Babies And Parents Quotes & Sayings

Not all babies are cute when they're born no matter how many new parents try to convince you otherwise. This is yet another lie the half-baked "theys" lead you to believe. Some babies are born looking like old men with wrinkled faces, age spots, and a receding hairline. When I was born, my father George took my hospital picture over to his friend Tim's house while my mom was still recuperating in the hospital. Tim took one look at my picture and said, "Oh sweet Jesus, George. You better hope she's smart." It was no different with my son, Gavin. He was funny looking. I was his mother, so I could say that. He had a huge head, no hair, and his ears stuck out so far I often wondered if they worked like the Whisper 2000, and he was able to pick up conversations from a block away. — Tara Sivec

There are many things children accept as "grown-up things" over when they have no control and for which they have no responsibility
for instance, weddings, having babies, buying houses, and driving cars. Parents who are separating really need to help their children put divorce on that grown-up list, so that children do not see themselves as the cause of their parents' decision to live apart. — Fred Rogers

You will lose touch with people you thought you wouldn't, watch from a distance while these people get married, gain weight, lose weight, move across the country, and get new sets of friends you will never meet. But you will look at your pictures of them and remember the nights you drank too much rum with them and you will enjoy those moments immensely. You will know what it is like to experience true nostalgia - the feelings a Hot Pocket can elicit will be astounding. It will not be a bittersweet kind of thing, because you know that it's not as much growing apart as it is growing up.
There will be successes, and failures, and a lot of good and bad things. You will watch yourself and the people you choose to be with fall in love and get married, get jobs, get fired, get a terrible tattoo, have babies, get sick, get better, get worse, lose parents, grow older, grow smarter. Things will flash forward, pass before your eyes like the lights at a terrible nightclub. — Alida Nugent

Emotional abuse is the sustained, reptitive, inappropriate, emotional responses to the child's felt emotions and their accompanying expressive behaviour. Emotional abuse impedes emotional development. In babies, it also impedes the onset of speech development. It retards the process through which a child acquires the ability to feel and express different emotions appropriately, and eventually, to regulate and control them. It impacts adversely on (a) the child's eductional, social, and cultural development; (b) psychological development; (c) relationships in adulthood; and (d) career prospects. — Kieran O'Hagan

Babies are such blank slates. They don't come into this world with the assumptions their parents have made, or the promises their church will give, or the ability to sort people into groups they like and don't like. They don't come into this world with anything, really, except a need for comfort. And they will take it from anyone, without judging the giver. I wonder how long it takes before the polish given by nature gets worn off by nurture. — Jodi Picoult

From the moment we are born, boys and girls are treated differently.19 Parents tend to talk to girl babies more than boy babies.20 Mothers overestimate the crawling ability of their sons and underestimate the crawling ability of their daughters.21 Reflecting the belief that girls need to be helped more than boys, mothers often spend more time comforting and hugging infant girls and more time watching infant boys play by themselves. — Sheryl Sandberg

Language has to be partly innate, simply because human babies are born with the ability to learn the language of their parents. While this can justifiably be called a language instinct, there is no one gene compelling us to produce language. Instead, a set of genetic settings gives rise to a set of behaviors and perceptual and cognitive biases, some of which may be more general and others of which are more language specific. — Christine Kenneally

Initially children use just a few names, mostly for familiar things and people. But when they are still just beginning to talk, many babies will suddenly start naming everything and asking for the names of everything they see. In fact, what'sat? is itself often one of the earliest words. An eighteen-month-old baby will go into a triumphant frenzy of pointing and naming: "What'sat! Dog! What'sat! Clock! What'sat juice, spoon, orange, high chair, clock! Clock! Clock!" Often this is the point at which even fondly attentive parents lose track of how many new words the baby has learned. It's as if the baby discovers that everything has a name, and this discovery triggers a kind of naming explosion. — Alison Gopnik

Before, I guess, mum and dad were everything, but now, in my case, I had two new girls and all of a sudden they're completely dependent on you and there's a third generation. It's a funny shift all of a sudden. You have the babies, you have yourself and then you have your parents. — Roger Federer

For many of us, the effects of this fallen world seem like distant theological concepts that carry little weight in everyday life. As a result, we live with expectations befitting a pre-fall Eden, rather than a sin-broken Earth. We expect to live healthy, fulfilled lives. We expect to have marriages in which we perfectly understand and communicate with our spouses. We expect to become pregnant easily, carry our babies full-term, and deliver them in perfect health. Our hearts yearn for the creation to function as God intended it to, and thus we don't naturally expect pain, discord, or death. Yet, this is exactly the inescapable inheritance we've received from our first parents. — Jessalyn Hutto

There was our old life, in the apartment, in which we had time to finish most of the tasks we started and took long showers and remembered to water our plants. And there was our new life, in the hospital a mile away, in which Shauna needed morphine and two babies needed to eat every three hours around the clock ... I remember thinking, we're going to have to figure out how to combine our old life with our new life ... Over a year later, we still have days of mind-crushing fatigue, midnights when I think I'm pouring milk into a bottle but am actually pouring it all over the counter. Yesterday I spent five minutes trying to remember my parents' zip code. But now there are mornings like this one, when we wake up and realize we've slept through the entire night, and we stroll through the gardens as if we are normal again, as if we are finally learning the syllables of this strange, new language. — Anthony Doerr

Goodness," said an exhausted Lady Maccon, "are babies customarily that repulsive looking?"
Madame Lefoux pursed her lips and turned the infant about, as though she hadn't quite looked closely before.
"I assure you, the appearance improves with time."
Alexia held out her arms - her dress was already ruined anyway - and received the pink wriggling thing into her embrace. She smiled up at her husband.
"I told you it would be a girl."
"Why isna she crying?" complained Lord Maccon. "Shouldna she be crying? Aren't all bairns supposed to cry?"
"Perhaps she's mute," suggested Alexia. "Be a sensible thing with parents like us."
Lord Maccon looked properly horrified at the idea. — Gail Carriger

It seems to me that sometimes the worst parents make the best grandparents. I'm not sure why. Maybe because there is enough of a generational separation that they don't see their grandchildren as an extension of themselves, so their relationship isn't tainted by any self-loathing. And of course, just growing older seems to soften and relax people. Since so many people these days don't seem to start their families until around age forty, I predict there will be less child beating, but more slipped disks from lifting babies out of cribs. Even the father of advanced age who's not inclined to spare the rod is likely to suffer more than his victim: The first punch he throws might well be the last straw for his rotator cuff, reducing his disciplinary options to mere verbal abuse and napping. I'm excited about the next generation! — Sarah Silverman

Ours is an age of pedagogy. Anxious parents instruct their children more and more, at younger and younger ages, until they're reading books to babies in the womb. — Alison Gopnik

Four- and five-year-olds' play is permeated with the rankest sexism. No matter what their parents do and say, they play their momand pop roles in ultraconventional style. We've seen little girls whose mothers are doctors absolutely refuse to take the doctors' parts in their play, insisting that "only boys can be doctors," against all reason. Girls do more washing and drying of clothes, dishes, and babies than they've ever seen their own mothers do, and they turn their play husbands into TV-watching drones who do nothing but talk about money. — Stella Chess

Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby- awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess. — Lemony Snicket

My parents first rented a tiny apartment on Chapel Street with their black standard poodle, Turbo. When I arrived, they had to move out because the landlord allowed dogs but not babies. They found a place on Edwards Street, where the owner allowed babies but not dogs. Fortunately, I made the cut and Turbo went to live at Grove Lane. — George W. Bush

I hate babies with trendy names like Tiffany and Britney and Heather and Noah and Blake and Justin. I'm sick of Olivia and Chloe and Eva and Madison. I hope Aiden and Jayden and Braden and Graden all suffer minor head injuries while reading Dr. Seuss. Enough already with the cutesy-poo baby names. What happened to John and Dave and Sue? Babies with trendy names grow up to be adults with ridiculous names. "This is our CEO, Micah." "You know what, Micah? I want my money back. I'm closing my portfolio. I'm going with Michael. He's a grown-up." One day all of these trendy-named children will grow up and become parents and then grandparents, and it's all wrong. Grandma Tori? Zayda Jared? Nana Savannah? — Joan Rivers

The memories seem to come in layers. For example, the first memory might be of incest; then they remember robes and candles; next they realize that their father or mother or both were present when they were being abused. Another layer will be the memory of seeing other people hurt and even killed. Then they remember having seen babies killed. Another layer is realizing that they participated in the sacrifices. One of the most painful memories may be that they even sacrificed their own baby. With each layer of memory comes another set of problems with which they must deal.
- Glenn L. Pace; "Ritualistic Child Abuse," memo — Glenn L. Pace

Lemurs are good parents but they do it in different ways. I originally studied father care. I was very interested in that and we saw that a lot of these animals that lived in pairs and the father wasn't doing anything at all for the first month. But then suddenly, when the baby got to be a certain weight then the dads chipped in and started carrying the babies which was very nice. And then if there was twins or triplets then they helped. — Patricia Wright

Babies welcomed at conception, prepared for during pregnancy, and gently birthed into loving hands begin life positively. They look out at the world with immense interest and curiosity, act as if they feel safe, and make a solid connection with their parents — David Chamberlain

My own kind. I'm not sure there's a name for us. I suspect we're born this way: our hearts screwed in tight, already a little broken. We hate sentimentality and yet we're deeply sentimental. Low-grade Romantics. Tough but susceptible. Afflicted by parking lots, empty courtyards, nostalgic pop music. When we cried for no reason as babies, just hauled off and wailed, our parents seemed to know, instinctively, that it wasn't diaper rash or colic. It was something deeper that they couldn't find a comfort for, though the good ones tried mightily, shaking rattles like maniacs and singing, "Happy Birthday" a little louder than called for. We weren't morose little kids. We could be really happy. — Steve Almond

French parents do offer a few sleep tips. They almost all say that in the early months, they kept their babies with them in the light during the day, even for naps, and put them to bed in the dark at night. And almost all say that, from birth, they carefully "observed" their babies, and then followed the babies' own "rhythms." French parents talk so much about rhythm, you'd think they were starting rock bands, not raising kids. "From zero to six months, the best is to respect the rhythms of their sleep," explains Alexandra, the mother whose babies slept through the night practically from birth. — Pamela Druckerman

Someone said that thirty was a significant birthday, and everyone around the table agreed. Someone else said it was the first time you heard the bell.
What bell? someone asked.
But they all knew what bell. It was like you'd already completed a few laps, observed another, but this was the first time you'd properly heard the bell. There had been one at seven, but you hadn't heard it because you were so young; and then one at fourteen but you hadn't heard it because you were too busy looking over your shoulder; then another at twenty-one but you hadn't heard it because you were too busy talking; and then one at twenty-eight which for some reason took two years before you heard it. But they all agreed you did hear that one, eventually.
Your lousy career, said one guest. Babies, said one of the women. Lovers, friends, travel, said another. Parents aging. Bong. All the things you hadn't done. Might not do. Bong. — Graham Joyce

Ever since the kids were babies, we have treated them with respect. We are the mom and dad for sure, but we look for opportunities for us to sit down and say, 'How are things going for you? Is there anything that we can do as parents to help you? Let's all come up with a solution together.' We work better as a team. — Jodi Benson

Babies learn most of what they know from interactions with their parents, but not of the formal, instructional variety. Babies learn from spontaneous, everyday events
the mailman at the door with a package to open ... all of which need adult interpretation. They are real events of interest and concern to babies and young children ... By contrast, infant education is artificial and out of context. — Sandra Scarr

Parents who are stressed or disturbed will have more difficulty in meeting their children's needs. Parents who have little support
from friends, relatives, neighbors, or the community
are more likely to be overburdened by the demands of their babies and to be unable to respond to them adequately. Parents who experience severe poverty or economic insecurity, who cannot satisfy their own basic needs, are likely to have difficulty in responding to their children's needs. — Sheila Kamerman

Like the French, he starts babies off on vegetables and fruits rather than bland cereals. He's not obsessed with allergies. He talks about "rhythm" and teaching kids to handle frustration. He values calm. And he gives real weight to the parents' own quality of life, not just to the child's welfare. — Pamela Druckerman

The French magazine Parents says that if a baby is scared of strangers, his mother should warn him that a visitor will be coming over soon. Then, when the doorbell rings, 'Tell him that the guest is here. Take a few seconds before opening the door . . . if he doesn't cry when he sees the stranger, don't forget to congratulate him.' I hear of several cases where, upon bringing a baby home from the maternity hospital, the parents give the baby a tour of the house.9 French parents often tell babies what they're doing to them: I'm picking you up, I'm changing your nappy, I'm going to give you a bath. This isn't just to make soothing sounds; it's to convey information. And since the baby is a person like any other, parents are often quite polite about all this. (Plus it's apparently never too early to start instilling good manners.) — Pamela Druckerman

Dr. [Paula] Menyuk and her co-workers [at Boston University's School of Education] found that parents who supplied babies with a steady stream of information were not necessarily helpful. Rather, early, rich language skills were more likely to develop when parents provided lots of opportunities for their infants and toddlers to "talk" and when parents listened and responded to the babies' communications. — Jane Brody

After my parents divorced, my father remarried and my brothers were born when I was twelve and sixteen. I was thunderstruck at these kids. The "baby-ness" of them. Their toes. I had never been around babies before. — Leigh Newman

Why do children want to grow up? Because they experience their lives as constrained by immaturity and perceive adulthood as a condition of greater freedom and opportunity. But what is there today, in America, that very poor and very rich adolescents want to do but cannot do? Not much: they can do drugs, have sex, make babies, and get money (from their parents, crime, or the State). For such adolescents, adulthood becomes synonymous with responsibility rather than liberty. Is it any surprise that they remain adolescents? — Thomas Szasz

In the Netherlands, the government health plan provides for a specially trained nurse/lactation expert to help each new baby's parents in their home for a full ten days following each birth (with a small co-payment). Hired for three, five, or eight hours according to individual families' needs, this maternity nurse serves the new parents breakfast in bed, feeds any older children their breakfast, walks the dog, helps the new mother with breastfeeding if necessary, cleans the house, and notifies the midwife if the mother or baby should need medical attention for any reason. The Dutch consider the care provided each family by the maternity nurse to be an investment in good health, which benefits the entire society because it so effectively reduces the number of illnesses mothers and babies experience during the first year of the baby's life and thus saves money — Ina May Gaskin

I once fisted two babies and then used the corpses as boxing gloves to fight off the grieving parents. — Zach Braff

First of all, why in this free country of ours has "free speech" turned into "anything goes"? Why isn't it necessary to obtain permission from a child's parents to have a photo of that child published in a magazine, never mind the cover? We are used to seeing the adorable faces of celebrity babies on the covers of magazines, to see Suri Cruise and Violet Affleck and Preston and Jayden splashed all over the newsstand, but do we ever stop to wonder how those photos were obtained? — Lynne Spears

The system isn't working when 12 million people live in hiding, and hundreds of thousands cross our borders illegally each year; when companies hire undocumented immigrants instead of legal citizens to avoid paying overtime or to avoid a union; when communities are terrorized by ICE immigration raids - when nursing mothers are torn from their babies, when children come home from school to find their parents missing, when people are detained without access to legal counsel. When all that's happening, the system just isn't working. — Barack Obama

I feel for all the parents whose babies just keep waking up for years. My heart and back go out to you guys! You are my heroes, and I am not fit to walk in your shoes! — Constance Marie

Because they are well rested, these babies will be more alert and more willing to listen during their awake times, which in turn means they will be more active learners. They will also be more willing to play contentedly by themselves and not require constant entertainment by parents and other caregivers. — Suzy Giordano

Carpe Infans!
Beware Babies
There is no other human so seductive that an otherwise rational human will feed, clothe, sit up nights, work trigonometry with, bake cookies for, and generally tolerate for such long extents of time for such paltry returns of goods and services. They are a trap for the unwary ... all of us. — W. Clark Boutwell

Yes, he's a good boy. Never been in trouble at school and he's on the honor roll. Captain of the football team. All-around psycho serial killer who hides bodies in the fridge whenever his parents go out of town. (Nick)
I also eat babies for breakfast and torture small animals for fun. My therapist says I'm making real progress though. (Caleb) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Oftentimes I felt ridiculous giving my seal of approval to what was in reality such a natural thing to do, sort of like reinventing the wheel and extolling its virtues. Had parents' intuition sunk so low that some strange man had to tell modern women that it was okay to sleep with their babies? — William Sears

One Monday, just for sport, Charlie grabbed an eggplant that a spectacularly wizened granny was going for, but instead of twisting it out of his hand with some mystic kung fu move as he expected, she looked him in the eye and shook her head - just a jog, barely perceptible really - it might have been a tic, but it was the most eloquent of gestures. Charlie read it as saying: O White Devil, you do not want to purloin that purple fruit, for I have four thousand years of ancestors and civilization on you; my grandparents built the railroads and dug the silver mines, and my parents survived the earthquake, the fire, and a society that outlawed even being Chinese; I am mother to a dozen, grandmother to a hundred, and great-grandmother to a legion; I have birthed babies and washed the dead; I am history and suffering and wisdom; I am a Buddha and a dragon; so get your fucking hand off my eggplant before you lose it. — Christopher Moore

Childhood is a fundamental part of all human lives, parents or not, since that's how we all start out. And yet babies and young children are so mysterious and puzzling and even paradoxical. — Alison Gopnik

Mothers and fathers act in mostly similar ways toward their young children. Psychologists are still highlighting small differencesrather than the overwhelming similarities in parents' behaviors. I think this is a hangover from the 1950s re-emergence of father as a parent. He has to be special. The best summary of the evidence on mothers and fathers with their babies is that young children of both sexes, in most circumstances, like both parents equally well. Fathers, like mothers, are good parents first and gender representatives second. — Sandra Scarr

No one is born with prejudicial feelings, they are developed and nurtured within us by our experiences and upbringing. Consider the many factors involved: Babies are born into rich families and poor families alike - each capable of developing resentment toward the other. Children will often adopt prejudicial attitudes from their parents' racist remarks and actions. There are always two sides of the train tracks, with people on each side often unwilling to cross. One negative experience with a person may lead to false stereotyping for an entire people group. — Dudley C. Rutherford

Getting down on all fours and imitating a rhinoceros stops babies from crying. (Put an empty cigarette pack on your nose for a horn and make loud "snort" noises.) I don't know why parents don't do this more often. Usually it makes the kid laugh. Sometimes it sends him into shock. Either way it quiets him down. If you're a parent, acting like a rhino has another advantage. Keep it up until the kid is a teenager and he definitely won't have his friends hanging around your house all the time. — P. J. O'Rourke

Perhaps the Queen's prayers, and those of Bernard, had been efficacious, or perhaps Louise had been more attentive in bed, for during 1145
the exact date is not recorded
she bore a daughter, who was named Marie in honour of the Virgin. If the infant was not the male heir to France so desired by the King
the Salic law forbade the succession of females to the throne
her arrival encouraged the royal parents to hope for a son in the future.
Relationships between aristocratic parents and children were rarely close. Queens and noblewomen did not nurse their own babies, but handed them over at birth into the care of wet nurses, leaving themselves free to become pregnant again. — Alison Weir

Babies aren't really born of their parents. They are born of every kind word, loving gesture, hope, and dream their parents ever had. — Julia Roberts

When we are babies ... we need an authoritative figure to guide and take care of us. We ask no questions about that authority and imagine that the small circumference of family life is the limit of the universe ... As we mature, our horizon expands and we begin to question. This continues until we either throw over our creators
our parents
for good and take their place as the creative force in our lives or find replacements for them because the terror and responsibility are too great. People go one way or the other, and this accounts for all of the great personal and political divides throughout history. — Charlotte Rogan

Do gargoyles really take their babies on flights?"
"Every chance we get." Hugh grinned. "In some clans, the parents toss 'em off a cliff."
She shuddered. "And there for a while I thought we were the worst parents ever. — Thea Harrison

Freckles never tired of studying the devotion of a fox mother to her babies. To him, whose early life had been so embittered by continual proof of neglect and cruelty in human parents toward their children, the love of these furred and feathered folk of the Limberlost was even more of a miracle than to the Bird Woman and the Angel. — Gene Stratton-Porter

I never asked my mother where babies came from but I remember clearly the day she volunteered the information ... my mother called me to set the table for dinner. She sat me down in the kitchen, and under the classic caveat of 'loving each other very, very much,' explained that when a man and a woman hug tightly, the man plants a seed in the woman. The seed grows into a baby. Then she sent me to the pantry to get placemats. As a direct result of this conversation, I wouldn't hug my father for two months. — Sloane Crosley

Memory, faith, and the natural world as both witness to the cycle of human life and healer to a questioning heart are at the core of this lovely and lyrical collection of poems. The weather changes, people come and go from cities and towns, babies are born, grow up and depart from their parents' arms, but still, the countryside and its rituals sustain the people and creatures who know how to read the signs of the seasons. In these pages, Laura Grace Weldon shares those signs with us; her poems are the fruit of a wonderful harvest. — Eleanor Lerman

"Let's say we discover the gene that says the kid's gonna be gay. How many parents, if they knew before the kid was gonna be born, [that he] was gonna be gay, they would take the pregnancy to term? Well, you don't know but let's say half of them said, "Oh, no, I don't wanna do that to a kid." [Then the] gay community finds out about this. The gay community would do the fastest 180 and become pro-life faster than anybody you've ever seen ... They'd be so against abortion if it was discovered that you could abort what you knew were gonna be gay babies." — Rush Limbaugh

It's like parenting. The hardest, most intensive time comes at the very beginning. We still love those babies as they grow into daredevil children, recalcitrant teens, and parents setting eyes on their own babes for the first time. We just get a little more sleep while we do it. — Debora Geary

One reason for pausing is that young babies make a lot of movement and noise while they're sleeping. This is normal and fine. If parents rush in and pick the baby up every time he makes a peep, they'll sometimes wake him up. — Pamela Druckerman

No one has to know until we adopt in a few years. I'm sure there are loads of damn babies waiting for parents to buy them. We will be fine."

I know she hasn't accepted my offer of marriage, or even being in a relationship with me, but I hope she doesn't use this opportunity to remind me of that.

She laughs softly. "Damn babies? Please tell me you don't think there is a store somewhere downtown where you walk in and purchase a baby?" She lifts her hand to her mouth to stop herself from laughing at me.

"There isn't?" I joke. "What's Babies 'R' Us, then?"

"Oh my goodness!" She tilts her head back in laughter.

I reach across the small space between us and grab hold of her hand. "If that damn store isn't full of babies, lined up, ready for purchase, than I'm suing for false advertisement. — Anna Todd

Comic books, movies, radio programmes centered their entertainment around the fact of torture. With the clearest of consciences, with a patriotic intensity, children dreamed, talked, acted orgies of physical abuse. Imaginations were released to wander on a reconnaissance mission from Cavalry to Dachau.
European children starved and watched their parents scheme and die. Here we grew up with toy whips. Early warning against our future leaders, the war babies. — Leonard Cohen

Moonlarks face more predators than most other creatures.So even though the parents follow their eggs across the ocean and are never far away,they do not make contact, and they do not bring their babies to the nest.Their insticts know that if they did, they would shelter the younglings and weaken their ability to survive.~Calla — Shannon Messenger

Parents should talk to their children, even when they are babies and can't talk back. — Robert Winston

Parents get all focused on themselves, and they see their little babies start walkin' and talkin', and since they kinda look like them and sound like the, they start thinking of those little babies as themselves....And then something funny happens. Those babies grow up to be kids and teenages and grown-ups in their own right....so everything the kids do, everything, is a betrayal. — Barry Lyga

The Catholic Church wasn't just a part of his parents' live, and his grandparents', it ruled their lives. The priests told them what to eat, what to do, who to vote for, what to think. What to believe.
Told them to have more and more babies. Kept them pregnant and poor and ignorant.
They'd been beaten in school, scolded in church, abused in the back rooms.
And when, after generations of this, they'd finally walked away, the Church had accused them of being unfaithful. And threatened them with eternal damnation. — Louise Penny