Quotes About Parenting

They may vacillate between over-involvement and neglect, depending upon their moods and emotional needs at the moment. They may only pay attention to the children when the kids are doing something to meet the borderline parents' needs. Some parents with BPD try to cope with their own feelings of inadequacy by demanding that their children be perfect. Children may then feel worthless when something goes wrong.

Children are especially vulnerable to projective identification because they're still forming their own identities. In fact, on a subconscious level they may feel that they may lose their parent's love if they don't do whatever mom or dad seemingly expects of them—including act badly.

According to MaryBelle Fisher, Ph.D., when a parent has BPD, the normal formation of the child's identity may be derailed. In our interview with Fisher she said, "The child's 'self' becomes a mechanism to regulate the borderline parent rather than an internal, cohesive event.

Unfortunately, many adults grew up with damaged, trampled, or nonexistent boundaries. In many cases, parents routinely violated their children's boundaries and rights or forced them into inappropriate roles. Different kinds of boundary violations cause different kinds of problems for children when they become adults:

But who are you? As the child of a parent with BPD and/or other emotional and cognitive difficulties, it may be surprisingly difficult to answer this question. You likely didn't have much mirroring, or validation, when you were young, which babies need in order to know where they stand in the world, that their feelings and observations and perceptions are healthy and normal. Without that early mirroring, it was difficult to see yourself, to know yourself…

Elan Golomb (1992) says: To grow up as a whole person, children in their formative stages need the experience of genuine acceptance; they have to know they are truly seen and yet are perfect in their parent's eyes; they need to stumble and sometimes fall, only to be greeted by a parent's commiserating smile. Through parental acceptance, children learn that their "is-ness," their essential selves, merit love.

I think my mom put it best. She said, 'Little girls soften their daddy's hearts.'

For all of those willing to help me start a family, I am flattered. I will let you know when I need your help.

My mother said, neutrally, that other children in the neighborhood were able to amuse themselves; they didn't seem to need adults to be involved with their pastimes. With a disinclined air, she taught me how to play solitaire.

When your children were small you worried that they would die and you would lose them, and then they grew up and you ended up losing the children they'd been, anyway.

But when Bumby nursed, his fist clutching the fabric of my robe, his eyes soft and bottomless and locked on mine, as if I were the very heart of his universe, I couldn't help but melt into him.

Your biological parents give you their genes, the map of your physical self. But whoever raises you makes you who you are, for better or for worse. Family dynamics are acted out, not built in, though someday scientists might prove otherwise.

You know, they don't hand out manuals for the tough stuff," he said as the band slowed. "I haven't always known what to do as a father, but somehow you've turned out all right." Before

No matter how resilient children can be, or how wanted, loved, and nurtured they are by their new parents, the original wounds of abandonment and rejection aren't just magically healed. Grit and inner strength don't altogether heal those wounds, either, because the parenting piece is primal. Mothers and fathers are supposed to stay. That's the original human story, in every culture, since the beginning of time.

Instead of opportunities for serious accomplishment in our culture, we supply our children with expensive toys, hoping that these will occupy them and keep them from disturbing us.

adult's role is to "teach children limits with love or the world will teach them without it.

After you have demonstrated a practical-life exercise, and once your child has begun to use it with concentration, you must take care not to interrupt him.

parents today are more likely to say their primary wish for their children is that they be happy. In pursuit of this goal they indulge their children, often unconsciously, to a degree that is startling to previous generations. All parents need to remember that true happiness comes through having character and discipline, and living a life of meaningful contribution—not by having and doing whatever you wish.

Our first responsibility to newborns in regard to sleep is to help them sleep through the night as soon as they are capable of doing so. For most babies this is possible when they are two to three months old. By sleeping through the night, we mean from approximately a ten o'clock evening feeding to a six o'clock morning feeding. It

by rushing about with our children without giving thought to their needs for developing focus or, equally damaging, by allowing them to become mesmerized in front of a TV or VCR, we destroy both their conscious attention and the development of the will. Parents

Sadly we deprive fifteen-month-olds of such opportunities for work in the home or a homelike setting. Instead we give them a schedule of planned activities, expensive toys, television, and VCRs to keep their mind off their real needs.

the adult's role is to "teach children limits with love or the world will teach them without it.

The parent-child relationship in the home usually reflects the objective cultural conditions of the surrounding social structure. If the conditions which penetrate the home are authoritarian, rigid, and dominating, the home will increase the climate of oppression.30 As these authoritarian relations between parents and children intensify, children in their infancy increasingly internalize the paternal authority.

Some are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same.