Quotes About Parenting

Children who are not encouraged to do, to try, to explore, to master, and to risk failure, often feel helpless and inadequate. Over-controlled by anxious, fearful parents, these children often become anxious and fearful themselves. This makes it difficult for them to mature. Many never outgrow the need for ongoing parental guidance and control. As a result, their parents continue to invade, manipulate, and frequently dominate their lives.

Many toxic parents compare one sibling unfavorably with another to make the target child feel that he's not doing enough to gain parental affection. This motivates the child to do whatever the parents want in order to regain their favor. This divide-and-conquer technique is often unleashed against children who become a little too independent, threatening the balance of the family system.

Instead of promoting healthy development, they unconsciously undermine it, often with the belief that they are acting in their child's best interest.

An unpredictable parent is a fearsome god in the eyes of a child.

Children soak up both verbal and nonverbal messages like sponges—indiscriminately. They listen to their parents, they watch their parents, and they imitate their parents' behavior. Because they have little frame of reference outside the family, the things they learn at home about themselves and others become universal truths engraved deeply in their minds.

What makes a controlling parent so insidious is that the domination usually comes in the guise of concern. Phrases such as, "this is for your own good," "I'm only doing this for you," and, "only because I love you so much," all mean the same thing: "I'm doing this because I'm so afraid of losing you that I'm willing to make you miserable.

Perfectionist parents seem to operate under the illusion that if they can just get their children to be perfect, they will be a perfect family. They put the burden of stability on the child to avoid facing the fact that they, as parents, cannot provide it. The child fails and becomes the scapegoat for family problems. Once again, the child is saddled with the blame.

which is that it is better to bind a child by love than by fear.

An offspring's sigh of tedium is inaudible to all human ears except a parent's. Boring your child who, at one point in his or her life, found you unspeakably delightful is humbling.

Who the hell knows where they get these farkakte names for their kids. One of Rita's friends named her son Bodhisattva. Bodhisattva Rosenblatt. Can you imagine? Rita always says, 'It's no big deal. They call him 'Bodi', is all.' Please. And the newspapers say I'm abusive to children?

Parenting in the age of mobile communication really does allow us to be there for our kids in a way never before possible.

That was half the problem with kids these days. No responsibility.

They loved their children, but parenting was all-consuming sometimes, to the point where you felt yourself barely hanging on to the you that didn't lose it just because your child spilled milk.

Your greatest fear once you give birth is losing your child or seeing them hurt.

You kids come to work and think you deserve to get paid, even though you don't work. You live on your phones, you live off your parents, while the rest of us make life easy for you by paying you to sit on your asses connected to the Internet." He

Angry, defensive, he strode into his living room with his twins to protect his…nanny.

Your parents didn't particularly care if you wanted to carpool with someone else to swimming lessons; it was convenient for you and Amanda Hammels to travel together, even if you never talked to each other in school, so, by god, that was the way it was going to be.

If your kids are giving you a headache, follow the directions on the aspirin bottle, especially the part that says "keep away from children."

No parent/home/child/teacher/school has an all-round 100 percent wholeness. We all have limitations and problems. But I must never think it is all or nothing. Perhaps I'd like to live in the country, but I don't. Well, maybe I can get the family to a park two times a week, and out to the country once every two weeks. Maybe I have to send my child to a not-so-good school. Well, maybe we can read one or two good books together aloud. If you can't give them everything, give them something.

moms, even good ones, sometimes lose it a little so as not to lose it all.

George watched this exchange with disappointment. "Performance parenting" was how Tina used to describe it. Seeking to charm listeners in public with one's patience and good humor, using one's child as a foil. Had George not been there, Emily would have told Nicholas to be quiet or no ice cream and that would have been the end of it.

Two Navy SEALs versus one angry seven-month-old," he mused, "The odds could go either way.

No. Now, shut up and eat your pears.

Birds are settling down for the night, singing lullabies to their young.