Quotes About Children

Look both ways before you cross the street," she tells me. I start to protest, but then it strikes me that if I am very lucky I will one day be able to offer annoying safety tips to my own children one day.

Look both ways before you cross the street," she tells me. I start to protest, but then it strikes me that if I am very lucky I will be able to offer annoying safety tips to my own children one day.

Every life is inexplicable, I kept telling myself. No matter how many facts are told, no matter how many details are given, the essential thing resists telling. To say that so and so was born here and went there, that he did this and did that, that he married this woman and had these children, that he lived, that he died, that he left behind these books or this battle or that bridge – none of that tells us very much.

All children are love children, he said, but only the best ones are ever called that.

Children are a consolation for everthing - except having children.

Or consider child beggars in the developing world. The sight of an emaciated child is shocking to a well-fed Westerner, and it's hard for a good person to resist helping out. And yet the act of doing so ends up supporting criminal organizations that enslave and often maim tens of thousands of children. By giving, you make the world worse. Actions that appear to help individuals in the short term can have terrible consequences for many more.

Making children suffer temporarily for their own good is made possible by love, intelligence, and compassion, but yet again, it can be impeded by empathy.

children provoke a couple's most frequent arguments: Jennifer Senior, All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood

But war's appeal is more than belonging, morality, and signaling. As Chris Hedges put it in the title of one of his books, "War is a force that gives us meaning." PERHAPS THE TWO examples so far have left you cold. Maybe you don't want to climb mountains or go to war. But what about having children?

As Jennifer Senior notes, children provoke a couple's most frequent arguments—"more than money, more than work, more than in-laws, more than annoying personal habits, communication styles, leisure activities, commitment issues, bothersome friends, sex." Someone who doesn't understand this is welcome to spend a full day with an angry two-year-old (or a sullen fifteen-year-old) and find out.

The first involves attachment. Most parents love their children, and it seems terrible to admit to yourself and others that the world would be better if someone you loved didn't exist. More than that, it's not just that you feel compelled to say that you are happy they exist—you are happy they exist. After all, you love them.

Were we to be engaged in a war . . we should become absolutely destitute of elephants. . .What would our children do without elephants to amuse them? What would the sick do without the sight of elephants to invigorate them?

Governments could recognize the huge value added if the two biological parents choose to live together with the child: a tax-credit bonus could reduce the tax burden for those who are taxpayers, and income could be supplemented by an equivalent amount for those who are not. The commitment of young parents to their children benefits us all, and we should be prepared to pay for it. When parents withhold this commitment, the rest of us pay for it – heavily.

But you can reassure children; you can tell them what's happening or going to happen. Can you get such reassurance across to a cat? I suppose it is that sort of anthropomorphism that bugs the hell out of researchers whose job is to experiment on nonhuman animals. If they permit themselves such a comparison, they might not sleep well at night.

If anyone asked why we decided to start a family when we did, I said, 'Most couples get kittens for their kids to play with; we decided to get a baby for our cats to play with.' That wasn't true, of course, but it was good for a laugh.

The great battle of parenting is not the battle of behavior; it's the battle for what kind of awe will rule children's hearts.

When your child wonders about what is right and what is wrong, don't just threaten him with the law of God; woo him with the sweet music of the grace of God. When she is struggling with what

Parents, if your eyes ever see or your ears ever hear the sin and weakness of your children, it's never an accident, it's never a hassle, it's never an interruption; it's always grace. God loves your children and because he does, he has placed them in a family of faith so that you can be his tool of convicting, forgiving, and transforming grace.

As a parent you are never, ever dealing just with the words and actions of your children. You are always also dealing with the thing that controls their words and behavior: the heart.

Your job is be God's tool for the purpose of forming the image of God's Son in your children.

Parenting is not first about what we want for our children or from our children, but about what god in grace has planned to do through us in our children. to lose sight of this is to end up with a relationship with our children that at the foundational level is neither Christian nor true parenting because it has become more about our will and our way than about the will and way of our Sovereign Savior King.

If God's plan really is to make his invisible grace visible by sending parents of grace to give grace to children who desperately need grace, then I am called not just to preach that grace but to live and model it for my children every day.

successful parenting is not about achieving goals (that you have no power to produce) but about being a usable and faithful tool in the hands of the One who alone is able to produce good things in your children.

It is important for all parents to examine the system of belief that shapes their moment-by-moment interactions with their children.