Quotes & Sayings About Bad Parents

People will always try to steal
your power. When you do well, they'll say it's only because you're rich and your parents are big shots. People who care about you will try to steal
your power, too, but they'll go about it differently. When you fail at something, they'll try to make you feel better by saying that nobody's good at
everything, and you shouldn't be so hard on yourself. They might tell you not to feel bad about screwing up a math test because math's hard for girls.
Or they'll say you shouldn't worry so much about injustice in the world because you're only one person. And even though they mean well, they'll be
making you less than what you can be. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

We don't go out there into the world and do what would make us feel happy and fulfilled with our lives, because what if it's not good enough for our parents? What if it's not cool enough for our friends? What if our choices aren't good enough for everybody else? "But know this: no matter what you do, you will never escape judgment and criticism. Don't even take this as bad news. It just is. It's what people do. They can't help it. You're getting judged either way, so you might as well do what makes you happy. — Katie Morton

Silas knew words could have power behind them. Usually it was just a sort of bad luck. He also knew, very early on, that you could never tell when that bad luck would jump up to claim its due, so it was best to be careful. Quiet was safer. He wished his parents had been quieter when they were together. Who knew what might happen when you said something awful to someone else? It was hard to take some words back. Some words stuck and you couldn't shake them off. Silence was better than those kinds of words. Silas had learned that lesson the hard way. — Ari Berk

When our personal world is dark, we seek to fix the blame on any one of a number of factors - heredity, parents, destiny, what is known as bad luck or the bad break, and occasionally even on God.

It takes a long while to learn that sometimes we, ourselves, put out or, at least cloud over, our own sun, and that all things balance in the end. In nights of darkness we forget the shining days, though everyone experiences both. — Faith Baldwin

Let's get something straight. I'm supposed to be the bad guy. I will always disappoint you. Your parents will hate me. You should not root for me. I am not your role model. I don't know why everyone seems to forget that. I never do. — Kami Garcia

I would never believe that I was better off without the Drakes and they without me. Growing up, I'd seen them more often than my own grandparents. They were part of my landscape. And if that particular landscape suddenly included earthquakes and volcanoes and mudslides, then too bad; I already built a house there and dug the well and planted crops. It was an analogy my parents had to understand. They were homesteaders; they knew that once you found your home, you dug your roots. Period. — Alyxandra Harvey

Renegade scientists and totalitarian loonies are not the folks most likely to abuse genetic engineering. You and I are-not because we are bad but because we want to do good. In a world dominated by competition, parents understandably want to give their kids every advantage ... The most likely way for eugenics to enter into our lives is through the front door as nervous parents ... will fall over one another to be first to give Junior a better set of genes. — Arthur Caplan

I would rather be the good aunt who never says anything bad and lets the parents discipline the child. — Ellen DeGeneres

I thought at the time of my parents' divorce that I was upset by deeper, more profound things and I was just taking it out on the joint custody agreement. But that disruption was bad enough. That was a huge deal for a teenager. — Noah Baumbach

I'm very fortunate to have parents who have kept me grounded, so I hopefully won't end up in a bad situation when I grow up. — Raven-Symone

My parents' generation's benchmark was simple: Fat Equals Bad. — Arabella Weir

I think we should find some kind of shelter; a cave or something."
"I don't want to do that! What if there's like, a creature living in the cave?" Tiara said. "Seriously, I saw this show once where these people were stranded on an island and there were these other people who were sort of crazy-slash-bad and there was this polar bear creature running around."
"What happened?" Miss Ohio asked.
"I don't know. My parents got divorced in the middle of season two and we lost our TiVo. — Libba Bray

I didn't realize how good I was with technology until I met my parents ... my dad told me "You're good; you should be a computer programmer." I said, "You're bad ... you should be a caveman." — Mike Birbiglia

It starts in the home environment. If the parents eat bad? Those kids are going to eat bad. If they see their parents stopping at McDonald's or Pizza Hut, then that's what they're going to eat as well. — Donald Driver

All boys wish to be manly; but they often try to become so by copying the vices of men rather than their virtues. They see men drinking, smoking, swearing; so these poor little fellows sedulously imitate such bad habits, thinking they are making themselves more like men. They mistake rudeness for strength, disrespect to parents for independence. They read wretched stories about boy brigands and boy detectives, and fancy themselves heroes when they break the laws, and become troublesome and mischievous. Out of such false influences the criminal classes are recruited. Many a little boy who only wishes to be manly, becomes corrupted and debased by the bad examples around him and the bad literature which he reads. The cure for this is to give him good books, show him truly noble examples from life and history, and make him understand how infinitely above this mock-manliness is the true courage which ennobles human nature. — James Clarke

You don't bad-mouth your ex or anything like that. The key is your kid knowing that both parents still love him and are there for him. — Dennis Quaid

Exemplar, n.
It's always something we have to negotiate- the face that my parents are happy, and yours have never been. I have something to live up to, and if I fail, I still have a family to welcome me home. You have a storyline to rewrite, and a lack of faith that it can ever be done.
You love my parents, I know. But you never get too close. You never truly believe there aren't bad secrets underneath. — David Levithan

Our parents, our tribesman, our authority figures, clearly expect us to be bad or anti-social or greedy or selfish or dirty or destructive or self-destructive. Our social nature is such that we tend to meet the expectations of our elders. Whenever this reversal took place and our elders stopped expecting us to be social and expected us to be anti-social, just to put it in gross terms, that's when the real fall took place. And we're paying for it dearly. — Jean Liedloff

Anger is considered especially bad. Anger is one of the seven deadly sins. These sins send you to hell. In its most accurate teaching, the deadly sin is not really the emotion of anger, but the behaviors resulting from anger. Behaviors often linked to anger are screaming, cursing, hitting, publically criticizing or condemning someone and physical violence. These behaviors are certainly prohibitive. They are behaviors based on judgment, rather than emotions. Many children are shamed for their anger. Children often see parents angry and rageful. The message is all too often that it's okay for parents to be angry, but it's not okay for children. — John Bradshaw

Parents' ability to survive a child's unabating needs, wants, and demands ... varies enormously. Some people can give and give ... Whether children are good or bad, brilliant or just about normal, enormously popular or born loners, they keep their cool and say just the right thing at all times ... even when they are miserable themselves, inexhaustible springs of emotional energy, reserved just for children, keep flowing unabated. — Stella Chess

My dad? He died when I was 19, which is a bad time for your dad to die, because there's an awful lot of things you have to resolve with your parents past your teens if you've been a difficult teenager. — Robbie Coltrane

I just wanted to show the migrants as complex humans with flaws and weakness, with good and bad things, and show that they're parents and family men. I wanted to show them with everything, as they are. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

It was as bad as the summer that her mother had taken the training wheels off Coraline's bicycle;but then, back then, in with all the cuts and scrapes (her knees had scabs on top of scabs) she had had a feeling of achievement. She was learning something, doing something she had not known how to do. Now she felt nothing but cold loss. She had failed the ghost children. She had failed her parents. She had failed herself, failed everything. — Neil Gaiman

A Mother's Advice

Manners matter, regardless of your position in society. There is no excuse in this world to practice bad manners, especially at the table. I found that out in high school. I was invited to my boyfriend's house for dinner. His parents were somewhat formal, and I knew the dinner would be "fancy," at least in my mind. My family wasn't upper class (or even middle class), and my mother never had what would be called "social graces."
Before I left, my mother gave me a piece of advice: hold your head high, be quiet, and take the lead from his mother. Even though I was scared to death, I did what my mother advised and got through the experience with flying colors.
To this day, my mother's advice has gotten me through many difficult situations, especially ones that are totally new to me! With my mother's simple advice, I know I could dine with the Queen of England, just by following her lead. Thanks, Mother!

-Deborah Ford — Deborah Ford

In third grade, I was taking tap-dance lessons, and about six weeks before the recital I wanted to quit. My mom said, 'No, you're going to stay with it.' Well, I did it, and I was bad, too! But my parents never let their kids walk away from something because it was too hard. — Rebecca Lobo

When you're a kid, you tend to see the best in your mates. Because at least they're not as bad as your parents. — Camilla Way

The stories teach them valuable life lessons. That good things happen to bad people. That it's possible to make a bad situation even worse if you don't think it through. That parents are clueless except when they're not. That it's good to try new things even when a new thing is kind of disgusting, because new experiences make you a well-rounded person. That art can be transcendent. That lust is all-powerful, that drugs are fun, and that not everyone who does them is a loser. That losing people is part of life. That where comedy goes, tragedy isn't far behind. That everyone has issues with their bodies, but some take it too far, almost to death. That fear can be exhilarating. That boys are assholes. That it's important to look forward and never look back ... — Megan McCafferty

When I was young - really young - I used to think that the kids who had money, who were popular at school and who did well at things must have had horrible home lives - abusive parents or nasty siblings or lived in cupboard under stairs.
It's kind of sick when you think about it, but what I figured was that life should be fair - everyone had to have good and bad things in their lives, and no one could have a wholly good life or a wholly bad life because that would upset the balance of things.
I know now that I was wrong. — Steph Bowe

But something about the interesting plot bothered me: one of the major rules that Wes had established on A Nightmare on Elm Street had been broken - Freddy was taken out of the dreams. In Nightmare 2, Freddy would be allowed to manifest outside of the dreamscape. It didn't hurt the quality of the script, but it messed up the continuity. On the plus side, I thought the bisexual-slash-homoerotic subtext was edgy and contemporary, and I appreciated how the plot investigated both the social-class system and the rise of suburban malaise. This may sound pretentious and over-analytical, but I believe that Freddy represented what looked to be a bad future for the post-boomer generation. It's possible that Wes believed the youth of America were about to fall into a pile of shit - virtually all the parents in the Nightmare movies were flawed, so how could these kids turn out safe and sane? - and he might have created Freddy to represent a less-than-bright future. — Robert Englund

Ugh. Would that Christmas could just be, without presents. It is just so stupid, everyone exhausting themselves, miserably haemorrhaging money on pointless items nobody wants: no longer tokens of love but angst-ridden solutions to problems. [...] What is the point of entire nation rushing round for six weeks in a bad mood preparing for utterly pointless Taste-of-Others exam which entire nation then fails and gets stuck with hideous unwanted merchandise as fallout? If gifts and cards were completely eradicated, then Christmas as pagan-style twinkly festival to distract from lengthy winter gloom would be lovely. But if government, religious bodies, parents, tradition, etc. insist on Christmas Gift Tax to ruin everything why not make it that everyone must go out and spend £500 on themselves then distribute the items among their relatives and friends to wrap up and give to them instead of this psychic-failure torment? — Helen Fielding

In my experience, there are plenty of bad middle-class parents: those who put their own lives and careers before those of their children and make precious little time available for their offspring, preferring instead to hire in childcare and shower them with the latest and most expensive gadgets. — Martin Jacques

Everyone over 50 in America feels like a refugee. In the Old America there were a lot of bad parents. There always are, because parenting is hard. Inadequate parents could say, 'Go outside and play in the culture,' and the culture
relatively innocent, and boring
could be more or less trusted to bring the kids up. Grown ups now know that you can't send the kids out to play in the culture, because the culture will leave them distorted and disturbed. — Peggy Noonan

There's freedom in hitting bottom, in seeing that you won't be able to save or rescue your daughter, her spouse, his parents, or your career, relief in admitting you've reached the place of great unknowing. This is where restoration can begin, because when you're still in the state of trying to fix the unfixable, everything bad is engaged: the chatter of your mind, the tension of your physiology, all the trunks and wheel-ons you carry from the past. It's exhausting, crazy-making. — Anne Lamott

Why is nostalgia such a bad thing? Nostalgia is a longing to return. If you really loved where you came from, if, in essence, you really loved yourself, how can you not want that to exist? It's like wanting your parents keep living. — Melissa Holbrook Pierson

The public debate plays out in an infinite regress of blame over who's responsible for those who fail to fit the standard erotic mold. This is variously ascribed to the people choosing to be the deviants they are, porn, the Devil (always a shoo-in), bad parents, poor role models, our sexually repressed culture, or the psychiatrists who keep needling sexual minorities by branding them mentally ill. It's a rabbit hole of endless (and usually endlessly bad) arguments. Morally, all that matters - and allow me to reiterate that because I feel it's quite important, all that matters - is whether a person's sexual deviancy is demonstrably harmful. If it's not, and we reject the person anyway, then we're not the good guys in this scenario; we're the bad guys. — Jesse Bering

If you get offended by words - by noises we make with our mouths - it means you were raised by bad parents. — Doug Stanhope

The Titans knew the abominations we would become. The horrific deeds we would commit. All the ways we would go on to abuse our creations. They'd tried to end our existence, to stop us, and in return we orchestrated their murder. We'd killed our parents. And then we created a species in our image, acting surprised when they spent every waking moment improving upon their methods of murder and mass destruction. We did that. We made them sadistic and twisted and broken. We were gods. Every bad thing that had ever happened lay at our feet. There was no one else to blame. — Kaitlin Bevis

Gina and Susie were cool, though. No hint of the beer they said they were going to score. They played good girls to my parents. Not that they weren't good girls. That's exactly what they were: good girls who wanted to pretend they were bad girls but who never would be bad girls because they were too decent. — Benjamin Alire Saenz

Freud, Sigmund: A man so dissatisfied with his own mother and father that he devoted his life to convincing everyone who would listen - or better still, talk - that their parents were just as bad. — John Ralston Saul

Parents have been taught to fear fevers, to see them as bad, and to try to lower them as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, most parents don't know why fevers occur, what is really a "high fever" and how (and why) to work with fevers instead of against them to help their children recover. — Anonymous

Ever since people are kids they use their parents as some
sort of measurement for how bad a situation is. When you fall on the ground
really hard and you can't figure out whether it hurts or not you look to your
parents. If they look worried and rush toward you, you cry. If they laugh and
smack the ground saying "Bold ground," then you pick yourself up and get
on with it.
When you find out you're pregnant and feel numb of all emotions you
look at their expressions. When both your mum and dad hug you and tell
you it's going to be OK and that they'll support you, you know it's not the
end of the world. But depending on the parents, it could have been pretty
damn close. — Cecelia Ahern

In California, where you're allowed to drive at 16, you get so much freedom with that. It's a freedom to get outside of your parents' house and to do bad things. — Gia Coppola

Great teachers will never be able to make up for bad parents, nor should they be expected to. — Taylor Mali

Growing up, I remember my parents feeling a little wary of 'The Simpsons.' This was the late eighties, and there was a wave of articles about TV shows that were bad for America. Then we all started watching it and loved it. — Mindy Kaling

They're her parent," Neal finally spoke out. "Regardless of what they've done, they're still her parents. Yes, she remembers the bad, but she will always remember the good as well, however short it was. It's not as easy to kill family as everyone makes it seem."
"This moment of wisdom was brought to you by - " I was cut off as a water bottle came flying at my head. I caught it and laughed.
"He's right though," our father replied. "We can't just keep killing everyone ... especially our in-laws."
True, we were running out of places to hide the bodies. I snickered at the thought. — J.J. McAvoy

Let's teach that loving isn't always loving. Like when you loved the hamster so much that it died. Some adults do that too. Too much, the wrong way. These are 'Stay away' zones on your body. These are 'Stay away' people. You don't have to obey all adults. Not even parents. Disagree respectfully. Run, if you need. Shout, if you need. Adults can be bad too. — Deborah Ainslie

If mental abuse was a punishable crime, a lot of parents would be in jail serving a long term. — Maddy Malhotra

I watched 60 Minutes ... and they showed this woman, she's in every kind of..thing like that. 'This woman', they say, 'she lost her first four children
died from malnutrition
and, now, she's afraid that her new six-month-old newborn twins will suffer the same fate' ... Who's going to step in and say ... 'kick her in the cunt 'til it doesn't work', 'that woman is a sociopath! that is a sick human being!' ... How much of a sociopath do you need to be? That is the slow ritual torture-murder of children, one after another! At what point does cause-and-effect not kick in? How many bulb-headed skeletons have to go stiff in your arms?! ... 'what? this one's not working ... oh, well let's try again', one after another. At what point do you not go 'I think this is bad'? ... How many kids are you going to fuckin' kill, lady? ... If you impregnate someone under those conditions, they should abort the parents! that's sick! — Doug Stanhope

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

1] The absence of the personal story: in order for magical rites to pass from generation to generation, the sorcerer (shaman) must forget all he learned before his initiation into magic. According to tradition, a man or women who are tied to his past, will in the end allow himself to be governed by his parents' way of thinking, or that of the society in which he lives. This is why all those who are initiated choose a new name and seek to free themselves from their memories, both good and bad. — Paulo Coelho

In the course of therapy, we often witness clients' capacities to report abuse stories with intellectualized, detached demeanors. And they are quick to add disclaimers that minimize their experiences such as "It wasn't so bad," "I probably deserved it anyway," "I know my parents did the best they could," "It didn't have any negative effect on me," or "That was a long time ago, and it can't be relevant to my life now." Many clients expend tremendous amounts of energy disavowing traumatic or abusive histories, believing that revisiting old feelings and thoughts will keep them stuck or are irrelevant to who they are today. — Lisa Ferentz

It's bad timing, but a lot of kids become teenagers just as their parents are hitting their mid-life crisis. So everybody's miserable and confused and seeking that new sense of identity. — Laurie Halse Anderson

No. I never saw a bad girl. You're not bad, Ash. You've just been pretending to be someone else for so long. Just to make your parents happy and then Sawyer happy. The girl you really are is amazing. You're kind yet you've got spunk. You're brilliant but you never act superior. You're careful yet you know how to have fun and you're so incredibly sexy but you haven't got a clue. — Abbi Glines

The end occurred mostly in her whispers and his silence - because he couldn't whisper and they didn't want to wake Colin's parents. They succeeded in staying quiet, in part because it felt like the air had been shocked out of him. Paradoxically, he felt as if his getting dumped was the only thing happening on the entire dark and silent planet, and also as if it weren't happening at all. He felt himself drifting away from the one-sided whispered conversation, wondering if maybe everything big and heartbreaking and incomprehensible is a paradox. — John Green

Let's see if I remember all of this - born in Charlottesville, Virginia, but raised in Salem by her mother, Susan, a teacher, and her father, Jacob, a police officer. Attended Salem Elementary School until your tenth birthday, when your father called into his station to report an unknown child in his house - "
"Stop," I muttered. Liam looked over his shoulder, trying to divide his attention between me and the boy reciting the sordid tale of my life. " - but, bad luck, the PSFs beat the police to your house. Good luck, someone dropped the ball or they had other kiddies to pick up, because they didn't wait around long enough to question your parents, and thus, didn't pre-sort you. And then you came to Thurmond, and you managed to avoid their detecting you were Orange - " "Stop!" I didn't want to hear this - I didn't want anyone to hear it. — Alexandra Bracken

I don't consider myself as a bad person, on the whole I consider myself a good person, I'm good to my parents. I treat my girl right ,,, take her out and buy her stuff. And I go to church every Sunday, But I've decided that just once I wanna do a really bad thing. I mean a really seriously bad thing. 'cause, ya know, like, we're put on this earth with free will. We can choose to do this or that. We can choose to be good or bad. But sometimes I think most people are good and not bad only because they're scared they might go to jail or hell or someplace. Some guy once said: "Anything done out of fear has no moral value" Well, I think that's right. I figure the only way you can be truly good is if you've tried been good, and you've tried being good, and you've tried being bad, and being good feels better. — Alan Moore

three-bedroom condo he and I shared with Trey. Braden had the master suite with his own bathroom, while Trey and I fought over the one in the hall. Not a bad deal, considering Braden's dad owned the condo and only charged Trey and me a hundred dollars each, plus our share of the utilities, food and expenses. My parents would — Maris Black

One thing I know is that it is a bad idea to marry someone who had bad parents. If they hated their mother, if they were hated by their mother or father, your marriage will pay for it in ways both obvious and subtle. When the chips are down, when someone is sick or loses their job or gets scared, the old patterns will kick in and he will treat you the way he treated his mother or the way she treated him. — Ellen Gilchrist

There's something completely unnerving about seeing your parents
upset. I suppose it's because they're supposed to be the strong ones, but
that's not just it. Ever since people are kids they use their parents as some
sort of measurement for how bad a situation is. When you fall on the ground
really hard and you can't figure out whether it hurts or not you look to your
parents. If they look worried and rush toward you, you cry. If they laugh and
smack the ground saying "Bold ground," then you pick yourself up and get
on with it. — Cecelia Ahern

We had the schools we wanted, in a way. Parents did not tend to show up at schools demanding that their kids be assigned more challenging reading or that their kindergarteners learn math while they still loved numbers. They did show up to complain about bad grades, however. And they came in droves, with video cameras and lawn chairs and full hearts, to watch their children play sports. — Amanda Ripley

How many people can you claim truly care about you? I mean, not just the people in your life who are fun to hang out with, not just the people who you love and trust. But people who feel good when you are happy and successful, feel bad when you are hurt or going through a hard time, people who would walk away from their lives for a little while to help you with yours. Not many. I felt that from Jake and I wasn't sure how to handle it. Because there's another side to it, you know. When someone is invested in your well-being, like your parents, for example, you become responsible for them in a way. Anything you do to hurt yourself hurts them. I already felt responsible for too many people that way. You're not really free when people care about you; not if you care about them. — Lisa Unger

I think we've met our quota for tearful reunions," she chuckled against the top of my head.
"When this is done, I promise I'm never going to leave the house ever again. We'll just stay in and order pizza and watch bad television."
Mom pulled away and looked over my shoulder. "Oh, I think you might want to get out every now and then," she said.
I felt the warm weight of Archer's hand on my waist. "Hey, I like pizza and bad TV."
I turned to him, surprised. "Your chest-"
"Cal," he said by way of explanation. "I owe that guy, like, a mountain of burgers. It's getting embarrassing."
Mom flashed me a little smile before saying, "You know, this isn't how I imagined meeting Sophie's first real boyfriend."
"Mom."
Archer gave me a little squeeze. "You mean I'm the first guy your parents have rescued from an enchanted island via use of a magic mirror? I feel so special. — Rachel Hawkins

The center was not holding. It was a country of bankruptcy notices and public-auction announcements and commonplace reports of casual killings and misplaced children and abandoned homes and vandals who misplaced even the four-letter words they scrawled. It was a country in which families routinely disappeared, trailing bad checks and repossession papers. Adolescents drifted from city to torn city, sloughing off both the past and the future as snakes shed their skins, children who were never taught and would never now learn the games that had held the society together. People were missing. Children were missing. Parents were missing. Those left behind filed desultory missing- persons reports, then moved on themselves. — Joan Didion

Big brotherhood is a burden. The first message he needs to hear from you is that you understand. It isn't easy having to share your parents with a smelly baby or a two-year-old pest! The more we try to convince our kids that it's not so bad, the harder they'll work to convince us that it is indeed that bad. — Joanna Faber

Perfectionist parents seem to operate under the illusion that if they can just get their children to be perfect, they will be a perfect family. They put the burden of stability on the child to avoid facing the fact that they, as parents, cannot provide it. The child fails and becomes the scapegoat for family problems. Once again, the child is saddled with the blame. — Susan Forward

As one boy said, 'I was thinking all these horrible thoughts about my parents when suddenly it hit me-if they're all that bad, how come I'm so wonderful' — Mark Twain

When rehabilitation works, there is no question that it is the best and most productive use of the correctional system. It stands to reason: if we can take a bad guy and turn him into a good guy and then let him out, then that's one fewer bad guy to harm us. . . .

Where I do not think there is much hope. . .is when we deal with serial killers and sexual predators, the people I have spent most of my career hunting and studying. These people do what they do. . .because it feels good, because they want to, because it gives
them satisfaction. You can certainly make the argument, and I will agree with you, that many of them are compensating for bad jobs, poor self-image, mistreatment by parents, any number of things. But that doesn't mean we're going to be able to rehabilitate them. — John E. Douglas

Unhealthy families discourage individual expression. Everyone must conform to the thoughts and actions of the toxic parents. They promote fusion, a blurring of personal boundaries, a welding together of family members. On an unconscious level, it is hard for family members to know where one ends and another begins. In their efforts to be close, they often suffocate one another's individuality. — Susan Forward

For centuries, we were taught that anger is bad. Our parents, teachers, priests, everyone taught us how to control and suppress our anger. But I ask: why can't we convert our anger for the larger good of society? — Kailash Satyarthi

We all have a tiny whispery voice inside of us, but the bad ones are usually at a lower register and come through a little clearer. I don't know where the good voice came from. It was a mix of loving parents, luck, and me. But ever since I was a small child, I would look at places where I wanted to be and believe I would eventually be on the other side of the glass. — Amy Poehler

I am far from a perfect dad. And I always will be. But I'm a damn good dad, and my son will always feel bigger than anything life can throw at him. Why? Because I get it. I get the power a dad has in a child's life, and in a child's level of self-belief. I get that everything I ever do and ever say to my son will be absorbed, for good or for bad. — Dan Pearce

What was behind this smug presumption that what pleased you was bad or at least unimportant in comparison to other things? ...
Little children were trained not to do "just what they liked' but ... but what? ... Of course! What others liked. And which others? Parents, teachers, supervisors, policemen, judges, officials, kings, dictators. All authorities.
When you are trained to despise "just what you like" then, of course, you become a much more obedient servant of others - a good slave. When you learn not to do "just what you like" then the System loves you. — Robert M. Pirsig

Sorting out what's good and bad is the province of ethics. It is also what keeps priests, pundits, and parents busy. Unfortunately, what keeps children and philosophers busy is asking the priests, pundits and parents, Why? — Thomas Cathcart

I'm not good for you. I don't know why you make me want you so bad. I was angry with myself when I said all that earlier. I was mad because I wanted you in a way I'd never experienced before. Before you, I just wanted to excel in football and school. I wanted my parents to be proud of me. But now, I want other things too. You get to me in a way I don't understand — Abbi Glines

Nobody wants to hear that any aspect of my awesome life is bad. I get that. But there are days, maybe two or three times a year, when I get completely overwhelmed by my job and go to my office, lie on the floor, and cry for ten minutes. Then I think: Mindy, you have literally the best life in the world besides that hot lawyer who married George Clooney. This is what you dreamed about when you were a weird, determined little ten-year-old. There are more than a thousand people in one square mile of this studio who would kill to have this job. Get your ass up off the floor and go back into that writers' room, you weakling. Then I get up, pour myself a generous glass of whiskey and club soda, think about the sustained grit of my parents, and go back to work. — Mindy Kaling

I wouldn't know what to do with daughters,' he says. 'Exchange them for sons?'
'But then I could wind up with something like you.'
'I'm not so bad,' he says. 'I'm smart.'
'You're about a hundred miles away from the town of Smart, my friend.'
'You're mistaken, counselor,' he says. 'I'm smart, I can take care of myself. I'm an awesome tennis player, a keen observer of life around me. I'm a good cook. I always have weed.'
'I'm sure your parents are proud.'
'It's possible.' He looks at his knees and I wonder if I've offended him. — Kaui Hart Hemmings

Some parents were nervous about how they would portray everything, ... At a picnic the moms put on for the team and coaches, I said that all the reality shows are turning around and showing good things, not bad things. — Dick Butkus

What do you suppose 'Jack and the Beanstalk' is about?" she asked. Conner contemplated a moment and slyly grinned. "Bad beans can cause more than indigestion," he answered, laughing hysterically to himself. Alex pursed her lips to hide a smile. "What do you think the lesson of 'Little Red Riding Hood' is?" she asked him. "Do you think she should have just mailed her grandmother the gift basket?" "Now you're thinking!" he said. "Although, I've always felt sorry for Little Red Riding Hood. It's obvious her parents didn't like her very much." "Why do you say that?" Alex asked, wondering how he could have possibly construed that from the story. "Who sends their young daughter into a dark and wolf-occupied forest carrying freshly baked food and wearing a bright jacket?" Conner asked. "They were practically asking for a wolf to eat her! She must have annoyed the heck out of them!" Alex held back laughter with all her might but, to Conner's delight, she let a quiet chuckle slip. "I — Chris Colfer

These women lived their lives happily. They had been taught, probably by loving parents, not to exceed the boundaries of their happiness regardless of what they were doing. But therefore they could never know real joy. Which is better? Who can say? Everyone lives the way she knows best. What I mean by 'their happiness' is living a life untouched as much as possible by the knowledge that we are really, all of us, alone. That's not a bad thing. Dressed in their aprons, their smiling faces like flowers, leaning to cook, absorbed in their little troubles and perplexities, they fall in love and marry. I think that's great. I wouldn't mind that kind of life. Me, when I'm utterly exhausted by it all, my skin breaks out, on those lonely evenings when I call my friends again and again and nobody's home, then I despise my own life - my birth, my upbringing, everything. I feel only regret for the whole thing. — Banana Yoshimoto

Children, like dogs, have so sharp and fine a scent that they detect and hunt out everything
the bad before all the rest. They also know well enough how this or that friend stands with their parents; and as they practice no dissimulation whatever, they serve as excellent barometers by which to observe the degree of favor or disfavor at which we stand with their parents. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

My parents had a certain resolve to them that I don't see as so prevalent today. Through good times and bad, they were committed to one another. Their relationship wasn't something to be constantly examined or picked apart. — Steve Carell

I had been a girl of whom certain things were expected, none of them too bad: a career as a nurse, for example; a sense of duty to my parents; obedience to the law and worship of convention. But in one year of being away from home, that girl had gone out of existence. — Jamaica Kincaid

But oh, it would just break your heart to see some of them waiting for their visitors. They get their hair all done up on Saturday, and on Sunday morning they get themselves all dressed and ready, and after all that, nobody comes to see them. I feel so bad, but what can you do? Having children is no guarantee that you'll get visitors ... No, it isn't. — Fannie Flagg

My parents are really funny. Laughter was a big part of my childhood. Of course, they tell a lot of bad jokes - but so do I. I tell a lot of bad jokes. — Cecily Strong

attention deficit disorder in his own son. "I had worked in an ADHD clinic during my residency, and had strong feelings that this was overdiagnosed," he said. "That it was a 'savior' diagnosis for too many kids whose parents wanted a medical reason to drug their children, or to explain their kids' bad behavior. — Michael Lewis

There are certain bad habits we've groomed our whole life
from personality flaws to fashion faux pas. And it has been the role of parents and friends, outside of some minor tweaking, to reinforce the belief that we're okay just as we are. But it's not enough to just be yourself. You have to be your best self. And that's a tall order if you haven't found your best self yet. — Neil Strauss

A lot of parents today are terrified that something they say to their children might make them 'feel bad.' But, hey, if they've done something wrong, they should feel bad. Kids with a sense of responsibility, not entitlement, who know when to experience gratitude and humility, will be better at navigating the social shoals of college. — Amy Chua

Most families would be healthier and happier if their members treated one another with the respect they would give to a perfect stranger. C. S. Lewis's discussion of storge, familial love, is endlessly instructive on this point and is required reading for all who intend to have a decent family life.1 He notes that he has been far more impressed by the bad manners of parents to children than by those of children to parent. — Dallas Willard

Bad things happen - wars, plagues, parents abandoning their children, the heartless preying on those with hearts - and no one, not a human or a god, will intervene. — Yiyun Li

There are hundreds of millions of gun owners in this country, and not one of them will have an accident today. The only misuse of guns comes in environments where there are drugs, alcohol, bad parents, and undisciplined children. Period. — Ted Nugent

You can't find your true voice and peer behind the door and report honestly and clearly to us if your parents are reading over your shoulder. They are probably the ones who told you not to open that door in the first place. You can tell if you they're there because a small voice will say, 'Oh, whoops, don't say that, that's a secret,' or 'That's a bad work,' or 'Don't tell anyone you jack off. They'll all start doing it.' So you have to breathe or pray or do therapy to send them away. Write as if your parents are dead. — Anne Lamott

If I'd been burned alive because of bad grades, my parents would have killed me, especially my father, who meant well but was just a little too gung ho for my taste. — David Sedaris

I hate the bad rap that people give my parents. Because they are just parents, really, at the end of the day trying to stand up for their daughter and themselves. — Lindsay Lohan

I just want us to remember than when we became parents, we didn't change species. We're still humans. I mean, we're bad-ass humans, for sure, but humans nonetheless. We make mistakes, all day, and that's good. We want our children to see that. We want them to learn how to handle mistakes because that's an important thing to learn. We expect to make mistakes, we say we're sorry, we forgive ourselves, we shrug and smile, and we try again.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat. — Glennon Doyle Melton

When a child does bad things, the parents are always going to love their child even if they do something bad. — Selena

We're a nation with an eating disorder, and we know it. The multiple maladies caused by bad eating are taking a dire toll on our health
most tragically for our kids, who are predicted to be this country's first generation to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. That alone is a stunning enough fact to give us pause. So is a government policy that advises us to eat more fruits and vegetables, while doling out subsidies not to fruit and vegetable farmers, but to commodity crops destined to become soda pop and cheap burgers. The Farm Bill, as of this writing, could aptly be called the Farm Kill, both for its effects on small farmers and for what it does to us, the consumers who are financing it. — Barbara Kingsolver

My parents always insulted each other. Mom was a good student and thought school was important. Dad agreed even though he had a chip on his shoulder because he never got good grades. He learned most things from running around on the street, but in a funny way, my dad was smarter. My mom never remembered what she learned in school because she just memorized stuff for tests; it was my dad, who had bad grades, that actually remembered everything he learned. — Eddie Huang

Are you capable of forgiving and loving God even when you have found out that He is not perfect, even when He has let you down and disappointed you by permitting bad luck and sickness and cruelty in His world, and permitting some of those things to happen to you? Can you learn to love and forgive Him despite His limitations, as Job does, and as you once learned to forgive and love your parents even though they were not as wise, as strong, or as perfect as you needed them to be? — Harold S. Kushner

When the weather's nice, my parents go out quite frequently and stick a bunch of flowers on old Allie's grave. I went with them a couple of times, but I cut it out. In the first place, I don't enjoy seeing him in that crazy cemetery. Surrounded by dead guys and tombstones and all. It wasn't too bad when the sun was out, but twice - twice - we were there when it started to rain. It was awful. It rained on his lousy tombstone, and it rained on the grass on his stomach. It rained all over the place. All the visitors that were visiting the cemetery started running like hell over to their cars. That's what nearly drove me crazy. All the visitors could get in their cars and turn on their radios and all and then go someplace nice for dinner - everybody except Allie. I couldn't stand it. I know it's only his body and all that's in the cemetery, and his soul's in Heaven and all that crap, but I couldn't stand it anyway. I just wished he wasn't there. — J.D. Salinger

I don't think Estonians ever really hated Russians. It was more, 'Leave us alone.' We can't change what is past. We can't blame them for what their parents have done. We never hated them. They didn't destroy us that bad. — Carmen Kass