Quotes & Sayings About Parenting

We could be like a father determined to provide everything for his family. He devotes every energy to that end and succeeds; only then does he discover that what they needed most, to be together as a family, has been neglected. And he reaps sorrow in place of contentment. — Boyd K. Packer

Parental Alienation is an emotional act of violence that is aimed at an adult, but critically wounds a child. — Steve Maraboli

Imperfect parenting does not cause addiction. If that were so, everyone would be one. — Sandy Swenson

Sit Down - What to do if a parent wants to get their child's attention. — Olive Hunter

I believe adopting free unstructured play, within an appropriate framework, has rich potential in bringing up happy, well-balanced and resilient children. — Iben Dissing Sandahl

As children become increasingly less connected to adults, they rely more and more on each other; the whole natural order of things change. In the natural order of all mammalian cultures, animals or humans, the young stay under the wings of adults until they themselves reach adulthood. Immature creatures were never meant to bring one another to maturity. They were never meant to look to one another for primary nurturing, modelling, cue giving or mentoring. They are not equipped to give one another a sense of direction or values. As a result of today's shift to this peer orientation, we are seeing the increasing immaturity, alienation, violence and precocious sexualization of North American Youth. The disruption of family life, rapid economic and social changes to human culture and relationships, and the erosion of stable communities are at the core of this shift. — Gabor Mate

I'll show up at every classroom open house and teacher conference,' she said, now in a voice that was almost frightening in its intensity. 'I'll bake brownies. My child will have new clothes. Her shoes will fit. She'll get her shots, and she'll get her braces. We'll start a college fund next week. I'll tell her I love her every damn day.'
If that wasn't a great plan for being a good mother, I couldn't imagine what a better one could be. — Charlaine Harris

The promises you speak over your children can take on the weight of destiny. — Neil Kennedy

The only safe guide is the Bible. It is the revelation of a God who has infinite knowledge and can therefore give you absolute truth. God has given you a revelation that is robust and complete. It presents an accurate and comprehensive picture of children, parents, family life, values, training, nurture, and discipline - all you need to be equipped for the task of parenting. — Tedd Tripp

My greatest hope is to be a mother who loves Jesus with a deep and abiding affection that joyfully overflows to my children. — Melissa B. Kruger

No work-family balance will ever fully take hold if the social conditions that might make it possible - men who are willing to share parenting and housework, communities that value work in the home as highly as work on the job, and policymakers and elected officials who are prepared to demand family-friendly reforms - remain out of reach. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

I've always believed phone calls from kids must be allowed if mothers are to feel welcome in the workplace, as anyone who has worked in my chambers can attest. — Sonia Sotomayor

Every parent is an artist, for the bared canvas of a newborn's soul begs for the artist's touch. And because this is so, a parent must prepare the palette with the utmost care, choose the brushes with poised caution, and mindfully attend to every brushstroke regardless of how slight. And such caution is utterly imperative for the emerging rendering will be both a legacy borne of the parent, and a life lived by the child. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

I felt like I needed to comfort both the little girl inside me and my mother, assuring them that neither of them could have prevented the rape. I didn't want my mother to blame herself and I didn't want to blame the little girl inside of me for not speaking up at the age of six. — Erin Merryn

Dads. It's time to tell our kids that we love them. Constantly. It's time to show our kids that we love them. Constantly. It's time to take joy in their twenty-thousand daily questions and their inability to do things as quickly as we'd like. It's time to take joy in their quirks and their ticks. It's time to take joy in their facial expressions and their mispronounced words. It's time to take joy in everything that our kids are. — Dan Pearce

All of us have moments in out lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them. — Erma Bombeck

For me, Twitter works best as a way of taking pictures of being stuck in traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge. If people really want to read really funny quips about life, parenting, and pop culture, then by all means read Michael Ian Black's tweets. — Michael Showalter

What assurance do I have that your parenting isn't screwing me up? — Bill Watterson

I don't have any romantic views of parenting. Every step of the way it's really hard. It's a dangerous world, physically and psychologically. — Anne Lamott

The children who are 'our future' will inherit a world created not just by parental devotion but by the sort of zealous, focused endeavors that can preclude good parenting. — Virginia Postrel

Our greatest duty to our children is to love them first. Secondly, it is to teach them. Not to frighten, force, or intimidate our children into submission, but to effectively teach them so that they have the knowledge and tools to govern themselves. — Richelle E. Goodrich

My husband's a pediatrician, so he and I talk about parenting all the time. You can't raise children who have more shame resilience than you do. — Brene Brown

When I ask French parents what they most want for their children, they say things like "to feel comfortable in their own skin" and "to find their path in the world." They want their kids to develop their own tastes and opinions. In fact, French parents worry if their kids are too docile. They want them to have character.

But they believe that children can achieve these goals only if they respect boundaries and have self-control. So alongside character, there has to be cadre. — Pamela Druckerman

That's the thing about parenting: anxious if you do, anxious if you don't. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Resilience is rooted in habits we can cultivate and change. — Andrew Zolli

Most of the time, it felt like my father and I were completely different species. Possibly literally, depending on the day and whether or not I actually qualified as human at the time. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Mostly they all were products of single parents, and in the most tragic category - black boys, with no particular criminal inclinations but whose very lack of direction put them in the crosshairs of the world. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

We can't give a child a natural consequence. The only truly natural consequences are the ones found in nature. — Joanna Faber

There is no such thing as reproduction, only acts of production. — Andrew Solomon

Sleeping is one of the more private aspects of parenting; it happens in a quiet room, whereas eating is a more public aspect of parenting. Other people can see it and compare it to what their kids eat. — Adam Mansbach

Before I had kids, I always found it funny how people would talk about their children like they were the cutest things on the planet and how every little thing they did was endlessly fascinating. Now that I've had kids, I can say with certainty that, my children really are the cutest things on this planet and every little thing they do is endlessly fascinating ... — Jennifer Miller

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

The irreducible, ultimate element in religious faith is the insistence that we are created things; male and female He created them; without God we are nothing. And yet, when men and women have children and become parents, they unmistakably become creators, incompetent, accidental and partial creators, no doubt, but creators none the less. It is their inescapable duty, and, with luck, their occasional delight to care and watch over their creations; even if this creative power is partly illusory because chromosomes and chance decide the whole business, parents cannot act as if it is illusory; they cannot sincerely believe in their ultimate helplessness. They must behave like shepherds, however clumsy, and not like sheep, however well trained.
The Sermon on the Mount is a wonderful, intoxicating sermon. But it is a sermon for bachelors. — Ferdinand Mount

My worldview, my philosophy, my attitudes, my relationships, my parenting, my marriage - everything has been transformed by my relationship with Christ. — Lee Strobel

A daughter,' Rowley scooped up the child and held her high. The baby blinked from sleep and crowed with him. 'Any fool can have a son,' he said. 'It takes a man to conceive a daughter. — Ariana Franklin

Raising people is not some lark. It's serious work with serious repercussions. It's air-traffic control. You can't step out for a minute; you can barely pause to scratch your ankle. — Kelly Corrigan

As Plato: What is play and delightful one kind of child is coercion and torture for another, and will not take no matter how much coercion is applied. — Rebecca Goldstein

Robin Simon, a sociology professor at Florida State University and researcher on parenting and happiness, told The Daily Beast in 20083 that parents experience lower levels of emotional well-being, less frequent positive emotions and more frequent negative emotions than their childless peers. — Jessica Valenti

He wished he understood where they come from: all the terrorists, religious revolutionists
and hate-criminals. Did terrorizing entire communities of people help them sleep sound at
night? Did it make them happy? Or are they just in for the attention? Have they nothing to
lose? Or are they simply bored and spit balling issues that have always been there? Can all
global acts of violence and terror be summed up, as just a whole other level of a mixture of
bad parenting, psychological disorders and unattended anger management issues? Can they
be treated, medically or spiritually? Are we waiting for the birth of another great visionary
like Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ or Prophet Muhammad, who will 'make the world a better
place'? Or are we just too soaked in the idea that religion is a dying concept and spirituality
is overrated? Is it too late? Are we too far behind? He wanted to know. — Thisuri Wanniarachchi

A child of God, special possession. — Lailah Gifty Akita

If you're asking your kids to exercise, then you better do it, too. Practice what you preach. — Caitlyn Jenner

Look, they're wearing light blue gauzy frozen superhero capes because I have told them that Anna is a junior superhero with a black sister and a gay brother- both of whom are off ruling other countries because, y'know, they have jobs. You do your mothering your way. I'll do my mothering mine . — Shonda Rhimes

If your child has a weakness, teach them how to turn it into a strength! The only Failure is not trying. — Kevin Heath

Turn off the device and take your child for a walk through the woods or on a hike up a mountain. Go on a camping trip. Late at night, when it's absolutely dark, take your child's hand and ask her to look up at the stars. Talk with her about the vastness of space and the tininess of our planet in the universe. That's reality. That's perspective. — Leonard Sax

The psychologist Jerome Kagan has argued that parenting has a threshold function: up until that threshold is crossed, the effects of a child's very early experience even out in the end. But parenting that crosses the threshold - abuse, stress, utter indifference - can sink in deep, especially if the baby remains in that environment. There's a lot to be said for this perspective on parenthood, not least that it offers well-meaning parents some relief from scaremongering. It also accounts for the astounding flexibility of the human infant: he is game for the craziest parenting stuff you can come up with. — Nicholas Day

One of the things that happens in the world is that people try to avoid conflict. Whereas in the home, you can't. You'll end up getting divorced or becoming estranged from your kids. Keep in mind, the hardest part of any negotiation is agreeing to start it. Once you've gotten past that emotional barrier, the solutions usually present themselves. — Bruce Feiler

You can't spell "parentry" without "try." Of course, you'll make a few mistakes. The important thing is that the mistakes you make with your kids are the same ones your parents made with you. At least you know how those turn out. — Stephen Colbert

If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest in judging other people's choices. If I feel good about my body, I don't go around making fun of other people's weight or appearance. We're hard on each other because we're using each other as a launching pad out of our own perceived deficiency. — Brene Brown

One thing I know for sure about raising children is that every single day a kid needs discipline ... But also every single day a kid needs a break. — Anne Lamott

Kindness effects more than severity. — Aesop

Father, I am from a different egg than your other children. Think of me as a duckling raised by hens. I am not a domestic bird destined to spend his life in a chicken coop. The water that scares you rejuvenates me. For unlike you I can swim, and swim I shall. The ocean is my homeland. If you are with me, come to the ocean. If not, stop interfering with me and go back to the chicken coop. — Elif Shafak

The lowest of the low-poverty countries manage to get along in the world with similar levels of single mother parenting just fine. . . . We plunge more than 1 in 5 of our nation's children into poverty because we choose to. — Rebecca Traister

With improved coping skills forged through my midlife crisis, I now listen first and do not control, and I allow these now adult children to come to their own conclusions about what they want for their lives. — David W. Earle

For a child, it is in the simplicity of play that the complexity of life is sorted like puzzle pieces joined together to make sense of the world. — L.R. Knost

Parenting is a sacred responsibility with the sobering reality, of raising scholars or scars. — Tom Althouse

Then the dreaded words, Your child has autism. These words echo in their heads like a freight train blasting through their hopes and dreams. — Dr. Linda Barboa

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

Having a baby is a life-changer. It gives you a whole other perspective on why you wake up every day. — Taylor Hanson

Your supporters can help you think in new ways, solve problems, and burst through barriers. — Beverly K. Bachel

Healthy parenting is nothing if not a process of empowerment. As we help to raise our children's self-esteem, we also increase their personal power. When we encourage them to be confident, self-reliant, self-directed, and responsible individuals, we are giving them power. — Louise Hart

Many parents have experienced the fact that kids don't seem to honor their parents the way that previous generations of children did. The question we need to ask is, how did we get to this position? How did this lack of respect infiltrate even the closest family relationships? Most importantly, how can we make sure that it doesn't ruin our bond with our own teens? — Fiona Dimas-Herd

The symptoms of executive skills problems are generic enough that it is sometimes hard for people to see them as other than just bad behavior or signs of poor parenting. — Joyce Cooper-Kahn

Unconditional parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason — Alfie Kohn

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

It seems to me that if God felt it best to delay marriage into the latter part of your twenties, He would also see fit to delay the hormonal urge to want to have sex. Or perhaps it was never His intent to delay marriage in an effort to "become more independent," "enjoy singlehood," and "build our careers. — Vicki Courtney

If we want to give our children what they need to thrive, we must honor their basic nature- boyish or girlish, introverted or extroverted, wild or mellow. — Wendy Mogel

Society tried to teach me that children are by nature selfish, out-of-control, and demanding, that their goal is power and that they are always trying to see how much they can get away with, that you can't let children manipulate you or become too dependant, and that disobedience equals disrespect. As a mother, I have come to believe strongly that my child's primary goals are having his needs met, feeling connected to others, and feeling self-worth. His misbehavior is an attempt to get a need met or to feel significance and connection, done in an appropriate way ... my job as a parent is to help my child identify and meet those needs in appropriate ways. - Lisa S. — Hilary Flower

It was what Aunty Ifeoma did to my cousins, I realized then, setting higher and higher jumps for them in the way she talked to them, in what she expected of them. She did it all the time believing they would scale the rod. And they did. It was different for Jaja and me. We did not scale the rod because we believed we could, we scaled it because we were terrified that we couldn't. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

We can only afford two children' is a squalid argument, but more acceptable in our society than 'we don't like children'. — Germaine Greer

Raising PERFECT children is not hard ...
It's IMPOSSIBLE !!!!! — K.j. Force

Patty believed that parents have a duty to teach their children how to recognize reality when they see it. — Jonathan Franzen

All that a child needs is great love. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Whenever one of my children says, 'Goodnight, Daddy,' I always think to myself, 'You don't mean that. — Jim Gaffigan

If parents wish to preserve childhood for their own children, they must conceive of parenting as an act of rebellion against culture. — Neil Postman

0Cross-gender behaviour is seen as less acceptable in boys than it is in girls: unlike the term 'tomboy' there is nothing positive implied by its male counterpart, the 'sissy'. — Cordelia Fine

Sometimes I hesitate to use the term sexual abuse. It conjures up worst-case scenarios in our minds, and we think, "That will never happen to my kids." And we never begin the conversation regarding sexual abuse with our children. But one violation left in secret can cause significant pain. — Carolyn Byers Ruch

You sounded frustrated and pissed off and amazingly happy — Kristin Hannah

The recent spate of magazines for "parents" (i.e., mothers) bombard the anxiety-induced mothers of America with reassurances that they can (after a $100,000 raise and a personality transplant) produce bright, motivated, focused, fun-loving, sensitive, cooperative, confident, contented kids just like the clean, obedient ones on the cover. — Susan Douglas

Now I know I'll never be numb again. A mother is condemned to feel everything forever. And I'm finally afraid, condemned to fear everything forever. But that makes sense: feel someone else's pain, feel someone else's everything.
And he's my baby, so everything's okay. — Kristin Hersh

We're depriving our kids of the chance to do the work of life for themselves. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

I didn't just see a child in my dreams - I felt it in my heart. — Seth Adam Smith

It's not that parents love their children less than in generations past. It's that they no longer receive consistent societal support for the belief that parenting is their highest priority ... TV messages championed rather then detracted from wholesome ideals ... maybe "the old days" before the societal changes of the '60s weren't perfect, but they allowed a bevy of family-friendly forces to surround parents with encouragement for their mission ... — Diane Medved

And since we're all adults here, let's be brutally honest-most babies are not actually attractive. In fact, they're weird and freakish looking. A large percentage of them are squinty-eyed and bald and their faces are all mushed toegther, kind of like Renee Zellweger pushed up against a glass window. — Joan Rivers

As a father, we need to actively listen. — Asa Don Brown

With the gentle force of their words, the dogged warmth of their embrace, and the assuring touch of souls softly bared, mothers are silently shaping whole societies and authoring entire cultures that sit poised on the horizon of the future. And although we ignorantly relegate such roles to some lower caste status, we would be wise to understand that the role of a mother sets the cadence of the future. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Children close their ears to Advice but Open their eyes to example.
Even New Genx Moms close their ears to Advice but Open their eyes to realize their mistakes eventually.
Think, Act Wise before it's Late. — Ilaxi Patel

In automobile terms, the child supplies the power but the parents have to do the steering. — Benjamin Spock

It's so awful, attacking your child. It's the worse thing I know, to shout loudly at this 50 lb. being with his huge trusting brown eyes. It's like bitch-slapping E.T. — Anne Lamott

Parent should never forget the great excitement they felt for the birth of a new born into the world. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Parenthood doesn't improve one's character, it exposes it. — Leslie A. Gordon

I cannot make my kids obey. But I can control my responses to their disobedience - that is, I can respect their choices and provide wise consequences for their actions, so they can learn just as much about wisdom from disobeying as from obeying. And I can respond in ways that create an environment in which their poor choices are their problem. — Jeff VanVonderen

If as a family we must be selective listeners, then let us pay more attention to the words of the heart and less to the words of anger — Wes Fesler

One of the most resilient and cherished myths of parenting is that parenting creates the child. — Kevin DeYoung

They decided to allow their baby to be born. What they did not realize is that they themselves were the ones who would be 'born,' infants in a new world where magic is commonplace, Harvard professors are the slow learners, and retarded babies are the master teachers. — Martha N. Beck

I believe that if a seven-year old kid has heard of Naked Lunch and is daring enough to want to read it, he's old enough to read it. — John Waters

Did children want sports cars for parents? No. They wanted Hondas. They wanted to know that the car would start in all seasons. — Dave Eggers

I'm a parent, especially when you've had the intense parenting the way I had. It's all in the bank. It's all in the great experience bank. Those are your secrets. That's the stuff that makes your work rich, that's what you dip into. — Hector Elizondo

Attachment parenting is at once conscious and instinctive parenting that focuses on respecting the importance of the parent-child attachment. It also recognises the necessity for secure attachment in growing compassionate, confident and peaceful human beings. Along with this, it acknowledges that mothers are truly important, not simply replaceable with products and procedures. Mothers matter, and that shouldn't mean they should lose agency in the process of becoming mothers who matter. — Chrissy Chittenden

I wasn't anything special as a father. But I loved them and they knew it. — Sammy Davis Jr.

So, your best defense is knowledge. It really is power, as they say ... The more you know, the more easily you will develop your own philosophies about child rearing. When you have your facts straight, and when you have a parenting plan, you will be able to respond with confidence to those who are well-meaning but offering contrary or incorrect advice. — Elizabeth Pantley