Raising Kids Quotes & Sayings

Raising your kids vegetarian is a great way to encourage them to do the opposite of what you want! But the goal is not to have them have the same values that I have. It's to have them act on their values. — Jonathan Safran Foer

You want to know the secret to raising good kids?"
"What's that? asked Thomas.
"High expectations."
Thomas laughed. "Alright, well what's the secret to a happy marriage?"
Clyde smiled back, but his face started to fall, and he chose his words carefully. " ... Low expectations. — Chris Nicolaisen

In the middle of a grocery store, two children were horsing around (one holding the other in a headlock) when the mother turned abruptly to give them a stern reprimand.
'You two are old enough to know better than to behave this way in public! Could you - at least for the time we're in this store - mind your manners enough to act like an adult?'
The children took less than a moment to consider their mother's question before facing each other and engaging in the following conversation:
'I hate you.'
'I hate you too.'
'Let's get a divorce.'
'Okay.'
Perhaps 'act like an adult' isn't such good advice anymore. — Richelle E. Goodrich

The good news is that your child has a natural desire to do well. Your job as parent is to bring out this quality and cherish it until the day your kids leave home, and then some. — Marlene Targ Brill

This is the culture your raising your kids in, don't be suprised when it blows up in your face. — Marilyn Manson

One of the things I've discovered in general about raising kids is that they really don't give a damn if you walked five miles to school. — Patty Duke

I have made a lot of mistakes raising the four Jenner kids. — Caitlyn Jenner

I am convinced that the reason why my kids have become very fulfilled and achieving human beings is because I wasn't raising them alone. — Gioconda Belli

After my kids were born I found myself incorporating my photography into different art endeavors and from there it just blossomed. I have always had to have an outlet for my creativity and when my life became more about raising my family than the bright lights of show business exploring my photo art was a great outlet for me. — Angela Cartwright

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

I think I'm much more afraid of making a mistake in raising my daughters than I would be with any work that I do, as an actor. It's a much higher scale of fear, raising kids. — Bruce Willis

I think we're raising whole generations who regard facts as more or less optional.
We have kids in elementary school who are being urged to take stands on political issues, to write letters to congressmen and presidents about nuclear energy.
They're not a decade old, and they're being thrown these kinds of questions that can absorb the lifetime of a very brilliant and learned man. And they're being taught that it's important to have views, and they're not being taught that it's important to know what you're talking about.
It's important to hear the opposite viewpoint, and more important to learn how to distinguish why viewpoint A and viewpoint B are different, and which one has the most evidence or logic behind it. They disregard that. They hear something, they hear some rhetoric, and they run with it. — Thomas Sowell

My greatest inspiration is my mother, the bravest person I ever knew. She overcame incredible odds, worked while raising two kids, and made it all look incredibly simple. Even in her final days succumbing to cancer, she fought like a champion. — Safra A. Catz

Real life, raising kids and trying to raise them to be good people takes a lot of work. It's all about (appearing) effortless, yet there's so much effort. You do it the best you can. — Kelli Williams

Fixing a broken immigration system. Protecting our kids from gun violence. Equal pay for equal work, paid leave, raising the minimum wage. All these things still matter to hardworking families; they are still the right thing to do; and I will not let up until they get done. — Barack Obama

I'm talking about the soul-crushing drudgery of day-to-day parenthood that we're too embarrassed to talk about. The boredom, the stress, the nagging dissatisfaction, and the sense of personal failure that parents feel when raising a kid isn't all it's cracked up to be. Perhaps worst of all is the guilt that so many women buy into because they're too ashamed to admit that despite the love they have for their kids, child rearing can be a tedious and thankless undertaking. — Jessica Valenti

I definitely think there's a lot of pressure for teenaged girls and guys to hook up on prom. I think it comes with the belief that you have to lose your virginity before you go to college. It's a coming of age thing. I think it's really sad because it has nothing to do with what you want and everything to do with peer pressure. But it comes with the territory of prom. Thankfully more and more kids are knowing their limits, and I think we're raising kids to be really good people, and they're realizing that they don't need to do it just because. — Brittany Snow

In general there should be gay characters in YA because a) surprise, there are gay folks everywhere and b) in my opinion as a father, there's not a damn thing wrong with my child encountering gay folks in her literature, because see point a). — John Scalzi

Some of these kids are spending more time with the coaches than they are with their parents. The coach is supposed to be raising these kids, not belittling them and talking to them like the world is coming to an end. — Ray Lewis

My writing process is a mix of research, personal experiences, washing the dishes, raising kids while thinking - then writing. — Jean Craighead George

Kids don't come with instructions. We all mess up. Raising a child is pure impromptu. — Harlan Coben

Shall I tell you something I've been noticing? The mistrust this society has for women. All kinds of experts and officials are terrified because so many women are working. They really think that women have to be coerced into having babies and raising kids. — Marge Piercy

More and more men are raising children or want to be close to their kids. They don't want to just lead work-obsessed lives and end up 50 years later with an engraved watch. — Gloria Steinem

Don't have kids until you're ready. And when you do have them, have them all the way. They aren't like some Cadillac that you can turn back into the dealership after three years. — Carew Papritz

Someday my children will look fondly on the annoying things I did and see them clearly as evidence of love. — Richelle E. Goodrich

The screams echoing through Janet's class were hard to bear. She was attempting a lecture on the Treaty of Paris while Mrs. Pachenko walked between the rows of desks insisting upon calm, raising a finger to her lips and whispering to individual students to please sit all the way down in their desks. In the back of the of the room, several kids were cheering as one of them, a young man whose shirt bore a flaming skull, stood hunched atop his desk like a motocross biker, sliding it forward in small hops. Students appear enthusiastic and are communicating well together, I wrote on the evaluation form. — Alissa Nutting

A 'good' father will tenderly cultivate his children. But a 'good' father who is also a 'brave' father will let the children without cultivate the child within. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

You raise them half-decent, and they grow up and leave. They move to Miami or California
someplace with gourmet groceries and nude beaches because you've reared them to cook good and be liberal minded. It's just the opposite with your failures
them kids stick to your tail like a cocklebur. You'd think it would be the other way around, but it's not. No matter how old I get, this will always amaze me. — Michael Lee West

We accept the need to train extensively to fly a plane; but think instinct should be enough for marrying and raising kids. — Alain De Botton

My most important inspirational job that I do is raising those kids. That's my job. And that's where my ambition goes. But I have a life. I'm not only their mother. I'm still who I was before, I just don't get to be it all the time. — Pat Benatar

Saturday mornings, I've learned, are a great opportunity for kids to sneak into your bed, fall back asleep, and kick you in the face. — Dan Pearce

I can't imagine my life without my kids. Raising them has been the greatest joy in my life. — Josie Bissett

A good wife is someone who thinks she has done everything right: raising the kids, being there for the husband, being home, trying to do it all. — Julianna Margulies

I tilt my head and ask "What firsts have we
already passed?"
"The easy ones," he says. "First hug, first date, first fight, first time we slept together,
although I wasn't the one sleeping. Now we barely have any left. First kiss. First time to
sleep together when we're both actually awake. First marriage. First kid. We're done
after that. Our lives will become mundane and boring and I'll have to divorce you and
marry a wife who's twenty years younger than me so I can have a lot more firsts and
you'll be stuck raising the kids." He bring his hand to my cheek and smile at me. "So you
see, babe? I'm only doing this for your benefit. The longer I wait to kiss you, the longer
it'll be before I'm forced to leave you high and dry. — Colleen Hoover

Teach them what you love to do in life. It really doesn't matter what it is. It never does. Just show them how important a passion is ... — Carew Papritz

My mother was a woman. A black woman. A single mother. Raising two kids on her own. So she was dark skinned. Had short hair. Got no love from nobody except for a group called the Black Panthers. So that's why she was a Black Panther. — Tupac Shakur

Make dads the godly leaders [of the family] with the women in submission, raising kids for the glory of God. — Randall Terry

Raising kids these days is hard. I'm the second to last child in my family. I think it's tough; I have two kids, I see them and I feel like I see things in them; they awaken the inner child in you. — Gore Verbinski

Re raising kids: Love, without discipline, isn't. — Malcolm Forbes

In raising children, life brings forth those things where you do what you should never have done and what I taught you never to do. And when my kids have done those things, I just kind of look at them and say, 'Now you know life.' — George Foreman

My wife is so analytical with raising kids, and I am not. My feeling is if they turn out good, then that means I was a good daddy and put a lot of effort into it. If they turn out bad, it means they took after her side of the family. — Jeff Foxworthy

I'm a single parent, and I just found that it was too difficult to manage raising my kids and doing the traveling involved in making movies. So I took a little bit of a break. And the little bit of a break turned into a longer break, and then I found that I really didn't miss it. — Rick Moranis

Some men don't want to be responsible fathers. It's easier to say 'Let's just turn the kids over to the state.' Women end up bearing the entire load, raising kids alone without a husband to share the parenting. — Tim Huelskamp

I don't even know if I have kind of a personal, like a take or a mental manual of how I'm raising kids. It's really - I think with everybody, it's just day-to-day and you just try to deal with every situation as they come. — Steve Carell

If I've learned anything as a mom with a daughter who's three, I've learned that you cannot judge the way another person is raising their kid. Everybody is just doing the best they can. It's hard to be a mom. — Maggie Gyllenhaal

Don't box your children in and tell them that everything is a sin. You'll produce either rebels, or very boring people. — C. JoyBell C.

I spend a great deal of time working for kids in Uganda and India and chasing bad guys who hurt them. I started a nonprofit a number of years ago and now Sweet Maria and I think about my day job as a great way to fund the things we're doing. Now when I put on a suit and tie or jump on a plane to go take a deposition, we call it "fund-raising." It still makes me grin every time to say it this way. It's like a really successful bake sale to get rid of bad guys. — Bob Goff

My mom has always been a huge inspiration. She was a single mom raising two kids in New York. Now that is full-on all the time. — Kim Raver

You will be raising these kids in your mind your whole life. And they will change you. Your little contribution to it - twenty years from now, they'll be marching off into other things and that's still the legacy you leave. — Bill Ayers

The kids get a vote. That's very important when it comes to raising kids. And always keep the bigger picture in mind. — Joe Perry

I am glad that I am not raising kids today. And I'm rather pessimistic that my grandchildren will enjoy the great society that I've enjoyed in my lifetime. I really think it's coarsened. It's coarsened in so many ways. One of the things that upsets me about modern society is the coarseness of manners. You can't go to a movie - or watch a television show for that matter - without hearing the constant use of the F-word - including, you know, ladies using it. People that I know don't talk like that! — Antonin Scalia

In Blue Crush , we meet three Hawaiian surfers who work as hotel maids, live in a grotty rental, and are raising the kid sister of one of them. Despite this near-poverty, they look great; there is nothing like a tan and a bikini to overcome class distinctions. — Roger Ebert

When most artists walk offstage, they go to a lonely hotel room. I went home to my family. They were there before the show, during and after. It's been great. I never would have done it any other way. I wasn't gonna miss raising my kids. There was no way that was gonna happen. — Gloria Estefan

Annabeth," he said hesitantly, "in New Rome, demigods can live their whole lives in peace."
Her expression turned guarded. "Reyna explained it to me. But, Percy, you belong at Camp Half-Blood. That other life - "
"I know," Percy said. "But while I was there, I saw so many demigods living without fear: kids going to college, couples getting married and raising families. There's nothing like that at Camp Half-Blood. I kept thinking about you and me ... and maybe someday when this war with the giants is over ... "
It was hard to tell in the golden light, but he thought Annabeth was blushing. "Oh," she said ...
"I'm sorry," he said. "I just ... I had to think of that to keep going. To give me hope. Forget I mentioned - "
"No!" she said. "Gods, Percy, that's so sweet. — Rick Riordan

Raising kids makes most people, including me, grow up at least a little. — Madonna Ciccone

I am raising my children with the Christian faith and life lessons I was taught. I am equipping them with all of the information and guidance as a parent and hope they will make sound decisions. The most important thing is to teach kids to stand firm in what they believe and not be swayed by detractors no matter what the subject matter. — Gretchen Carlson

Teaching is a truly noble profession. It's sad the amount of responsibility that teachers have today. They're not only teaching kids: they're raising kids, policing kids - and they don't make a lot of money. — Jesse L. Martin

I may deserve your disappointment as well as a lecture and strict discipline, but what I need is your understanding, your guidance, and your unconditional love. — Richelle E. Goodrich

In hindsight, I was totally unprepared for the truth. I will live without my children much longer than I lived with them. That's a difficult reality after submerging twenty years of my life into the responsibilities, joys, and frustrations of raising kids. — Elaine Ambrose

Codi: Gives you the willies, doesn't it? The thought of raising kids in a place where the front yard ends in a two-hundred-foot drop? [referring to cliff dwellings] Loyd: No worse than raising up kids where the front yard ends in a freeway. — Barbara Kingsolver

There has been, for some reason (or more likely an unfortunate accumulation of reasons) a trend over the past several decades for parents to do the work of parenting in the isolation of their own homes - and not only that, this trend has overlapped with the other trend of much deeper parent involvement in raising kids. That you also represent trend No. 3, more people raising kids solo, has only exacerbated a close-to-no-win situation. — Carolyn Hax

Do not give a damn what "they" have to say (and you will know who they are) for you are either very right or very wrong, but at least you are very something. — Carew Papritz

They're really nice kids. Michael is really raising them properly and right. — Joseph Jackson

Certainly other things we can do, we gotta promote after-school employment, give kids an opportunity, raising the minimum wage was part of that, we can't expect that young people are going to feel they can make a living out there for such low wages. — Matt Gonzalez

Raising kids is like nailing Jell-O to a tree. — Maya Angelou

Raising kids may be a thankless job with ridiculous hours, but at least the pay sucks. — Jim Gaffigan

Contemporary American politics also revolve around this contradiction. Democrats want a more equitable society, even if it means raising taxes to fund programmes to help the poor, elderly and infirm. But that infringes on the freedom of individuals to spend their money as they wish. Why should the government force me to buy health insurance if I prefer using the money to put my kids through college? Republicans, on the other hand, want to maximise individual freedom, even if it means that the income gap between rich and poor will grow wider and that many Americans will not be able to afford health care. — Yuval Noah Harari

Do you realize how many kids I'll be raising if all my friends and my brother and his wife all die in a tragic cruise ship disaster? — Mary Calmes

This is the other thing: we make the cost of raising kids higher than it has to be just because we feel they need all this stuff, like gadgets, certain schools, and activities that are nice but aren't really necessary. — Patricia Heaton

I was raised by my grandmother. She had a very difficult time, raised all her kids, my father and everybody. Listening to those stories and finding her so strong, poised. Anybody who came close to her was made to feel blessed. And at the same time, it didn't matter how strong a person was, in front of her, their head would go down. She carried through her life raising everybody. That is my model. — Rajashree Choudhury

The Five Keys
1.Always be involved in her life 2.Respect and honor her mom.
3.Treasure every moment with her.
4.Pray for her every day.
5.Be her hero. — Harry H. Harrison Jr.

Society needs both parents and nonparents, both the work party and the home party. While raising children is the most important work most people will do, not everyone is cut out for parenthood. And, as many a childless teacher has proved, raising kids is not the only important contribution a person can make to their future. — Virginia Postrel

I was raising seven kids. I lived in the bedrooms, in the laundry room, in the kitchen, in the car - car pooling all over. I just didn't have time to sit down and watch a lot of TV. So I really didn't. — Karolyn Grimes

I get so much out of being married and raising my kids - that's really important to me. — Tracy Pollan

Don't you think you're a little old now to be quoting The Chronicles of Narnia?' I ask, raising an eyebrow at him.
'You read Harry Potter,' Will protests.
'Everyone reads Harry Potter,' I exclaim. 'It's an institution. Besides, it's not really a kids book, it's a metaphor for the world at large. It's almost philosophical in its way. — Jennifer Gilby Roberts

I tilt my head sideways so I can look him straight on. "What firsts have we already passed?" "The easy ones. First hug, first date, first fight, first time we slept together, although I wasn't the one sleeping . Now we barely have any left. First kiss. First time to sleep together when we're both actually awake. First marriage. First kid. We're done after that. Our lives will become mundane and boring and I'll have to divorce you and marry a wife who's twenty years younger than me so I can have a lot more firsts and you'll be stuck raising the kids." He cups my cheek in his hand and smiles at me. "So you see, babe? I'm only doing this for your benefit. The longer I wait to kiss you, the longer it'll be before I'm forced to leave you high and dry."
Hoover, Colleen (2012-12-18). Hopeless (pp. 165-166). Colleen Hoover. Kindle Edition. — Colleen Hoover

Look forward to the wonderment of growing up, raising a family and driving by the gas station where the popular kids now work. — Tim Dorsey

I thought I'd find that Wholehearted people were just like me and doing all of the same things I was doing: working hard, following the rules, doing it until I got it right, always trying to know myself better, raising my kids exactly by the books ... — Brene Brown

My brother and I have converted to Christianity, and my other brother and sister are still Sikh. So for me, it's not something that I ever want to be judgmental on. I know my parents are two people of a very strong faith. I respect all that they've done in raising their four kids and in the opportunities that they've given us. — Nikki Haley

Here's the simple truth that isn't so simple: Raising kids to be different from the world really does make them different from the world. — Kristen Welch

Don't get me wrong. Being a mom is no picnic. Raising the kids is the mother's
responsibility. It's a thankless, solitary job, like sheriff or Pope. — Stephen Colbert

Kids are a lesson every day, and being married is a lesson every day, but I think having a boutique and running it with my husband and having our careers and raising children was something that was really an eye-opener all the time. — Lisa Rinna

Having kids means taking care of them, raising them, loving and supporting them, and none of those things have anything to do with who makes them one night in the bedroom or the experience of being pregnant — Nicholas Sparks

Raising self-centered kids is not good for society, but it's also not good for their own mental health to be completely self-absorbed. — William Damon

If I screw up raising my kids, nothing I achieve will matter much. — Steve Martin

He would read up on parenting, if he thought it would help, but his errors always seemed too basic for the manuals. "Always tell your kids they have siblings ... " He couldn't imagine any child-raising guru taking the trouble to write that down. Maybe there was a gap in the market. — Nick Hornby

I loved raising my kids. I loved the process, the dirt of it, the tears of it, the frustration of it, Christmas, Easter, birthdays, growth charts, pediatrician appointments. I loved all of it. — Jane Elliot

Jittery, neurotic parents don't need any more false scares to piss their pants over. They're already raising their twatty little offspring like mollycoddled prisoners: banned from playing outdoors in case a paedophile ring burrows through the pavement and eats them, locked indoors with nothing but anti-bacterial plasma screens for company, ferried to and from school in spluttering rollcaged tanks ... Christ, half these kids would view choking to death as a release. — Charlie Brooker

It's funny-my married friends tell me all the time, 'What you have is so much easier.' When you're doing it on your own, you don't have to [argue over] how you're raising the kids. — Connie Britton

Men marry women who see through their bullshit, and women marry men they can't seduce, at least according to Lou. It's the only way you can live with each other over long periods of time and get things done, raising kids and buying houses and all the other nonsense of matrimony and human striving.

To Judith, this was a depressing thought. She wanted to marry a man who was so crazy for her he couldn't see straight. — Karin Goodwin

I've had a family my entire adult life; I started raising kids when I was 21. I suspect that being part of a family has probably informed my life as a writer as much as anything else has. — Amy Bloom

When it comes to raising civilized kids there are no hard rules, but there are two things on which most parents agree: Boys are generally wilder than girls, and adolescents are wilder than kids of any other age. If you've got an adolescent boy, you're in the sweet spot for trouble. — Jeffrey Kluger

Raising kids is part joy and part guerilla warfare. — Ed Asner

I have an incredible role model in my mom. She was a single mother raising two kids in New York. — Kim Raver

If you want to be an architect of change by raising great kids, God bless. If you want to do it by raising money for your kid's school, great. If you want to build a garden - whatever it is. Women like myself - they're complicated, and they have a lot of different interests and qualities within them. — Maria Shriver

We got babies raising babies, and its important for us as responsible adults to go out and do what we can to make sure that our kids are steered in the right direction. — Alonzo Mourning

The real superstar is a man or a woman raising six kids on $150 a week. — Spencer Haywood

We go to college, live together or marry, and have kids - often with little more thought to the daily routines of raising children than our grandparents gave them, when women by and large stayed at home. — Mona Simpson

Tiger parenting is all about raising independent, creative, courageous kids. In America today, there's a dangerous tendency to romanticize creativity in a way that may undermine it. — Amy Chua

It's not just the look, the cost, and the time involved in putting sunscreen on a child, it's the battle. My kids have no idea why they would have to wait to have fun while they are smeared with chemicals all over their face and body. They scream. They cry. "It burns!" The process of applying sunscreen just highlights the preposterousness of raising pale kids on a planet that revolves around a hot burning star that emits poisonous UV rays. I can never tell if the concerned looks from strangers are because they think I am torturing my children or because I am dressed like an out-of-shape Superman at the beach. Does anyone know where I can get a red swim cape? — Jim Gaffigan