Quotes About Parenting

Humility is the mother of all virtues, courage the father, integrity the child and wisdom the grandchild.

And he that is taught to live upon little, owes more to his father's wisdom, than he that has a great deal left him, does to his father's care.

I pray daily for wisdom on how to serve my kids without words.

Your mothers get mighty shocked at you girls nowadays, but in her day, her mother was just on the verge of sending her to reform school.

How is it that one is born of good parents, receives a good education and becomes a good man, while another comes from besotted parents and ends on the gallows? How do you explain this inequality without implicating God?

The beauty of "spacing" children many years apart lies in the fact that parents have time to learn the mistakes that were made with the older ones — which permits them to make exactly the opposite mistakes with the younger ones.

The commonest fallacy among women is that simply having children makes them a mother - which is as absurd as believing that having a piano makes one a musician.

What is much harder to handle is the sense that you have to live up to the mark someone else has set for you. The grades become too important, the competition too frantic, the fear of disappointing those who believe in you turns into an overwhelming nightmare. And it is desperately unfair to the boy. He cannot live his parents' life over again for them. He cannot make up for their own lacks, their own unfulfillments. He cannot carry their torch -- only his own.

And the end of this paradox is that only when the child is thus free can he have the proper attachment to his parents; only when we allow his independence can he then freely offer us love and respect, without conflict and without resentment. It is the hardest lesson to learn that the goal of parenthood is not to reign forever but to abdicate gracefully at the right time.

And most of the failures in parent-child relationships, from my observation, begin when the child begins to acquire a mind and a will of its own, to make independent decisions and to question the omnipotence or the wisdom of the parent.

I am convinced that an immense number of people who have children should not have them, and do not particularly want them, except as "symbols" of family life. What they want are ideal children, not real ones; and as soon as the real ones show no intention of conforming to the ideal in the parent's mind, they are treated as burdens, shipped away to school or otherwise neglected.

Parents should learn to stop nagging their children about how well they could do "if you only tried more, or cared more." Trying and caring, in specific areas, is built into people; or else it comes to them later, if they mature properly; or it never comes at all. But it is dead certain that no young person was ever motivated by a querulous, disappointed parent more concerned with his own pride than with the child's ultimate self-actualization.

We think the future lies ahead, but its seed is contained in the present. There is no sharp break between the two: the lie we tell today can send us sprawling a year from now; the way we treat our infant determines the way he treats us when he reaches adolescence.

Nobody can misunderstand a child as much as his own parents.

The beauty of "spacing" children many years apart lies in the fact that parents have time to learn the mistakes that were made with the older ones — which permits them to make exactly the opposite mistakes with the younger ones.

The developmental needs and tasks of your children should always be at the forefront of your parenting.

It's like parents choosing to raise their own standard of living rather than to provide for the future of their kids. You wouldn't consider that very admirable would you?

A grandchild is a miracle, but a renewed relationship with your own children is even a greater one.

One of the most serious blows to American education has been the loss of parent involvement. Many parents, for various reasons, including increasing work pressures, have stepped back from their children's education. Schools—willingly or not—now often find themselves educating children without a strong partnership with parents. From that distance, parents are left feeling guilty and empty-handed.

Talk to her about safe ways to handle dangerous feelings. When you are driving and someone cuts in front of you, instead of giving way to road rage, say, "I'm so mad I could have smashed into him. But I didn't." She may not entirely understand you, but she'll be comforted to find that frightening feelings can be discussed.

I raised five children. They all have different personalities. All of them have different issues, different levels of success. That was a learning experience for me.

my parents' ideals are good ones, and I support them to the highest. But my parents could only promote us to the levels to which they themselves had been exposed.

As a parent, you are called to carry the loads of your children that are too heavy for them, and you even want to carry the lighter

We hope that our incessant need to make things better for them didn't make them less capable human beings, less able to withstand the trials that will come their way because they didn't experience any disruption growing up.