Quotes & Sayings About Children Growing Up

I started reading Dickens when I was about 12, and I particularly liked all of the orphan books. I always liked books about young people who are left on their own with the world, and the four children's books I've written feature that very thing: children that are abandoned by their families or running away from their families or ignored by their families and having to grow up quicker than they should, like David Copperfield - having to be the hero of their own story. — John Boyne

She did not care for children's books in which the children grew up, as what "growing up" entailed (in life as in books) was a swift and inexplicable dwindling of character; out of a clear blue sky the heroes and heroines abandoned their adventures for some dull sweetheart, got married and had families, and generally started acting like a bunch of cows. — Donna Tartt

Only when you are grown up, perhaps only when you have children yourself, do you fully understand that your own parents had a full and intricate existence before you were born. — Ian McEwan

Red remembered growing up in that house as heaven. There were enough children on Bouton Road to form two baseball teams, when they felt like it, and they spent all their free time playing out of doors - boys and girls together, little ones and big ones. Suppers were brief, pesky interruptions foisted on them by their mothers. They disappeared again till they were called in for bed, and then they came protesting, all sweaty-faced and hot with grass blades sticking to them, begging for just another half hour. "I bet I can still name every kid on the block," Red would tell his own children. But that was not so impressive, because most of those kids had stayed on in the neighborhood as grown-ups, or at least come back to it later after trying out other, lesser places. Red — Anne Tyler

Weston: Look at my outlook. You don't envy it, right?
Wesley: No.
Weston: That's because it's full of poison. Infected. And you recognize poison, right? You recognize it when you see it?
Wesley: Yes.
Weston: Yes, you do. I can see that you do. My poison scares you.
Wesley: Doesn't scare me.
Weston: No?
Wesley: No.
Weston: Good. You're growing up. I never saw my old man's poison until I was much older than you. Much older. And then you know how I recognized it?
Wesley: How?
Weston: Because I saw myself infected with it. That's how. I saw me carrying it around. His poison in my body. — Sam Shepard

Growing up in a home where children continually witness abuse and violence will leave them living every day feeling anxious and depressed, and they will suffer from physical and emotioinal problems throughout their childhood. But worst of all, they will be highly likely to grow up to raise children of their own who will continue the tragic cycle of family violence. (Taken from the tc book BLOOD HIGHWAY) — Shelia Johnson

Dare we let children grow up with no vital contact with the Saviour, never intentionally and consciously put into His arms? Not to bring them to Him, not to teach them to walk toward Him, as soon as they can walk toward anyone, is wronging a child beyond words. The terrible indictment uttered by the Lord, "Them that were entering in ye hindered," and the millstone warning for offending little ones, are close akin to the deserts of those who ruin a man's whole day of life by wronging his morning hours. Not to help a child to know the saving power of Christ is to hold back a man from salvation. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

I would want my children to grow up and do what they wish to in a field that they choose to step in. They should not have to use the shadow of their father's name. I think that is a bit of a downer for a movie star's children. — Shahrukh Khan

When you grow up in that (multi-ethnic) environment, you see the world differently. Being a mixed-race child, I didn't always see colour in people, I really didn't. It was other people that made me see the colour all the time. — Halle Berry

All persons who bear the blessed title of parent have the personal responsibility to see that their children are growing up fully appreciative of the rights of God and their fellowmen. — J. Edgar Hoover

If parents start to fear that monsters may have been let loose in their children's bedrooms, it may be because their children are the monsters. Consider what kind of world they are growing up in. It can all end tomorrow. Material progress no longer seems as closely meshed with human evolution as it once was; the anticipated leap into the future may not take place in a time or manner that can be so easily predicted. However, by now everyone from Richard Nixon to Chairman Mao knows that the only way to force the evolutionary curve to bend your way is by throwing larger numbers at it. — Ken Hollings

If a child is given love, he becomes loving ... If he's helped when he needs help, he becomes helpful. And if he has been truly valued at home ... he grows up secure enough to look beyond himself to the welfare of others. — Joyce Brothers

It isn't a coincidence that governments everywhere want to educate children. Government education, in turn, is supposed to be evidence of the state's goodness and its concern for our well-being. The real explanation is less flattering. If the government's propaganda can take root as children grow up, those kids will be no threat to the state apparatus. They'll fasten the chains to their own ankles. H.L. Mencken once said that the state doesn't just want to make you obey. It tries to make you want to obey. And that's one thing the government schools do very well. — Llewellyn Rockwell

...[their] children were not growing up or being brought up, but were tumbling up. — Charles Dickens

I remember saying once to my friend Susan, when my marriage was becoming intolerable, "I don't want my children growing up in a household like this." Susan said, "Why don't you leave those so-called children out of the discussion? They don't even exist yet. Why can't you just admit that you don't want to live in unhappiness anymore? — Elizabeth Gilbert

The underlying message of the Lancet article is that if you want to understand aggressive behaviour in children, look to the social and emotional environment in which they are growing up, and the values they bring to the viewing experience. — Hugh Mackay

Children whose curiosity survives parental discipline and who manage to grow up before they blow up are invited to join the Yale faculty. Within the university they go on asking their questions and trying to find the answers ... it is a place where the world's hostility to curiosity can be defied. — Edmund Morgan

The most serious injury is done in childhood. Our cruel waste of the nerve force of children is only more pathetic than it is absurd. The mere business of growing up ... which should be a process unconscious or full of joy and rich accumulation, is made by our ignorant mishandling a confusing, irritating, exhausting process, often leaving permanent injuries to the machine, as well as waste of power. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Candy. He spoke of candy. Was he still in the child's world where candy stood for something sweet enough to hold back tears? I had grown older, and had lost enthusiasm for childish delights. I wanted what every teenager wants
freedom to develop into a woman, freedom to have full control over my life! Though I tried to tell him this, my voice had dried up along with my tears. — V.C. Andrews

We all learn by imitating, as children, as students, as novices in the world of business. And then we grow up and learn to blend our innate abilities with the rules or principles we have learned. — Akio Morita

It has started to snow. We all ran out when it began, and played at catching flakes as we used to when we were children. But it was cold, and our boots and gloves and cloaks were soon wet - you feel these things more when you are grown-up. — Natasha Farrant

In those years I did not care to enjoy sex, only to have it. That is what seeing Alex again on Fifth Avenue brought back to me - a youth of fascinated, passionless copulation. There they are, figures in a discoloured blur, young men and not so young, the nice ones with automobiles, the dull ones full of suspicions and stinginess. By asking a thousand questions of many heavy souls, I did not learn much. You receive biographies interesting mainly for their coherence. So many are children who from the day of their birth are growing up to be their parents. Look at the voting records, inherited like flat feet. — Elizabeth Hardwick

I looked at my son and put my hand on his arm. 'I'd really like to know....What could I have done in the past that would have helped when you were growing up? How could I have been a better mother?'
He thought about it for a few moments and then answered, 'When I was growing up--and even during my difficult years--I would have liked it if you had listened more to my heart than to my words.' ...
Sometimes our children use words or a tone that communicates something completely different from what they are struggling with inside--whether it's fear or insecurity or pain. I realized that this is a great lesson for me to learn and something that could be applied to all my relationships. — Christopher Yuan

Resting on the roots of this old oak I lean back against his knotted trunk, shine my granny smith on my sleeve And ponder the days ... — Kellie Elmore

family structure that produces the best outcomes for children, on average, are two biological parents who remain married. Divorced parents produce the next-best outcomes. Whether the parents remarry or remain single while the children are growing up makes little difference. Never-married women produce the worst outcomes. All of these statements apply after controlling for the family's socioeconomic status.14 I know of no other set of important findings that are as broadly accepted by social scientists who follow the technical literature, liberal as well as conservative, and yet are so resolutely ignored by network news programs, editorial writers for the major newspapers, and politicians of both major political parties. In — Charles Murray

I would have given anything to keep her little. They outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow them.
Brian Fitzgerald, talking about his children. — Jodi Picoult

Until she had had children of her own she had not been able to contemplate the death of either of her parents; when the subject had arisen, in conversation or in her own imagining, she had said only: I just don't know what I'd do. — Sebastian Faulks

I want MIT to be the dream of every child who wants to grow up to make the world a better place. We need to reach those young explorers and bring them with us on the great adventure of discovery and innovation. — Susan Hockfield

Almost 24 million children - one in three - are likely growing up without their father involved in their lives. — Arne Duncan

We have a cultural notion that if children were not engineered, if we did not manipulate them, they would grow up as beasts in the field. This is the wildest fallacy in the world. — Joseph Chilton Pearce

If our children are unable to voice what they mean, no one will know how they feel. If they can't imagine a different world, they are stumbling through a darkness made all the more sinister by its lack of reference points. For a young person growing up in America's alienated neighborhoods, there can be no greater empowerment than to dare to speak from the heart - and then to discover that one is not alone in ones feelings. — Rita Dove

To see cartoon-me positioned (alphabetically) amongst so many of my women heroes and role models ... well, I just broke down and cried. Happy tears. I surely hope that this one-of-a-kind collection of radical American women reaches the hands of all children who want to grow up and become amazing women. — Kate Bornstein

Many of Judy Blume's books - which I devoured when I was growing up and where I found characters that were believable because they were a lot like me - caused considerable consternation when they were first published, but now they're widely accepted as an essential part of the children's literary canon. — Jeff Kinney

Validate my existence with your words and I will speak to you all the day long. — Richelle E. Goodrich

The roots of a child's ability to cope and thrive, regardless of circumstance, lie in that child's having had at least a small, safe place (an apartment? a room? a lap?) in which, in the companionship of a loving person, that child could discover that he or she was lovable and capable of loving in return. If a child finds this during the first years of life, he or she can grow up to be a competent, healthy person. — Fred Rogers

Every child should be given the right to grow up and become a productive citizen. This will not happen unless, at the very least, basic food needs are met. Ending childhood hunger should be a national priority. — Pamela Sue Martin

God said this is our land, land in which we flourish as people ... we want our cattle to get fat on our land so that our children grow up in prosperity; and we do not want the fat removed to feed others. — Jomo Kenyatta

If we have children. When they are just born we do everything for them. We are omnipotent, they are completely dependent on us, but then when they grow up you must take back your influence on them, to give them freedom. — Jurgen Moltmann

I have several children who I'm turning into killers. Wait till they grow up. — David Berkowitz

CHILDREN Are Like ANGELS And On Earth, ANGELS Have No Color ... It's The Society To Blame That Teaches Racism, Turning An ANGLE To A Civilized Beast While They Are Growing Up ... — Muhammad Imran Hasan

Katie soon learned there was a problem with hope. — Carla H. Krueger

You can't make me be nice.
You can't make me be good.
You can't make me believe.
But your example, your kindness, your patience and love will affect me perhaps enough that eventually I may choose to do those things. — Richelle E. Goodrich

We all have the best laid plans for our children, and they go and ruin it all by growing up any way they want to. What the hell was it all for, then? (Real Life and Liars) — Kristina Riggle

A boy has two jobs. One is just being a boy. The other is growing up to be a man. — Herbert Hoover

Arizona may be the only state in America where mothers don't tell their children that someday they can grow up and be president. — John McCain

I have two older sisters and one older brother and hold them largely responsible for the trouble I got into growing up. I believe as the youngest child, that is my right. — Suzanne Collins

Have I added to their building blocks, shoring them up with strength and their own magnificence? Have I shown them enough color? Did I let them have enough ice cream and leave them alone enough without my anxieties? How can we know which is the right way? We have to go with our inner instincts and the feeling in our bones. But I can contribute to their growing cells, show them some foods that are better than others, walk with them, and encourage their own tastes. I can teach them to love and appreciate food, help them treat their bodies like gold, listen to them wanting more or less. The rest I have to trust. — Tessa Kiros

If any feel that as psychiatrists directing a hospital for alcoholics we appear somewhat sentimental, let them stand with us a while on the firing line, see the tragedies, the despairing wives, the little children; let the solving of these problems become a part of their daily work, and even of their sleeping moments, and the most cynical will not wonder that we have accepted and encouraged this movement. We feel, after years of experience, that we have found nothing which has contributed more to the rehabilitation of these men than the altruistic movement now growing up among them. — William Duncan Silkworth

We cannot say to one couple that their love is deserving of marriage and to another that their love should only be called a partnership. 'Separate but equal' is never equal. Children of same-sex couples should not grow up wondering why their family is treated differently from other families — Christine Gregoire

It is rare, I think, for parents to let their children
of any age
grow up and become peers. — Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot

Many children today are growing up without discipline. As they become adults and the discipline of job or family demands are placed upon them, they do not know how to cope ... children need discipline to be useful members of society. Likewise, God's children need discipline to be useful members of His family. — Billy Graham

Being a Negro in America means trying to smile when you want to cry. It means trying to hold on to physical life amid psychological death. It means the pain of watching your children grow up with clouds of inferiority in their mental skies. It means having their legs off, and then being condemned for being a cripple. — Martin Luther King Jr.

She was deemed an unfit mother, in spite of the fact that she goes to the gym every day,' Hal once told me.
... Beautiful people are often forgiven for many things
and maybe she's gotten through life that way, but I don't forgive her for anything
and I don't even know what awful things she's done other than showing a lack of parental fitness. — Neal Shusterman

Mental illness was a family secret. This patient had four children grow up in foster homes, and they never knew her. It was heart-wrenching for her granddaughter to find this out. — Sean Moran

I wasn't exposed to art as I was growing up, and can't recall the first time I saw a work of art. However, I remember very clearly a vision I had of a little green reindeer when I was a child, and visions emanate from the same mythical area where painting resides. Whatever the reason, I immediately felt comfortable working with visual materials. — William S. Burroughs

I was banished from that world forever, I knew. I couldn't go back now. One day soon I would go away from here entirely; I would leave this house, perhaps never to return.
I hugged myself, comforting my fear. Very well then, I thought, I will be my own house. I will build myself a house out of my own flesh and bones where my frightened child-self can find shelter. After all, isn't that one of the things that women do? We are houses for our children, shielding them from harm within the stronghold of our bodies, until they are strong enough to breathe and walk alone. So surely I must be able to give myself shelter now. — Patrice Kindl

If a boy is not trained to endure and to bear trouble, he will grow up a girl; and a boy that is a girl has all a girl's weakness without any of her regal qualities. A woman made out of a woman is God's noblest work; a woman made out of a man is His meanest. — Henry Ward Beecher

If our society were truly to appreciate the significance of children's emotional ties throughout the first years of life, it would no longer tolerate children growing up or parents having to struggle in situations which could not possibly nourish healthy growth. — Stanley Greenspan

Childhood in large parts of modern Britain, at any rate, has been replaced by premature adulthood, or rather adolescence. Children grow up very fast but not very far. That is why it is possible for fourteen-year-olds now to establish friendships with twenty-six-year-olds - because they know by the age of fourteen all they are ever going to know. — Theodore Dalrymple

And why is it that so many years later it is so easy to distinguish the bullies from their prey? Adult bodies surrounding the children of long ago. The years have changed nothing. — Leila Aboulela

Live for the gifts the fragrant-breasted Muses
send, for the clear, the singing, lyre, my children.
Old age freezes my body, once so lithe,
rinses the darkness from my hair, now white.
My heart's heavy, my knees no longer keep me
up through the dance they used to prance like fawns in.
Oh, I grumble about it, but for what?
Nothing can stop a person's growing old.
They say that Tithonus was swept away
in Dawn's passionate, rose-flushed arms to live
forever, but he lost his looks, his youth,
failing husband of an immortal bride. — Sappho

You can not ignore his current life. Bowie has become a family man and enjoys to see his children grow up close to him. But after six years he feels the urge to get in the studio with musicans he likes. He closely follows bands like Arcade Fire in recent months. But he is inspired by ancient Chinese folk and jazz these days as well. — Gail Ann Dorsey

Blood doesn't make you family. Hell, an only child can bleed. It's the sharing of pain that makes you family. 'Cause, you can't really love a brother or sister until you know that they're as scarred and broken as you are. And, hey, if you grow up with a father like mine and you aren't at least a little scarred and broken, well then, that's not your father. You were spawned by an entirely different guy. — Christopher Titus

[My boys] bloody well will work. Same as myself, same as David. They're not going to be the kinds of kids that just hang about. I want them to be able to fulfill their passions, but I think it's important that the children grow up and have respect for themselves. — Victoria Beckham

DEAR MISS MANNERS:
I a tired of being treated like a child. My father says it's because I am a child
I am twelve-and-a-half years old
but it still isn't fair. If I go into a store to buy something, nobody pays any attention to me, or if they do, it's to say, "Leave that alone," "Don't touch that," although I haven't done anything. My money is as good as anybody's, but because I am younger, they feel they can be mean to me. It happens to me at home, too. My mother's friend who comes over after dinner sometimes, who doesn't have any children of her own and doesn't know what's what, likes to say to me, "Shouldn't you be in bed by now,dear?" when she doesn't even know what my bedtime is supposed to be. Is there any way I can make these people stop?
GENTLE READER:
Growing up is the best revenge. — Judith Martin

It's a difficult position. Do you endanger your child to fight for the right thing, or do you keep your mouth shut and let your child grow up in a world where their natural rights are stripped away from them? — Jamie Bell

The U.S. is becoming an increasingly fatherless society. A generation ago, an American child could reasonably expect to grow up with his or her father. Today an American child can reasonably expect not to. Fatherlessness is now approaching a rough parity with fatherhood as a defining feature of American childhood. — David Blankenhorn

The job of every generation is to discover the flaws of the one that came before it. That's part of growing up, figuring out all the ways your parents and their friends are broken. — Justine Larbalestier

The world changed, and the idea of having a family became feasible for homosexuals. But I was still left with the question as to what it would be like for a child to grow up with gay parents. — Andrew Solomon

I am concerned that my children will grow up sheltered from the public. I am concerned that the children get to experience childhood and youth in their time without constant monitoring. It has been very important for both the Crown Prince and myself. — Mette-Marit, Crown Princess Of Norway

The knowledge that you were beaten and that this, as your parents tell you, was for your own good may well be retained (although not always), but the suffering caused by the way you were mistreated will remain unconscious and will later prevent you from empathizing with others. This is why battered children grow up to be mothers and fathers who beat their offspring — Alice Miller

As a child growing up, you never thought about being in a videogame, then to have a game of your own and be lucky enough to set the bar with it in the gaming world, it's a dream come true. — Tiger Woods

Both the revolutionary and the creative individual are perpetual juveniles. The revolutionary does not grow up because he cannot grow, while the creative individual cannot grow up because he keeps growing. — Eric Hoffer

One loses the capacity to grieve as a child grieves, or to rage as a child rages: hotly, despairingly, with tears of passion. One grows up, one becomes civilized, one learns one's manners, and consequently can no longer manage these two functions - sorrow and anger - adequately. — Anita Brookner

Our children will grow up confused, not respecting the Bible or anything else that is sacred. — Charles Wesley

Thoughts are such fleet magic things. Betsy's thoughts swept a wide arc while Uncle Keith read her poem aloud. She thought of Julia learning to sing with Mrs. Poppy. She thought of Tib learning to dance. She thought of herself and Tacy and Tib going into their 'teens. She even thought of Tom and Herbert and of how, by and by, they would be carrying her books and Tacy's and Tib's up the hill from high school. — Maud Hart Lovelace

Don't try to make children grow up to be like you, or they may do it. — Russell Baker

I've long believed that one of the mainsprings of our own liberty has been the widespread ownership of property among our people and the expectation that anyone's child, even from the humblest of families, could grow up to own a business or a corporation. Thomas Jefferson dreamed of a land of small farmers, of shopowners, and merchants. Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Homestead Act that ensured that the great western prairies of America would be the realm of independent, propertyowning citizens-a mightier guarantee of freedom is difficult to imagine. — Ronald Reagan

The question isn't so much, Are you parenting the right way? as it is: Are you the adult you want your child to grow up to be? — Brene Brown

From the time that you are a child, you grow up repressing yourself. — Lauryn Hill

It's really impossible for athletes to grow up. On the one hand, you're still a child, still playing a game. But on the other hand, you're a superhuman hero that everyone dreams of being. No wonder we have such a hard time understanding who we are. — Billie Jean King

I'm a firm believer the the first two tenets of effective child-rearing boil down to "spend a lot of time with your children" and "cherish them," because, one, they need you when they're growing, and, two, they're going to be up and gone before you realize it. — Archie Manning

Public opinion polls are rather like children in a garden, digging things up all the time to see how they're growing. — J.B. Priestley

When I was growing up, my parents took in foster children. From a young age, I learned that there are a lot of children in need. — Michelle Monaghan

Manners are the root, laws only the trunk and branches. Manners are the archetypes of laws. Manners are laws in their infancy; laws are manners fully grown,
or, manners are children, which, when they grow up, become laws. — Horace Mann

The stultifying effect of the movies is not that the children see them but that their parents do, as if Hollywood provided a plausible adult recreation to grow up into. — Paul Goodman

A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. — Edward Snowden

Never try to grow up too fast, but don't linger in the child you were — Christofer Drew

It was all beginning to run together in the back of Eleanor's mind, and the things that had probably really happened were confused with the things that probably hadn't. And every day everything in her whole past life - the real things and the imaginary things - was being pushed farther and farther back, because going to high school was so enormous, so vast! so different from all of Eleanor's life before. The milling crowds in the hall between classes, all those jostling elbows and swollen shoulders and bosoms, all those enormous hands and feet, they pushed and thumped and shoved at Eleanor's childhood, until there was no room anymore for anything but now, right now, a hurrying rushing now that was just incredibly thrilling, or absolutely rotten and just disgusting, this heaving present moment, right now. — Jane Langton

When I grow up I want to be just like Benny Carter! — Dizzy Gillespie

When we grow up, we find ways to hide our anxieties, our loneliness, our fear and sorrow. But children hide nothing, putting everything into their tears, which they spread liberally about for the whole world to see. — Yoko Ogawa

Growing up in a religious environment, children learn what not to do sexually. They learn that some practices or ideas, such as homosexuality, lust, masturbation, and pornography are sinful. These ideas are embedded in the minds of children years before they are ready for marriage, so it's no surprise that many religious people have little or no experience with sex and know little about their sexuality.
The guilt cycle that results from this training creates a form of self-censorship. Because so many sex acts and ideas are liable to lead to eternal damnation, people have a strong incentive to avoid expressing or discussing secretly held ideas and interests. Fear leads to hidden thoughts and activities and prevents normal, appropriately channeled sexual expression. — Darrel Ray

People know more about baseball players' contracts than they do about the policies that govern the fate of our children's lives in twenty years. Think about it. People used to say, the whole time I was growing up, 'Do you want to bring a child into this world?' That's pretty dire. — Jackson Browne

When I was growing up my mother used to tell me that the best gift parents could give their children was to have a strong and loving relationship with each other. — George Howe Colt

Jocelyn did not want to always remain the same. Where was the adventure in that? — Heidi Schulz

It was a dangerous profession I had chosen ... because no one likes a funny kid. In fact, adults are scared silly of them and tend to warn children who act out that they are going to wind up in prison or worse. It is only when you grow up that they pay you vast sums of money to make them laugh. — Art Buchwald

Who has not seen a frail, clinging-vine type of woman, who upon the death of her husband strainghtens up and becomes an oak, around which the growing children twine their lives, and are forever greatful for such a mother? But this strength would never have come out and developed had it not been for the tears that watered the vine and made it into an oak. — E. Stanley Jones

I want my children to be able to meet and play and communicate with many other children on their own, not only when they are driven somewhere. I want them to grow up in an environment that is not just a place where people sleep but where people work.. and where people enjoy themselves. — Moshe Safdie

This is where the pivotal events of my childhood unfolded, while I ate banana and root beer Popsicles, two by two, tucking the sticks neatly under the skirt of the chair. It's where Sunnybank Lad met Lady, Ken met his friend Flicka, Atlanta burned, Manderley burned, Lassie came home, Jim ran away, Alice got small, Wilbur got big, David Copperfield was born, Beth died, and, on an endless gloomy winter afternoon, Jody shot his yearling. — Jo Ann Beard

a happy child grows up to be a happy adult. When I was growing up, spoiling a child meant ruining a child. If something was spoiled, it either went down the drain or was tossed into the rubbish. These days, however, parents pat themselves on the back because their children want for nothing. Wanting is good. If you want for nothing, then you have no goals. And if you have no goals, you have no life, no drive, and no ambitions. Chances are, if today's children don't inherit a lot of money from their parents, they'll grow up and live off the welfare system. — Jamie Eubanks