Quotes About Parenting

It is when a parent's love is experienced as conditional on achievement that children are at risk for serious emotional problems.

We are never free of our past, but we can be free of its unwanted intrusion into our relationship with our children and the ways in which we choose to parent. Being a parent gives us the extraordinary opportunity for a "do-over." Once again we are in a parent-child relationship, but this time we hold the cards. We can use the best of what we learned from our own parents and change the things that were out of synch or hurtful. This time around, we get to choose.

Having an involved father is a strong predictor of a child's eventual level of empathy. Optimally this involvement should begin when children are starting elementary school. Moving from preschool to elementary school is a big transition for kids. Dads, who often take the lead on making the outside world enticing, appear to grease the wheels and make this transition easier. This effect is equally marked for young girls and boys alike.

Our job is to produce and guide our children; not to reproduce ourselves. Nor should we want to. One of the absolute miracles of life is the profound uniqueness of each person.

Flexibility is a frame of mind. It is what allows us to choose the best response from a raft of different possibilities. Flexibility in parenting does not mean you should become a pushover. There is a delicate tightrope to be walked between your child's need for structure and the importance of considering content and context when you make decisions. But without flexibility, you are unlikely to be a successful parent and will certainly not be an empathic or introspective one.

we must be certain that our children can face these challenges armed with a well-developed moral compass.

We should be encouraging our children to push themselves, to develop their talents and passions, but we should also be aware that the bromide "You can do anything" is wishful thinking.

When you allow your child to palm off responsibility you encourage the idea that someone else is responsible both for the problem and for fixing it. This attitude is bound to make your child less competent and therefore lower his self-esteem. Even when others have a hand in your child's distress, which will happen, teach your child to take responsibility for his own life.

When we pay for tutors and turn a blind eye to irresponsible behavior, whether it's cheating or not getting adequate sleep, are we fooling ourselves? When we tell our children we want them to have "options," is that really another way of saying that we want them to get the best possible grades, so they can go to the best possible college and graduate school, to prepare them for the best possible jobs, which disproportionately seem to be in the field of finance?

Adolescents need tremendous support as they go about the task of figuring out their identities, their future selves. Too often what they get is intrusion. Intrusion and support are two fundamentally different processes: support is about the needs of the child, intrusion is about the needs of the parent.

But while our children learn from watching how we react to challenge and recover from crisis, they are not us. Genetics and temperament play a role in determining which coping skills come most easily to us. We naturally lean in to our strengths. An extroverted parent may reach for enthusiasm first, while an introverted child may opt for creativity. Both can be equally effective in solving problems.

If thirty years of being a psychologist has taught me anything, it is that it is much easier to talk about things than to change them. But the potential for change is always present. We are at that moment of change now—with our children, our education system, and our willingness to alter some of our parenting habits in order to protect our children from the worst excesses of our culture.

outgrowth of materialism is the notion that there are "winners" and "losers," the "haves" and the "have-nots." Parents need to check in with themselves regularly and avoid endorsing values that pit children against each other or suggest that resources are so scarce that children must be in constant competition.

When we protect our children from excessive control, outsized competition, and persistent academic pressure, and choose instead to commit to nurturing them with warmth, clear limits, firm consequences, and a delight in their potential and uniqueness, then our children are free to return to their essential task—the development of a sense of self, sufficiently robust to weather the inevitable ups and downs of a lifetime.

But perhaps no parent can truly see their child. When we look we see only the mirror of our own faults.

You have always been the worst of my children," he said. "Be sure not to dishonor me." "I have a better idea. I will do as I please, and when you count your children, leave me out.

I would not be able to bear it, I thought. I would seize him, hold him to me. But I only embraced him a final time, pressing hard as if to set him into my skin. Then I watched him take his place among them, stand upon the prow, outlined against the sky. The light darted silver from the waves. I lifted my hand in blessing and gave my son to the world.

Two children he had had, and he had not seen either clearly. But perhaps no parent can truly see their child. When we look we see only the mirror of our own faults.

perhaps no parent can truly see their child. When we look we see only the mirror of our own faults.

Gods pretend to be parents, but they are children, clapping their hands and shouting for more.

The balancing act we parents attempt is convincing our children: 1. You are loved more than you can imagine. 2. The world does not revolve around you.

To see you in love is far more powerful than any other lesson. A picture is worth a thousand words. It's important that your sons see your physical affection, to see you kiss, cuddle on the couch, hold hands in public. Oh, sure—they'll say they're "grossed out," tell you to "get a room." But they are watching and learning.

Successful artistic parents seem very rarely to give birth to equally successful artistic sons and daughters, and I suspect it may be because the urge to create, which must always be partly the need to escape everyday reality, is better fostered-- despite modern educational theory-- not by a sympathetic and 'creative' childhood environment, but the very opposite, by pruning and confining natural instinct.

MRS. PEACHUM How the mother is to be pitied who has handsome daughters! Locks, bolts, bars and lectures of morality are nothing to them – they break through them all.