Quotes About Parenting

Children are carpets, they should be stepped on occasionally.

Caesareans or not, children are ruinous; you're out of your mind," said Mrs. Phelps. "I plunk the children in school nine days out of ten. I put up with them when they come home three days a month; it's not bad at all. You heave them into the 'parlor' and turn the switch. It's like washing clothes; stuff laundry in and slam the lid." Mrs. Bowles tittered. "They'd just as soon kick as kiss me. Thank God, I can kick back!

wasn't like today, when if you don't tell your kid you love him every twenty minutes you could go to jail for child abuse.

His childhood had been a pleasant, though disciplined, one. He got on well with his brothers and sisters, and he did not hate his mother and father, even though they had both been very good to him.

All I really needed to know about being a freelance assassin I learned before my youngest daughter, Trisha, started kindergarten. I've

The power of a parent to wound, to kill. The power of a parent is terrible.

a mother's crying, stifled, soundless, secret so as not to disturb. If you cried so others could hear you were crying to be heard but a mother's crying was just the opposite, crying not to be heard.

It was Corinne's secret belief that her daughter was a far finer person than she was herself, a riddle put to her by God. I must become the mother deserving of such a daughter—is that it?

For that was mom's trump card: she was the mother, and so possessed a mysterious and unquestioned authority. Dad was the boss, but Mom was the power.

papà ci amava. Ci ama. Diceva che, se non ci avesse voluto bene, non ci avrebbe punite. Riesco a capirlo, davvero. Però è un modo di pensare malato, e sbagliato".

It's not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can't tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself.

No doubt Richard's father, like my mother, had once held his infant son in his arms, looked into the eyes of his child's mother, and believed they would move into the future together with love. The fact that they didn't was a weight each of us carried, as every child does, probably, whose parents no longer live under the same roof. Wherever it is you make your home, there is always this other place, this other person, calling to you. Come to me. Come back.

Daughters, he told her as they dug. Nothing better than a good daughter.

When I think about this, I think of my children. I wouldn't want them to run in the front door and tell me what they need without even saying, "Hello, Mom, how are you?" I would not want them to only spend time with me or pay attention to me when they had problems. I want them to fellowship with me often.

I'm trying to fuck my kids up just enough so they'll want to get a job.

As Ian's father had once jokingly remarked of their gifted son, "Ian permits us to raise him because he loves us, not because he thinks we're smarter than he is. He already knows we aren't, but he doesn't want to wound our sensibilities by saying so.

I tried to do it all myself: be mommy and camp counselor and art teacher and prereading specialist (and somehow, in my off-hours, to do my own work). I tried my absolute best. And like so many of the moms around me, I started to go a little crazy.

We seem to feel as though the life our children have -- that we have built for them -- is just a delicate house of cards, held together by the most intricate balancing of all its carefully selected components, and that the slightest shock, the slightest jar to all our perfect orchestration, will bring the whole edifice crashing down.

All these things we do bespeak a terrible anxiety: that our children simply will not be able to make it through life if we do not perform totemic acts to keep them on the path toward self-perfection and keep their lives pure and unfettered by distracting emotion, personality foibles, or less-than-ideal experiences.

You weren't always born to the right parents. And parents didn't necessarily get the kids they were meant to raise.

Now that's my point about my mother. I mean, if she understands so much about me then why couldn't she understand that I had to wear loafers without socks?

Book banning satisfied their need to feel in control of their children's lives. Those who censored were easily frightened. They were afraid of exposing their children to ideas different from their own. Afraid to answer children's questions or talk with them about sensitive subjects.

So many adults are exhausting themselves worrying about other people corrupting their children with books, they're turning kids off to reading instead of turning them on.

Do you think just having a baby automatically makes you love it?' 'I'm not sure... you might have to learn to love it, like any other person.