Parenting Yourself Quotes & Sayings

Tell me how a person judges his or her self-esteem, and I will tell you how that person operates at work, in love, in sex, in parenting, in every important aspect of existence - and how high he or she is likely to rise. The reputation you have with yourself - your self-esteem - is the single most important factor for a fulfilling life. — Nathaniel Branden

How can families harm us when they love us? Very easily, unfortunately. Most of us overlook one important fact when we think love is enough: Love and respect aren't the same thing.
Love is fusion. As a baby, you belong to your parents, you're extension of them.
Respect is differentiation: you belong to yourself, and you're an extension of no one.
Differentiation is essential for happiness of adults. — Barbara Sher

Parenting changes your life, it changes how you hear yourself in relationship to others - which is part of the reason that a bunch of people in the rock community are sick of the goodwill and positive energy and love between these 45-year-old musicians who they preferred when they were 25 and taking stabs at each other. — Lars Ulrich

Be a full person. Motherhood is a glorious gift, but do not define yourself solely by motherhood. Be a full person. Your child will benefit from that. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Don't let yourself become so concerned with raising a good kid that you forget you already have one. — Glennon Melton

It is not natural to challenge the existing beliefs breaking patterns, and yet once you manage, you create a space for the new patterns to form, the ones that are filled with Love, Acceptance, Knowledge, and you give yourself & your kids a chance to Spiritually Grow. — Natasa Nuit Pantovic

You can apply some leverage when your child is feeling energetic, "We can go to the park as soon as these blocks are put away." But when a toddler is tired or hungry, avoid a losing battle. Do it yourself for now. There will be plenty of other opportunities for your child to participate. Don't worry, this is not the last mess!! — Julie King

Health is the ability to be fully and consciously aware of all that contributes to your life experience and to effectively exist in that environment. It then means you see yourself as you really are. — Rand Olson

I'm not saying parenting cured my narcissism, but it changed me and continues to change me every day. I am now a teeny tiny bit less of a narcissist. Being a parent is a selfless adventure. The worldview of "Take care of yourself first" is no longer logical to a sane person if your baby wakes up hungry in the middle of the night. You can't be like, "What's that? The baby is starving? Eh, forget her, I've got to get some sleep." For me, parenting was literally a wake-up call from my own simple selfishness. In other words, I'm not quite as horrible as I used to be. — Jim Gaffigan

Do not make your child your only hobby or you will end up waiting by the telephone in a cheery room covered in brittle, yellowed crayon drawings, regaling those few friends that are left with stale anecdotes about your youngster's accomplishments. Your little baby will be off in college, or backpacking in the Amazon, or on the other side of the country trying to get as far away from home as possible, and you will begin collecting porcelain frogs and feeding stray cats. So now is the time to start getting that life to fall back on. You know what you must do. Do it for your child. Do it for me, and for everyone out there who has to deal with your child for the rest of your child's life. And do it for yourself. — Christie Mellor

You can think of spiritual practice as a kind of spiritual re-parenting ... You're offering yourself the two qualities that make up good parenting: understanding - seeing yourself for who you truly are - and relating to what you see with unconditional love. — Tara Brach

Mothering while grieving should involve being understanding and keeping a gentle attitude toward yourself as you work to balance your own needs and your child's. You become stronger by remaining aware of your own well-being, which in turn makes you a stronger person for your child or children. — Elizabeth Berrien

To those of you who are yet to plunge into the zygote pool and want to know what both plumbless horror and pure love feels like, have yourself a baby ... — Conrad Williams

We pretend that we know our children, because it's easier than admitting the truth
from the minute that cord is cut, they are strangers. It's far easier to tell yourself your daughter is still a little girl than to see her in a bikini and realize she has the curves of a young woman; it's safer to say you're a good parent who has all the right conversations about drugs and sex than to acknowledge there are a thousand things she would never tell you. — Jodi Picoult

You cannot stop loving your child because you know that he has committed a wrong action. But you certainly stop loving yourself for loving him.

~ Rudransh Kashyap — Kirtida Gautam

When you have a problem with an adult - say, for example, you have a friend who's always borrowing things and returning them late or broken or not at all - you probably don't think about how you can punish that person. You think about how to respectfully protect yourself. You don't say, "Now that you've given me back my jacket with a stain on it, and broken the side mirror off my car, I'm going to . . . slap you." That would be assault. Or ". . . lock you in your room for an hour." That would be imprisonment. Or ". . . take away your smart phone." That would be theft. You'd probably say something like, "I don't feel comfortable lending you clothes anymore. I get very upset when they come back damaged. And, I can't lend you my car, which I just got repaired. I need to have it in working condition. In fact, I'd appreciate some help with the repair bill! — Joanna Faber

To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while. — Josh Billings

Healthy parenting is especially challenging when our own childhoods weren't healthy. It requires energy, attention, and constant restraint. Realize that you need healing. Take time out to nurture yourself. — Vimala McClure

Ask yourself exactly what you want in your life - now and in the future. If you were given the opportunity to do or have anything, what would it be, and why? — Beverly K. Bachel

I do not believe in the government of the lash, if any one of you ever expects to whip your children again, I want you to have a photograph taken of yourself when you are in the act, with your face red with vulgar anger, and the face of the little child, with eyes swimming in tears and the little chin dimpled with fear, like a piece of water struck by a sudden cold wind. Have the picture taken. If that little child should die, I cannot think of a sweeter way to spend an autumn afternoon than to go out to the cemetery, when the maples are clad in tender gold, and little scarlet runners are coming, like poems of regret, from the sad heart of the earth - and sit down upon the grave and look at that photograph, and think of the flesh now dust that you beat. I tell you it is wrong; it is no way to raise children! Make your home happy. Be honest with them. Divide fairly with them in everything. — Robert G. Ingersoll

Forgive your child and yourself nightly. You didn't ask to live with the effects of ADHD any more than did your child. — Martin L. Kutscher

I used to believe my father about everything but then I had children myself & now I see how much stuff you make up just to keep yourself from going crazy. — Brian Andreas

Children are mirrors; they will always show you exactly what is going on inside of you. Each phase of their growth is an opportunity to heal your own pain, to go deeper inside yourself and become more truly human — Vimala McClure

By spending years and years living entirely for yourself, thinking only about yourself, and having responsibility to no one but yourself, you end up inadvertently extending the introverted existence of a teenager deep into middle age. — Danielle Crittenden

Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do. — Benjamin Spock

In leading People, take a page from parenting: Establish a handful of rules, repeat yourself a lot, and act consistently with those rules. This is the role and power of Core Values. If discovered and used effectively, these values guide all the relationship decisions and systems in the company. — Verne Harnish

New mothers enter the world of parenting feeling much like Alice in Wonderland.
- Being a mother is one of the most rewarding jobs on earth and also one of the most challenging.
- Motherhood is a process. Learn to love the process.
- There is a tremendous amount of learning that takes place in the first year of your baby's life; the baby learns a lot, too.
- It is sometimes difficult to reconcile the fantasy of what you thuoght motherhood would be like, and what you thought you would be like as a mother, with reality.
- Take care of yourself. If Mommy isn't happy, no one else in the family is happy either.
- New mother generally need to lower their expectations.
- A good mother learns to love her child as he is and adjusts her mothering to suit her child. — Debra Gilbert Rosenberg

Alignment of vision, mission, values and attitudes need to be matched between you and those you choose to surround yourself with. The cost of training or replacing will be very minimal and less painful if recruitment, selection and positioning are done well. This applies even to general employment processes, whether at leadership or staff levels. — Archibald Marwizi

It's a long haul bringing up our children to be good; you have to keep doing that - bring them up - and that means bringing things up with them: Asking, telling, sounding them out, sounding off yourself - finding, through experience, your own words, your own way of putting them together. You have to learn where you stand, and make sure your kids learn [where you stand], understand why, and soon, you hope, they'll be standing there beside you, with you. — Erik Erikson

When you intervene on behalf of your child, your child becomes the victim. You're expressing the message 'You're incapable, you're not sturdy enough to resolve this yourself, you need me to come in and take care of this for you.'" You are, in essence, disempowering your child. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

We want our children to have a childhood that's magical and enriched, but I'll bet that your best childhood memories involve something you were thrilled to do by yourself. These are childhood's magic words: I did it myself! — Lenore Skenazy

Overall, your want to present yourself to your child as an ally, empathetic to his feelings, and responsive to his needs - even when your needs are conflicting. If your goal is to enlist your child's cooperation in changing his behavior, find ways to be as aligned with his emotionally as possible. By earning your child's trust, you are much more likely to reach him with your point of view than if you approach him in opposition. — Hilary Flower

One day ask your daughter the kind of mother she wants to be! One day ask your son the kind of father he wants to be! One day ask yourself the kind of parent you have been! And one day, ask yourself how you have run the race of life through the good and the bad times with the baton of life in your hands! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Three great lessons for my children; love God, love yourself and love your neighbour as yourself. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Although it is very easy to marry a wife, it is very difficult to support her along with the children and the household. Accordingly, no one notices this faith of Jacob. Indeed, many hate fertility in a wife for the sole reason that the offspring must be supported and brought up. For this is what they commonly say: 'Why should I marry a wife when I am a pauper and a beggar? I would rather bear the burden of poverty alone and not load myself with misery and want.' But this blame is unjustly fastened on marriage and fruitfulness. Indeed, you are indicting your unbelief by distrusting God's goodness, and you are bringing greater misery upon yourself by disparaging God's blessing. For if you had trust in God's grace and promises, you would undoubtedly be supported. But because you do not hope in the Lord, you will never prosper. — Martin Luther

How well you do things should be incidental, not integral, to the way you regard yourself. — Alfie Kohn

I've come to realize that making it your life's work to be different than your parents is not only hard to do, it's a dumb idea. Not everything we found fault with was necessarily wrong; we were right, for example, to resent, as kids, being told when to go to bed. We'd be equally wrong, as parents, to let our kids stay up all night. To throw out all the tools of parenting just because our parents used them would be like making yourself speak English without using ten letters of the alphabet; it's hard to do. — Paul Reiser

Nevertheless, even with all the very best tips and advice, parenting can sometimes make anyone feel frustrated, edgy, and inadequate. That's why it's crucial that you never shake - or even jiggle - your baby when you're angry! Please - if you're at the end of your patience, put your baby down (even if he is crying) and give yourself a break. Don't hesitate to call for help from your spouse, your family, a friend, or a crisis hotline. — Anonymous

Conduct yourself towards your parents as you would have your children conduct themselves towards you. — Isocrates

Fond mother, you that will never correct a child, hear the charge, and let it thrill through your heart, exciting emotions of horror, you are a hater of your child; your foolish love is infanticide; your cruel embraces are hugging your child to death. In not correcting him, you are committing sin of the heaviest kind, and your own wickedness, in not correcting him, will at last punish yourself. — John Angell James

Imagine what it must be like for teenagers who don't feel they have room to breathe in their own homes. If you are a parent reading this book, you care about your child. If she is quirky, unusual, or nonconformist, ask yourself whether you are doing everything you can to nurture her unusual interests, style, or skills, or whether instead you are directly or subtly pushing her to hide them. — Alexandra Robbins

Parenting has nothing to do with perfection. Perfection isn't even the goal, not for us, not for our children. Learning together to live well in an imperfect world, loving each other despite or even because of our imperfections, and growing as humans while we grow our little humans, those are the goals of gentle parenting. So don't ask yourself at the end of the day if you did everything right. Ask yourself what you learned and how well you loved, then grow from your answer. That is perfect parenting. — L.R. Knost

Therefore, the idle parent who wants to stop the whining needs to stop whining himself, and one way is to resist the call to work ever longer and harder hours. Throw your BlackBerry into the river. Unslave yourself. Hard work will not lead to health and happiness. Just ask yourself: would you rather spend your child's first few years playing with them or working for the mega-corp in order to make them profits and you money to buy ribbish you don't need in order to dull the pain of overwork? — Tom Hodgkinson

Do not speak harshly to a grown-up man. He is old enough to be your father. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Single parenting is sometimes just a case of sitting around by yourself in mild despair, not knowing what to do. — Simon Van Booy

I wondered how long it took for a baby to become yours, for familiarity to set in. Maybe as long as it took a new car to lose that scent, or a brand-new house to gather dust. Maybe that was the process more commonly described as bonding: the act of learning your child as well as you know yourself. — Jodi Picoult

Allow yourself to think that the possibility of failure is a necessary part of parenting well ... Avoiding the possibility of failure means avoiding the possibility of being an extraordinary parent-and avoiding what you want for your child. — Lisa Coyne

By making eye-contact, getting down to your child's level, offering a touch, or using a tone of your voice that conveys a desire to genuinely connect, you disarm yourself. You make it possible to reach your child more deeply and truly move forward together. — Hilary Flower

I think we've moved to thinking of parenting and pregnancy as something in which you should lose yourself. — Emily Oster

History repeated itself. The 'don't do the things I did' mantra was tiresome posh. The best way to make sure your children don't grow up as cunts is not to be one yourself - or not to let them SEE you being one. This is easier as a sober artist in Santa Barbara than as an alcoholic jailbird in Leith. — Irvine Welsh

The best gift you can give your children is to keep yourself emotionally, physically, spiritually and intellectually healthy. — Iben Dissing Sandahl

Expect to change yourself in order to change your life experience. — Rand Olson

My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me. — Jim Valvano

I think the more
she has failed at things like relationships
and parenting, the more she has cut
herself off from feeling bad about those
things. And if you don't let yourself feel
bad, sooner or later you stop feeling
good, too. You insulate yourself. Build
up layers, like stacking paper, everything
growing heavier. And when the weight
becomes too much, those layers compress.
Become hard. Sad, really, to think that
Kristina has turned herself into cardboard. — Ellen Hopkins

To look deep into your child's eyes and see in him both yourself and something utterly strange, and then to develop a zealous attachment to every aspect of him, is to achieve parenthood's self-regarding, yet unselfish, abandon. It is astonishing how often such mutuality had been realized - how frequently parents who had supposed that they couldn't care for an exceptional child discover that they can. The parental predisposition to love prevails in the most harrowing of circumstances. There is more imagination in the world than one might think. — Andrew Solomon