Quotes About Family

The couple is the most important. It's the only thing that you chose in your life. Your children, you didn't choose. You chose your husband. So, you're going to make your life with him.

It quickly becomes clear that having a child in France doesn't require choosing a parenting philsophy.

The child must not invade the parents' whole universe . . . for family balance, the parents also need personal space,

We've hired a lovely nanny, Adelyn, from the Philippines, who shows up in the morning and looks after Bean all day.

French parents don't just think these separations are good for parents. They also genuinely believe that they're important for kids, who must understand that their parents have their own pleasures. "Thus the child understands that he is not the center of the world, and this is essential for his development," the French parenting guide Votre Enfant explains.

Though I'm winging it, I've realized that everyone else is, too. Parenting starts out as a concrete project. You're full of ideas about how to shape your children. But you end up with this jellyfish of a family that you can't control exactly. All you can do is warm the waters and nudge it in the right direction.

The family is based on the couple. If it exists only through children, it withers,

Siblings are the people we practice on, the people who teach us about fairness and cooperation and kindness and caring — quite often the hard way.

I know I ain't smart, Miss Althea. I don't pretend to be. It's something a feller can't lie about. But I can get you game. I can keep ups this farm. And I care about your boy. I care about him a lot. But I'd never get between the two of you. Miss Althea, if you'll marry up with me, I promise to listen to you in the things I don't know about. Work for you 'til my back is broke and my fingers is down to the bone. And love and care for you until the day I die.

She was Grandma Will. That term felt foreign and unfitting to the relationship they had. She wondered if her father had ever called her Mother, Ma, Mom, Mama? Maybe in private he might have, but to the world, all the world, it was Aunt Will.

I've got to get you home before I lose all my sanity and give in to the urge to imprison you here as a sex slave for my evil desires." Jesse sighed heavily. "That does sound tempting, but I'm pretty sure that Aunt Will would miss me." "She probably would," Piney agreed. "And how could I explain to my son why I've got a woman locked up in my bedroom?

A minute spent reading to your kids now will repay itself a million-fold later," the author George Saunders

School is where children learn that they have to read. Home is where kids learn to read because they want to. It's where they learn to love to read.

It's stressful to be a parent. It's stressful to be a person. But I've found that even in the most difficult moments, on the most challenging days, I can usually reach for a book and feel lifted up, returned to myself. On days when I've felt as though I have nothing left to give to my kids, I've been able to sit next to them and open a book. We start reading, and the world looks different.

Before was preparation: leaving home, going to college, launching a career, getting married, having a child, realizing that love might be forever but life was not. After was living with the choices I'd made: that man, that child, that profession, that city, that self.

Having a holiday weekend without a family member felt like putting on a sweater that had an extra arm.

it's a little girl named anna, and she doesn't know if she's ready to say good-bye to a father she's never really said hello to.

It's mom and me sharing a blanket, in a rare quiet moment when all we're doing is enjoying each other. This woman made me. She should get to cuddle me whenever she wants. She spent years with me attached to her side. Why should it be weirder now that I'm more than a couple of decades old?

clanking against the side of a stainless steel pot—signaled that her mother was busy in the kitchen preparing breakfast. Easing the door shut, Brianna leaned against it and closed her eyes. To pull this off, Brianna couldn't just act calm, she had to be calm. Otherwise, her mother would surely notice. But at only thirteen, she'd become pretty good at finding ways around her mother's

Skype or FaceTime or even talk to her on the phone. Jaden had explained that he wanted to hear her voice and see her face for the first time in person. When she thought about it, that was kind of romantic. If it hadn't been for her Uncle

Tu vois, Jo, cette petite étoile au bout de la casserole, elle est comme toi, si tu l'enlèves, la casserole perd son équilibre, et toi, si on te retire de la famille, la famille s'écroule parce que tu es la joie incarnée, la bonne humeur, la générosité... et pourtant, avait poursuivi son père, elle a l'air bien modeste, cette étoile en bout de constellation, on la voit à peine...

When I was younger, my family would go camping and fishing on our ranches. My dad loves being around all kinds of animals. He's the one who got me to be a really big animal lover.

There is a hierarchy, and these are the rules in my family: If you don't talk about a thing, it's not a problem. If you hide how deeply something hurt you, it didn't happen. If you pretend not to notice how deeply you hurt someone else, you don't have to feel bad about it.

I took my cue from Mom and stuck to that story. I was happy to cast her and Dad as vigilant, fully present parents. That's who they wanted to be. That's who they are: the parents who would go to the ends of the earth for their children. Only in my case, they went to the wrong end.