figured out how Atticus knew I was listening, and it was not until many years later that I realized he wanted me to hear every word he said.

She was always ordering me out of the kitchen, asking me why I couldn't behave as well as Jem when she knew he was older, and calling me home when I wasn't ready to come. Our battles were epic and one-sided. Calpurnia always won, mainly because Atticus always took her side. She had been with us ever since Jem was born, and I had felt her tyrannical presence as long as I could remember.

I'd rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you'll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.

Ä°yi biri olarak doÄŸduÄŸumu ama her y?l kötüleÅŸtiÄŸimi söylüyordu. Duygular?m? incitiyordu. Atticus'a sorduÄŸumda 'ailede yeterince güneÅŸ ????? var, böyle iyisin' dedi.

Jem and I found our father satisfactory: he played with us, read to us, and treated us with courteous detachment.

She knocked and went in. Atticus was in bed reading. "Have a good time?" "I had a won-derful time," she said. "Atticus?" "Hm?

In the dim past, Atticus had owned an old canvas-top touring car, and once when he was taking Jem, Henry, and Jean Louise swimming, the car rolled over a particularly bad hump in the road and deposited Jem without. Atticus drove serenely on until they reached Barker's Eddy, because Jean Louise had no intention of advising her father that Jem was no longer present, and she prevented Henry from doing so by catching his finger and bending it back.

Relax, son," Atticus had told him in one of his rare comments on her. "Don't push her. Let her go at her own speed. Push her and every mule in the county'd be easier to live with.

Atticus don't ever do anything to Jem and me in the house that he don't do in the yard.

Before Jem looks at anyone else, he looks at me, and I have tried to live so I can look squarely back at him. If I connived at something like this, frankly I couldn't meet his eye, and the day I can't do that I'll know I've lost him.

There were six bedrooms upstairs, four for the eight female children, one for Welcome Finch, the sole son, and one for visiting relatives. Simple enough; but the daughters' rooms could be reached only by one staircase, Welcome's room and the guestroom only by another. The Daughters' Staircase was in the ground-floor bedroom of their parents, so Simon always knew the hours of his daughters' nocturnal comings and goings.

Atticus says that you can't punish the children for the father's faults.