Quotes About Parenting

Ask a child's guardians what it takes to be good at their jobs, and most will answer with a single word... SACRIFICE. Parents give up so much: time, sleep, freedom, money, intimacy... pretty much everything but complaining how much they sacrifice.

Okay, is anyone else worried that some of the fruit didn't fall far enough away from the tree?

If there's an opposite of a honeymoon, it's the week after a couple's first child is born. No matter how hard they try, no matter how pure their intentions... Everything will go wrong. And that's when the gawkers show up. From far and wide they come to inspect the hapless new parents. The nice ones bring food.

Every kid gets programmed by their 'rents, Chase. That doesn't mean they have to do as they're told.

Marvel and DC are my divorced mom and dad. DC is my stable, loving, nurturing mom. Marvel is my weird dad who lives in a condo and doesn't know how to cook, but he'll let you stay up until three in the morning watching RoboCop 2.

If there's an opposite of a honeymoon, it's the week after a couples first child is born. No matter how hard they try, no matter how pure their intentions... everything will go wrong.

If you raise your children to feel that they can accomplish any goal or task they decide upon, you will have succeeded as a parent and you will have given your children the greatest of all blessings.

try a democratic environment. Ask your child's opinions, make them feel as though they matter and their feelings are valued. The same time and energy spent on an argument later can be spent listening to their opinions in the first place. When you take your child's feelings into consideration, when you ask their opinions, it makes them feel important even if they don't always get their way.

You can't decide to value your child sometimes, and then put a game of Farmville, or golf, or a scrapbooking session before kids on other days. Values are non-negotiable like that.

Communicating is like that, because the way we communicate with our children shows how we feel about ourselves.

Parents are responsible for 40 to 50 percent of a child's habits. Children are greatly influenced, not just by their parents' efforts at persuasion, but also by their behavior.

Is It Baby Fat or Real Fat? The answer partly depends on the parents. A study of 854 Washington State children under three years old showed that a child is nearly three times as likely to grow up obese if one of his parents is obese. If you're overweight, your child has a 65–75 percent chance of growing up to be overweight. So, is that little paunch on your fourth grader baby fat? Not if you're sporting the same paunch.

You need to remember the best legacy you can give your kids is an example of a life well lived. They may listen to what you say, but they will do what you do. If you tell them to take care of yourself but you don't do it yourself, what kind of message are you sending?

L)ittle is debated with greater ferocity than the question of what the creator owes the creation. Some feel you must hover over it, guarding it every moment. Others believe the highest, hardest, and most important task is to let go. They say that just as the parent must at some point release the child to the world, the creator must release the creation. Otherwise you stop it in its tracks, strangle its growth. Then you become not only its creator, but its executioner.

By picking their own punishments, children become more internally driven to avoid them. By choosing their own rewards, children become more intrinsically motivated to achieve them. Let your kids take a greater role in raising themselves.

A meta-analysis of sixty-six studies completed in 1992 found that mothers who have more support from grandmothers have less stress and more well-adjusted children. The more involved the grandmothers are, the more involved dads are, too.

As many conventionally unhappy parents did in the 1950s, my parents stayed together for the sake of the children—they divorced after my youngest brother left home for college. I only wish they had known that modeling their dysfunctional relationship was far more damaging to their children than their separation would have been.

The time we are given for parenting is so short, passes so quickly and is jumbled up with so many other priorities and disruptions that, in the end, we come to doubt that we used it in the best interests of our children.

At home in Nigeria, all a mother had to do for a baby was wash and feed him and, if he was fidgety, strap him onto her back and carry on with her work while that baby slept. But in England she had to wash piles and piles of nappies, wheel the child round for sunshine during the day, attend to his feeds as regularly as if one were serving a master, talk to the child, even if he was only a day old! Oh, yes, in England, looking after babies was in itself a full-time job.

In Ibuza sons help their father more than they help their mother. A mother's joy is only in the name. She worries over them,looks after them when they are small;but in the actual help on the farm ,the upholding of the family name,all belong to the father.

If your happiness depends on your children being happy, that makes them your hostages. So stay out of their business, stop using them for your happiness, and be your own happiness. And that way you are the teacher for your children: someone who knows how to live a happy life.

When my children ask me what they should do, I say, "I don't know, honey." Or, "Here's what I did in a similar situation, and it worked for me. And you can always know that I'm here to listen and that I'm always going to love you, whatever decision you make. You'll know what to do. And also, sweetheart, you can't do it wrong. I promise you that." I finally learned to tell my children the truth.

Whose business are my children? Their business! When we're mentally out of our children's business, we have a shot at happiness, and so do they, because finally there's an example in the house.

I marvelled at her capabilities as a mother - naturally empathic but no pushover, funny and generous, frank about her own limitations and the challenges of parenting, loving and affectionate but unsentimental - absolutely solid in her role.