Quotes About Parenting

Rather than helping children to think for themselves, solve their own problems and develop trust in themselves, parents tend to treat children as possessions.

effective parents don't want to be leaned on; they want to make leaning unnecessary.

There's no winning arguments with your parents, so why get all pumped up over them? It is way better to dive down and get out of the way than it is to get clobbered by some parental tidal wave.

CHAPTER 12 Mom and Dad Boot Up

children always wake after they have slept exactly as long as is good for them..

The most basic parental bond is maternal. Equal parenting is great--it has forced men to get off their duffs--but women, from breast to cradle to cuddle, can nurture in ways that men cannot.

The sight of these two vying for custody of that pathetic brood makes you wonder how a society that requires licenses for drivers manages without requiring them for parents.

At this point we understand that if the mother or other parent figure cannot provide these first few needs, the child's physical, mental-emotional and spiritual growth would likely be stunted.

However, the nurturing person must be able to nurture and the person in need must be able to let go, to surrender, in order to be nurtured. In my observations of patients, their families, and of other people, this reciprocity is unusual in human interaction. It is not the child's job to nurture their parent, and when this happens repeatedly, it is a subtle form of child abuse or neglect.

The mother or other parent figure(s) must attend the infant and child so that at least its safety, security and touching are met.

I am determined that my children shall be brought up in their father's religion, if they can find out what it is.

Once when Monty was in kindergarten, I had read to him and was trying to get him to go to sleep. He said he didn't want to close his eyes because "It's dark in there.

They are your children. You taught them. I didn't teach them.

These children that come at you with knives--they are your children. You taught them. I didn't teach them. I just tried to help them stand up.

girls need their father. Period. And I couldn't really tell you why other than it's the father who tells them who they are. Until he does, they're just floating in the earth like that tooth. Buried in some trash mound. Waiting to be discovered by somebody with a shovel who won't crack it or crush it. [Murphy Shepherd]

Kids are like a spring, or a Stretch Armstrong. No matter how many times they're passed around, passed off, and passed on . . . they snap back." He spit through his window. "Hope . . . it's the fuel that feeds them." He shook his head and spit something off the end of his tongue. "God forbid the day they stop eating it.

The brown bag, of course, had its imperfections. While some kids carried roast beef sandwiches, others had peanut butter. I have no way of knowing if all of those brown bags contained 'nutritionally adequate diets.' But I do know that those brown bags and those lunch pails symbolized parental love and responsibility.

1950s nuclear family,

It used to be that parents didn't have to be home. If a neighbor so I child misbehaving, it was considered appropriate for the neighbor to intervene. The parents would be grateful when they found out, and they would take the word of the neighbor if the child protested his innocence. Unmarried and divorced parents tend not to behave that way. Instead, they tend to try to be the good guy to their children.

Considerable social science research has found that constant praise of children can backfire, because it so often consists of telling children how smart they are, not of praising children for the things they actually do. As a result, many children become protective of their image of being smart and are reluctant to take chances that might actually damage that image.

They don't know the distinction between taking care of a child and raising a child.

Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children.

In giving us children, God places us in a position of both leadership and service. He calls us to give up our lives for someone else's sake - to abandon our own desires and put our child's interests first. Yet, according to His perfect design, it is through this selflessness that we can become truly fulfilled.

By the time a man realizes that his father was right, he has a son who thinks he's wrong.