Quotes About Parenting

The most important thing to remember, the guiding principle, is to try to keep your son's self-esteem

My father criticizes me all the time. My grades went up from Cs to Bs in two courses and down in another, and all he could talk about was the course I had done worse in. Why would a father say something like that to a kid?" We sometimes have to wait weeks or months for that brief window of emotional disclosure when a boy suddenly shows us his sadness and bewilderment, which had previously been masked by silence or anger.

expectations, rules, and requests for compliance often drives the best-intentioned parents over the edge.

It is parents and educators who need to create a climate that clearly communicates a moral code in which cruelty is neither tolerated nor ignored. In a home

Emotional distance keeps many good men from being better fathers;

Kids are like heroin, a little heroin addiction. When it's bad, you've never been so miserable, but when it's good you've never been so high.

How did people raise kids before plastic came along? "Everything for Baby", said the sign over the aisle we were in. It should have said, "Everything for Baby Is Made from Molded Plastic in Ugly Primary Colors.

The last thing I want my child to see is Dad running around in the middle of the pack. That would really upset me. And that would upset him. I would be embarrassed to take him to school with kids saying, 'Hey, how'd your dad do this weekend?' 'Well, he finished fifth or sixth'.

But being a substitute parent? Him? It was a tall order for a guy who couldn't even keep a houseplant alive.

Tired is the catchall for everything when you're a parent of a small child. When your child throws a tantrum, when your child refuses to kiss his grandmother, when your child doesn't say thank you, when your child does anything remotely shitty, you can always just say: He's tired or She didn't get enough sleep last night and you're off the hook.

Becoming familiar with your amygdala and the kinds of things it reacts to in life is an important part of learning to regulate your own stress and manage your tendencies to approach and avoid things in your life, including your children.

all the world's parenting advice can be distilled to two simple rules: pay attention to what your children are fascinated by, and praise them for their effort." [Paraphrasing Carol Dweck, a psychologist who studies motivation]

When the Parent Dragons are triggered, you feel like you've done something wrong, you are not good enough or supported, and you are motivated to work harder.

relationship. The mothers of autistic children in their studies started out warm, but actually became more reserved when they did not get positive feedback from their children. The kind of love that is critical to making the parent-infant bond work is reciprocal.

More often than not, it's disrespectful to them (our children) - and disrespectful to their struggle with their tasks in life- if our own anxiety as parents makes us cling to our children. It's disrespectful is we demand more intimacy than they are willing or able to give. Too much involvement with our children is not an act of love- it's an act of selfishness.

On job of parents - " Their job is to love you, protect you as best as they can, try to understand you, and enjoy your laughter. I hope they will give you both roots and wings. When they give you roots, you will feel safe, loved, and secure, knowing they genuinely want to understand the person you are. When they give you wings, you will feel free to think whatever you want to think, free to explore the world of your heart and mind and the world outside".

I think we owe it to our children to share our wisdom. If we share our wisdom for the purpose of changing our children, then that's hitting them over the head with a hammer or shoving something down their throats. If the wisdom turns into advice, that's selfish. But if we simply share ourselves and let our children know our hearts, then it's a gift. And I think it's a gift we're responsible for giving them.

As our children turn even five or six degrees away from us, we have to be aware of our fear and our excitement and our hope for them. And as that five or sex degrees turns into ten or twenty degrees, even ninety degrees, we have to monitor those feelings every step of the way-and ultimately realize that our child is another human being and not necessarily and extension of us.

This is what almost all parents want for their children: a lifetime of happiness and an easy passage.

Children don't learn from lessons or teaching. They learn from what we honestly have to say about our feelings, and they learn from our behavior.

There's no going back. Pay your son to take out the trash—and you've pretty much guaranteed the kid will never do it again for free.

When parents don't take responsibility for their own unfinished business, they miss an opportunity not only to become better parents but also to continue their own development. People who remain in the dark about the origins of their behaviors and intense emotional responses are unaware of their unresolved issues and the parental ambivalence they create.

Parents who speak with their children about their feelings have children who develop emotional intelligence and can understand their own and other people's feelings more fully.

It's also crucial to keep in mind that no matter how nonsensical and frustrating our child's feelings may seem to us, they are real and important to our child. It's vital that we treat them as such in our response.