Quotes About Parenting

It is easy to become a father, but very difficult to be a father.

People should be _very_ careful when choosing the future fathers and mothers of their children. For that reason alone, it is extremely mean to demand a marriage certificate for life, just for one night of embracement.

I sadly want a reform in the construction of children. Nature's only idea seems to be to make them machines for the production of incessant noise.

Tired mothers find that spanking takes less time than reasoning and penetrates sooner to the seat of the memory.

Many parents have discovered, perhaps with some guilt, that they can read a story to a child while thinking of something else.

Die Liebe zu den Kindern - besser, man kämpft gegen sie an. Man kommt ja auch nicht einem Hund zu nahe; sogar wenn er freundlich aussieht, kann er zuschnappen. Stets muss man einen Abstand lassen zwischen sich und seinem Kind, sie sterben einfach zu schnell. Aber mit jedem Jahr, das vergeht, gewöhnt man sich mehr an so ein Wesen. Man fasst Zutrauen, man erlaubt sich, es teilzuhaben. Und plötzlich ist es weg.

As a devoted follower of Anthroposophy—Rudolf Steiner's early-twentieth-century spiritual philosophy that comes with comprehensive rules of conduct—Johanna did not believe in inoculating her children against whooping cough. Steiner had declared that "these inoculations will influence the human body in a way that will make it refuse to give a home to the spiritual inclinations of the soul." So Johanna did not vaccinate her children.

To remind parents of their flaws, let's define discipline this way: Discipline is the process in which bigger sinners attempt to convince littler sinners to mend their wicked ways.

beauty and pleasure are at the center of teaching. For the best teacher is the one who wants you to find meaning in the things that have given him pleasure, too, so that the appreciation of their beauty will outlive him. In this way—because it arises from an acceptance of the inevitability of death—good teaching is like good parenting.

Reassured, we left their bedroom without understanding-- or wanting to admit-- that what a child learns first isn't the act but the gestures that accompany the act. And although it may also help them learn, this ostentatious show of reading is primarily intended to reassure them and please us.

Non si riuscirà mai a far capire a un ragazzo che, la sera, è nel bel mezzo di una storia avvincente, non si riuscirà mai a fargli capire, con una dimostrazione limitata a lui stesso, che deve interrompere la lettura e andare a letto.- È Kafka a scrivere questo nel diario, il piccolo Franz, che papà avrebbe preferito veder passare tutte le notti della sua vita a fare conti.

Che ne dici, tu che sei il prodotto di un lungo interrogativo procreatorio: "E' giusto fare dei figli in un mondo come questo? Il Divino Paranoico merita che si accresca la sua opera? Ho io il diritto di mettere in moto un destino? Non so forse che avviare una vita significa metterle la morte alle calcagna? Cosa valgo io come padre e cosa varrà Julie come madre? Possiamo correre il rischio di assomigliarci?

Civility is for divorced couples with children. – Chiara

A terrible thing, isn't it?" "What's that, Ari?" "For the child to die before the parent. It upends the natural order of things.

Russian men don't always make the best fathers. Unfortunately, is is a cultural trait they pass on to their sons. - Elena Kharkov

Like many parents, they equated normality with being happy and productive.

She dressed to cast her daughter in a frumpy light.

Danielle Elizabeth Henderson! Get your ass over here!' she shouted. Grandma always used my full name when she was angry. None of the shoppers around her turned a head or lifted a finger to help; in the 1980s, department stores were full of people shouting the names of temporarily lost children, a cacophony of negligent parenting always ringing out like the last act of an opera.

A lot of people who had terrible childhoods have kids to prove that they can do a better job, or to fix some cosmic rift by being the parents they needed to their own children.

I am endlessly busy, bringing up five young kids, and trying to keep up with the three older ones. I still spend most of my life driving car pools.

And if they really fuck it up and do make a horrible mistake, which can happen to anyone, from any culture, you still have to sit back and watch from the sidelines. It's their life. What you need is a life of your own. You can't hang on to them forever and live theirs or stop them from making mistakes. That's the deal. Once they grow up, they belong to themselves, not to us.

He noticed that the streets didn't feel as safe when there were fewer women on them. So he launched a Night Without Men, where women were encouraged to hit the bars and restaurants and the men were encouraged to stay at home with the kids.

While I was very disappointed and angry to find my daughter smoking a cigarette, I'll be damned if she didn't look cooler.

It's inconvenient and it's maddening and it's frustrating and it's sometimes painfully difficult to love another person, even or especially our own child. But this love is our spiritual practice. It is our work and our task down here on this mortal coil. It is not only the oxygen that we offer to our children, it's what makes us able to breathe, ourselves.