Quotes About Parenting

I think it's easiest to teach by example. My dad didn't tell us to work hard we just saw how hard he worked. I know I have shortcomings - like a short fuse - but I've learned you can't come home from a long day of work and snap at the kids.

Well, when you're the youngest of five, parents kind of lose interest more and more through the children. I think my eldest brother was under loads of pressure to do something amazing with his life, but by the time I came around they were like, 'Well, let's hope he doesn't kill a guy.'

Now that I have children, I realize taking care of my children is more fun than anything in the whole world.

If you can keep your son off the pipe and your daughter off the pole, you're ahead of the game.

When I hear people talk about juggling, or the sacrifices they make for their children, I look at them like they're crazy, because 'sacrifice' infers that there was something better to do than being with your children.

I still think we need to stick to our original plan," Bell said. "We brought him into this world, it's up to us to send him away.

Look, I've got incredible pride for my family. I've absolutely fallen into that cliche of a dad who could just happily talk about my daughter endlessly.

a man's lack of closeness to his parents, or having a father who was physically and emotionally less involved, could predict early disability and death from suicide, hypertension, coronary artery disease, and tumors.

I will not have my son grow up in a tension-filled home.

Remember: eye contact," he says. "And be sure to smile." "You are such a mom." "You know what your problem is?" "That my boyfriend is acting like a mom?

She says she can't believe she raised a child who traveled all over the world but has been content ever since to let the world come to her.

A man whose mother won't let him lift a finger is ruined for a wife." The

as a week. She's been spanked with a spatula, slapped across

The second day of the book tour I stopped an interviewer and said, "Aren't you asking the wrong question?" The interviewer stared at me blankly. "The question is not really why I chose to share my experiences with other people. The question we should be dealing with is why does anyone mistreat their children? I think that's what we should be talking about.

My birth mother brought me into this world, but it was my adoptive parents who gave me life.

She said she hated my children—her own children, Looloo-dirl, her own children!

I'll find a way. There must be a way. And I'll take my children from you. The man who loves children! You can have your own. That's all you really care about

she would say to the children as they crowded about her bent shoulders, peering at her satin stitch or Madeira work, "my kids too: I'm not proud; well, I don't care what happens to you kids, I've done my best and if that's not satisfactory, you must try another shop.

she said, her children should not live on trash, her children had to fight for their livings, having such a silly, puffed-up ignoramus of a father, her girls were not going to be underfed "mud rats.

Borderline mothers have difficulty allowing their children to grow up. The dependency of a newborn can be intensely satisfying to the borderline mother, but as the child becomes increasingly independent, conflict erupts.

Although she can function extraordinarily well in other roles, mothering is the single most daunting task for the borderline female.

Borderlines may destroy what is good and loved by their children because they are intensely jealous of the loved object.

Laura explained that her mother "went on tirades." Something could set her off and she would whirl around the house like a cyclone. The warning signal was "the look." The look was a piercing, threatening glare that meant "I could kill you." When Laura was a child, her mother actually said it, with no awareness of the power of her words.

Emotionally stable parents share their children's joy and quiet their fear. But caretaking roles are reversed for children of borderlines whose mothers are chronically upset. Children repress their fear in order to calm their mother. Situations that should frighten children may not because they have learned not to feel.