Quotes About Parenting

Helicopter parents. Before I started at Pirriwee Public, I thought it was an exaggeration, this thing about parents being overly involved with their kids. I mean, my mum and dad loved me, they were, like, interested in me when I was growing up in the nineties, but they weren't, like, obsessed with me.

And even though I adore the fact that Francesca has Ben's eyes, I also see now that her biological connection to us is irrelevant. She is her own little person. She is Francesca. If we weren't her "natural" parents, we would still have loved her just as much.

The other mothers, the teachers, the people . I didn't realize that having a child was so social. You're always talking to people.

When she looked at photos of her children when they were little, she sometimes thought, Did I notice how beautiful they were? Was I actually there? Did I just skim the surface of my entire damned life?)

Overtired five-year-olds needed to be handled like explosive devices.

Parents do tend to judge each other. I don't know why. Maybe because none of us really know what we're doing? And I guess that can sometimes lead to conflict.

Samantha: Parents do tend to judge each other. I don't know why. Maybe because none of us really know what we're doing? And I guess that can sometimes lead to conflict. Just not normally on this sort of scale.

Why weren't they just overcome with joy every time they looked at those kids? Why in the world were they divorcing?

If her mother had been observing this interaction, she'd tell Clementine she was wrong, that she needed to keep talking, to say everything that was on her mind, to communicate, to leave no possibility for misinterpretation. If her father were here, he'd put his finger to his lips and say, "Shh." Clementine settled for two words. "I'm sorry," she said.

Of course, a minute was enough. Never take your eyes off them. Never look away. It happens so fast. It happens without a sound. All those stories in the news. All those parents. All those mistakes she'd read about. ... Children with stupid, foolish, neglectful parents. Children who died while surrounded by so-called responsible adults. And each time she would pretend to be non-judgmental, but really, deep down she was thinking: Not me. That could never really happen to me.

If parents had children who were good sleepers, they assumed this was due to their good parenting, not good luck. They followed the rules, and the rules had been proven to work. Celeste must therefore not be following the rules. And you could never prove it to them! They would die smug in their beds.

Parents take far too much notice of their children these days. Bring back the good old days of benign indifference, I reckon.

remembering all the glorious moments, one after the other after the other, her children's ecstatic faces looking for their parents in the stands, looking for their approval, looking for their love, knowing it was there, knowing—she hoped they knew this—that it would always be there, even long after she and Stan were gone, because love like that was infinite.

There was no such thing as a good divorce for children.

Renata and Harper attended the same weekly support group for parents of gifted children. Madeline imagined them all sitting in a circle, wringing their hands while their eyes shone with secret pride.

Sometimes their children would do everything exactly as they'd taught them, and sometimes they would do all the things they'd told them not to do, and seeing them suffer the tiniest disappointments would be more painful than their own most significant losses, but then other times they would do something so extraordinary, so unexpected and beautiful, so entirely of their own choice and their own making,

The children had become wriggly and giggly, almost as if they were drunk. They seemed unable to sit still. They were sliding of their chairs, constantly knocking cutlery onto the floor, and talking in high-pitched voices over the top of one another. Alice didn't know if this was normal behavior or not. It wasn't exactly relaxing. Nick had his jaw clenched, as if this dinner were a horrible medical procedure he had to endure.

And sure, they love their kids, but let's be honest, they're hard work. And it's not like you get to keep those adorable babies. Babies disappear. They grow up. They

It occurred to Jacob that a man who could take such pleasure in watching someone else's children compete in a backyard tennis match would probably have quite liked at least one athletic child of his own, rather than the two uncoordinated, academic kids he got. It said something about his dad that it had taken Jacob thirty-four years for that thought to occur to him.

Joy and Stan used to exchange smiles as their ponytailed daughter glided back and forth across the court, when she was maybe eight or nine, back when she had a "funny little personality" not "a possible mental illness." (Joy never forgave the GP who wrote that particular referral letter.)

there was something in your children that could bring out the child in yourself.

One minute they were driving her home from the hospital, a tiny, wrinkled, squalling baby. The next she was all legs and cheekbones and opinions. Whoosh. It made Alice's head spin.

That's true," she'd said, amazed and terrified by the thought. A toddler: an actual miniature person, created by them, belonging to them, separate from them.

It made Alice sick with guilt when she thought about what they had put the children through that year. She and Nick had been so young, so full of the earth-shattering importance of their own feelings.