Quotes About Parenting

Nobody ever told you that being a mother is all about making what seemed like thousands of tiny decisions. Tess had always considered herself quite a decisive person before she had Liam.

Teenagers!" said Hank. "All the parenting articles say, Talk to them, listen to them! But how can you when they seem to find it physically painful to even look at you?

there was something in your children that could bring out the child in yourself. Nothing and nobody could aggravate you the way your child could aggravate you.

Other people's problems always seemed so surmountable, and other people's children so much more biddable.

Mothers took their mothering so seriously now.

Your child was a little stranger, constantly changing, disappearing and reintroducing himself to you

She'd learned that with her daughters. Don't say a word. Don't ask a question. Give them enough time and they'll finally tell you what's on their minds. It was like fishing. It took silence and patience. (Or so she'd heard. Cecilia would rather hammer nails into her forehead than go fishing.) Silence didn't come naturally to her. Cecilia was a talker.

Great. Now Renata would have even more reason to dislike her. Jane would have an enemy. The last time she had had anything close to an enemy, she was in primary school herself. It had never crossed her mind that sending your child to school would be like going back to school yourself.

No one warned you that having children reduced you right down to some smaller, rudimentary, primitive version of yourself, where your talents

For someone who didn't want children, Erika had a wealth of parenting expertise she felt obliged to share. You

Her boys were gorgeous little darlings. Her boys were feral little animals.

Loving parental care has unmatched transformational powers in restoring the child's developmental momentum in risk situations.

Babies and young children thrive when they feel secure in their parents' care as they experiment with their bodies, relationships, and physical environment. When the child cannot feel safe because the parent is consistently unavailable, unpredictable, or frightening, the basic conditions that promote early mental health are severely undermined.

Father's Day is like Mother's Day, except the gift is cheaper.

Our own system of trying to guess what or how much a child's mind can assimilate results in cross purposes, misunderstanding, disappointments, anger and a general loss of harmony.

Nobody's born rotten. You just don't have bad kids. It's not true. There is no such thing. But we can make them bad.

His wise parent disapproved of this uncatly conduct; it indicated a certain lack of character, and no good would come of it. By her own example she tried to guide him. When dinner was served she gave the plate a haughty sniff and walked away, no matter how tempting the dish. That was the way it was done by any self-respecting feline. In a minute or two she returned and condescended to dine, but never with open enthusiasm.

Throughout history, parents have tried to name their offspring in a manner that would foretell the trajectory of their future. It's one of the first spells humans encounter in this life. Little did your parents know what would happen today, for you, because of your name, but they blessed this day for you.

I played with dolls until I was 15. My mother encouraged it because my older sister got married when she was 15, so Mom thought that the longer I stayed with dolls, the better.

Parenting, when it is pursued seriously and thoughtfully, is not only life's most important career, but its most joyful and fulfilling career.

When adults ignore their children's feelings, children come to believe their feelings are not important. When we repeatedly threaten or punish children for a display of emotion, children learn that emotions are dangerous things that need to be held inside and hidden—an invitation to later depression or rage.

The hardest task for a parent was to encourage them to grow, but not too fast for their own good.

Keep thou an open door between thy child's life and thine own.

Only make one meal for your kids. They won't starve to death if they don't eat it. In fact, if they are hungry every night because they refuse dinner, perhaps they'll learn to eat more. "I call it the Starbucks Phenomenon: The expectation that it's okay for each person in the family to order something different in the home," Dr. Fishel says. "That's just another burden on who is doing the cooking and could be another impediment.