Quotes About Parents

Secrets help toxic parents cope by turning their families into private little clubs to which no outsiders are admitted.

When Sandy said, "My parents don't know how to love me," she was saying that they don't know how to behave in loving ways. If you were to ask Sandy's parents, or almost any other toxic parents, if they love their children, most of them would answer emphatically that they do. Yet, sadly, most of their children have always felt unloved. What toxic parents call "love" rarely translates into nourishing, comforting behavior.

Because these parents so often behave like helpless or irresponsible children, their adult children feel protective. They jump to their parents' defense, like a crime victim apologizing for the perpetrator.

It is tremendously difficult to regain feelings of trust and safety once they have been trampled by parents.

If you were made to believe that your parents' feelings were your responsibility, you probably still believe that it's within your power to "make" them—and often everyone else—either happy or sad.

In many cases, I'm sure that no harmful intent existed, but speculating on intent is a waste of time. It's the results that count. If harm was done by inadequate parents, the intent is irrelevant. Inadequate parents are responsible both for what they did do and for what they didn't.

Adult children of toxic parents have an especially difficult time with their anger because they grew up in families where emotional expression was discouraged. Anger was something only parents had the privilege of displaying.

When we're very young, our godlike parents are everything to us. Without them, we would be unloved, unprotected, unhoused, and unfed, living in a constant state of terror, knowing we were unable to survive alone.

emotional and mental peace comes as a result of releasing yourself from your toxic parents' control, without necessarily having to forgive them. And that release can come only after you've worked through your intense feelings of outrage and grief and after you've put the responsibility on their shoulders, where it belongs.

It's funny how much influence our parents have on us." "True.

if I'd have to convert. It would upset my parents, but at least it would upset both of them equally. Dad would feel I'd chosen a form of Christianity, and Mimmy would be equally certain that I hadn't.

This lack of social capital puts enormous strain on working-class and poverty-stricken parents because they not only don't know where to turn for help but also can't afford it when they do.

The sofa is a mountain to climb, a valley for sleeping in, a place of ambush for surprise attacks on passing parents.

It is regarded as axiomatic that parents have more power then children. This is an inescapable biological fact; young children are completely dependent on their parents or other caring adults for survival.

As children, many of us were taught never to talk to strangers. As parents and grandparents, our message must change with technology to include strangers on the Internet.

Having the freedom to read and the freedom to choose is one of the best gifts my parents ever gave me.

As parents and teachers know well, we teach children to be fair and honest not by teaching them what they should do and then trying to interest them in having a new motivation to do this. Rather, we try to educate and fowl motivations that are present already.

To be deprived of parents - is that where freedom starts?

She grimaced. Her mother and father were probably giggling and whispering and ducking into a darkened corner. Good heavens. It was downright embarrassing.

Individual children are separated from their parents only when those parents cross the border illegally and are arrested. We can't have children with parents who are in incarceration.

When we are kids, we imagine that to define ourselves or to find ourselves means charting your own individuality, making your own destiny, and actually running away from your parents and your home and what you grew up with. Of course, as the years go on, we come to find that we become our parents.

My parents bought an indoor skatepark in 2003 that was a perfect training facility for me.

I don't know why, but the older I get the more interested I get in my parents' marriage. And it's interesting to be married yourself, too, because there is an inevitable comparison.

It's inevitable that we'll have some form of designer children, fueled not just by the science but by parents' hard-wired desire to give their children every advantage.