Quotes & Sayings About What It Means To Be A Parent

To be in charge as a parent means inspiring your children to motivate themselves. — Hal Edward Runkel

I hated being a child because to be a child means that you are essentially the property of your parents, benevolently or not. — Molly Crabapple

There is a saying: 'The child is parent to the adult', which means whatever happens to you as a child or teenager affects the adult you become. You are forged in your history. And fiction is an incredibly important force in shaping children, and that's why fiction needs to be diverse. — Malorie Blackman

In two-parent households, women have increasingly entered the workplace, and in single-parent households, there is even more of a need for the adults to work. That means parents do not fully control their own schedule and have to scramble to find high-quality after-school options. — Geoffrey Canada

I want people to feel conflicted. I want them to feel for characters they started out hating. I want to start conversations about what it means to be a parent. About the responsibility we bear to ourselves and to each other. — Sian Heder

Children raised by the Double-Minded parent will often grow up having codependent tendencies, seeking acceptance from others, being unrealistic in their view of "self," and feeling insecure. They are confused about what it means to follow Christ, and might avoid their parents in adulthood. — Michelle Anthony

One thing that happens when you have an alcoholic for a parent is you grow up the child of an alcoholic. ... For a quick trip around the bases, it means you blame yourself for everything, you avoid reality, you can't trust people, you're hungry to please. Which isn't all bad: perfectionism makes the straight-A student; lack of trust begets self-sufficiency; low self-esteem can be a terrific motivator; if everyone were so gung-ho on reality, there'd be no art. — Maria Semple

I realize that this is what being a parent means - facing the most horrible thing that could ever happen to you and yet thinking only of how it will hurt your child. — Claudia Gray

We should remember that with such preparatory reading, a good pace to maintain is to try and finish a book every week or two. This may seem intimidating at first, and if it were considered a hobby, it would be overwhelming. But the task is the education of your children, which is not a hobby but a vocation. The word vocation comes from the Latin verb voco, which means "I call." A person's vocation is his calling; a parent's vocation is to learn in order to teach. — Wesley Callihan

At the end of the day, Esperanza stepped into Myron's office, sat down, and said, "I don't know much about family values or what makes a happy family. I don't know the best way to raise a kid or what you have to do to make him happy and well adjusted, whatever the hell 'well adjusted' means. I don't know if it's best to be an only child or have lots of siblings or be raised by two parents or a single parent or a gay couple or a lesbian couple or an overweight albino. But I know one thing." Myron looked up at her and waited. "No child could ever be harmed by having you in his life." Esperanza — Harlan Coben

The art of Montessori, which simply means finding the best way to help the child himself become what he was meant to become from the first moment of conception, is an art that joins home and school. That means parent and teacher supporting one another in their responsibility to the life of the child. — Maria Montessori

And so we see the paradox that evolution has handed us. If man is the only animal whose consciousness of self gives him an unusual dignity in the animal kingdom, he also pays a tragic price for it. The fact that the child has to identify -first- means that his very first identity is a social product. His habitation of his own body is built from the outside in; not from the inside out. He doesn't unfold into the world, the world unfolds into him. As the child responds to the vocal symbols learned from his object, he often gives the pathetic impression of being a true social puppet, jerked by alien symbols and sounds. What sensitive parent does not have his satisfaction tinged with sadness as the child repeats with such vital earnestness the little symbols that are taught him? — Ernest Becker

For it is the role of the parent to express his concerns and then take three steps back. Not one, mind you, not two, but three. Or maybe four. (But by no means five.) Yes, a parent should share his hesitations and then take three or four steps back, so that the child can make a decision by herself - even when that decision may lead to disappointment. — Amor Towles

Genesis 18 calls fathers to direct their children to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just. Being a parent means working in God's behalf to provide direction for your children. Directors are in charge. It involves knowing and helping them to understand God's standard for children's behavior. It means teaching them that they are sinners by nature. It includes pointing them to the mercy and grace of God shown in Christ's life and death for sinners. — Tedd Tripp

Whenever one asks "Why?" in science, one actually means "How?". "Why?" is not really a sensible question in science because it usually implies purpose and, as anyone who has been the parent of a small child knows, one can keep on asking "Why?" forever, no matter what the answer to the previous question. Ultimately, the only way to end the conversation seems to be to say "Because! — Lawrence M. Krauss

The change in the early elementary curriculum and the consequent neglect of teaching socialization places a greater burden than ever before on the American parent. But just when kids need parents more than ever to teach them the whole package of what it means to be a good person in this particular culture, the authority of parents to do that job has been undermined. We now live in a culture in which kids value the opinion of same-age peers more than they value the opinion of their parents, a culture in which the authority of parents has declined not only in the eyes of children but also in the eyes of parents themselves. Parents today suffer from role confusion. — Leonard Sax

The beginning of sanctity is loving yourself as a creation of God. And that means all of yourself, even the parts that you wish weren't there, the parts that you wish God hadn't made, the parts that you lament. God loves us like a parent loves a child - often more for the parts of the child that are weaker or where the child struggles or falters. More often than not, those very weaknesses are the most important paths to holiness, because they remind you of your reliance on God. — James Martin

I have a rule of thumb now and that's that somebody [she dates] has to have been married and they have to have had kids. Everything boils down to perspective. If your potential mate does not have the same perspective that you do then you're going to be lost ... If somebody has never been married, they don't know compromise ... [and] if they don't have children, they don't know the absolute self-sacrifice it takes and what it means to be a parent. — Eva LaRue

Defining yourself in terms of how you rank is always dangerous and ultimately immature. It doesn't matter whether the rank has to do with your grades, your weight or where you finished in the 800 meter race. Becoming a mature adult means, among other things, that you define yourself relative to your own potential, not relative somebody else's standard. — Leonard Sax

How could someone who has never lost a parent, a lover, or a best friend have the faintest clue about what any of this means? — Lena Dunham

A parenting program should provide time for parents to clarify their own ideas about what it means to be an effective and successful parent. — Timothy Carey

You don't have to be involved with my parents. Not if you don't want to be. Yes, you're the father,
but you aren't my boyfriend or husband. My family is my problem."
"I do," he said, before he even realized what he was saying. "I do want to be involved. With all of it.
We're talking about really making this work, about making a ... I don't know if we're talking about a
family, not in the traditional sense, but we're in this together, right?"
"I guess."
"That means I get to help you with parent things, and other unpleasantness. And you have to know
my brother. — Maisey Yates

They say the death of a parent puts you in time because that means there's now no generation standing between you and ordinary death: you're next. I don't buy it. — Bruce Jackson

Most literature on the culture of adolescence focuses on peer pressure as a negative force. Warnings about the "wrong crowd" read like tornado alerts in parent manuals ... It is a relative term that means different things in different places. In Fort Wayne, for example, the wrong crowd meant hanging out with liberal Democrats. In Connecticut, it meant kids who weren't planning to get a Ph. D. from Yale. — Mary Blakely

while living on His script. While far from perfect, the Spiritually Healthy parent is a parent who walks each day, step by step, with God as his guide. Becoming a spiritually healthy family means you will allow God to call the shots for you and your family members and that you look to Him to give you wisdom instead of relying on your own strength and "great ideas". Because you realize you are a work in progress yourself, you offer your children grace when needed, while helping them see the corrected path that God desires all His children to follow. You recite the following things each — Michelle Anthony

Faith should be a tool to set us free, not a means to fuel a fascist agenda seeking to impede the civil liberties of the "us"s. The first shall be last and the last shall be first ... therefore, those who stand for their Pius self-righteousness in order to trample those they deem inferior will be the 'last' and the poor and oppressed shall be 'first.' If the self-righteous want a lesson on morality, then actually take a lesson from Jesus whose best friend was a former hooker and whose mother was a single parent. — Cristina Marrero

If you're responsible enough to become a parent, then you should be responsible enough to accept your kid no matter how they turn out. It doesn't matter if they're disabled or gay or not as smart as others or green or black or blue or whatever the hell they turn out to be. You have them, you love them. Always. Being a parent isn't about getting to pick and choose what you want you kid to be. Being a parent means protecting your kid from anything that could ever harm him. Being a parent means you shelter, but you also make them stronger so one day they can stand on their own. — T.J. Klune

The parent is the strongest statement that the child hears regarding what it means to be alive and real. More than what we say or do, the way we are expresses what we think it means to be alive. So the articulate parent is less a telling than a listening individual. — Polly Berrien Berends

As parents, can we counter the effect of television violence? One worrying feature in Britain is that so many TV sets are in a child's bedroom; this means that the mediating effect of watching with a parent, the ability to discuss and interpret what has been seen, is lost. — Robert Winston

A huge majority of parents use some form of physical or verbal aggression against children. Since women remain the primary caretakers of children, the facts confirm the reality that given a hierarchal system in a culture of domination which empowers females (like the parent-child relationship) all too often they use coercive force to maintain dominance. In a culture of domination everyone is socialized to see violence as an acceptable means of social control. Dominant parties maintain power by the threat (acted upon or not) that abusive punishment, physical or psychological, will be used whenever the hierarchal structures in place are threatened, whether that be in male-female relationships, or parent and child bonds. — Bell Hooks

Raising children with an emphasis on intrinsic rewards is not a technique, a method or a trick to get them to do what the parent wants them to by subtler means, but a way of life, a way of living with children with real respect for their intelligence and for their being. — Mamie Van Doren

It's time to place the market within a moral framework - even if that means standing up to companies who make life harder for parents and families. — David Cameron

God loves his children more than any earthly parent, so think what your kindness to his children means to him. — Henry B. Eyring

A tragic mistake that is often made is to assume that the will of God is bound to be something very dull and uninviting, if not positively unpleasant. Consciously or not some persons look upon God as a hard taskmaster, or a severe parent ... The truth is that the will of God for us always means greater freedom, greater self-expression, newer and brighter experience, wider opportunity of service to others-life more abundant. — Emmet Fox

But the further step, by means of which a civilization is given its quality or culture, is only attained by a process of cellular division, in the course of which the individual is differentiated, made distinct from and independent of the parent group. — Herbert Read

Scoutcraft is a means through which the veriest hooligan can be brought to higher thought and to the elements of faith in God; and, coupled with the Scout's obligation to do a good turn every day, it gives the base of Duty to God and to Neighbour on which the parent or pastor can build with greater ease the form of belief that is desired. — Robert Baden-Powell

On a lighter but serious side I believe that homework was meant for parents to take a keen interest in the studies of children rather than leave it completely for the teacher. This way the parent child communication also developed. However with the passage of time the world become more mechanical and commercial. Quality time suffixed for quantity time and homework became a means of earning for many an educated unemployed teachers. How sad we sure have progressed but yet in many ways have lost our basic values, ethics and morality. It's time to wake up and DO OUR HOMEWORK. — Amit Abraham

[A]s a parent you just have no idea what anything means. On some level everything your kids do and say is in code. — Bill Clegg

Adopting means opening your home, and heart, to a life you've never known. But there is nothing as richly rewarding as being an adoptive parent. — Michael Gove

I would have let him go one finger at a time, until, without his realizing, he'd be floating without me. And then I thought, perhaps that is what it means to be a [parent] - to teach your child to live without you. — Nicole Krauss

Having children doesn't make you a good parent, it means you had sex. That's all. — Dave Ramsey

To let ourselves be seen, deeply seen, vulnerably seen; to love with our whole hearts, even though there's no guarantee
and that's really hard, and I can tell you as a parent, that's excruciatingly difficult
to practice gratitude and joy in those moments of terror, when we're wondering, "Can I love you this much? Can I believe in this this passionately? Can I be this fierce about this?" just to be able to stop and, instead of catastrophizing what might happen, to say, "I'm just so grateful, because to feel this vulnerable means I'm alive." And the last, which I think is probably the most important, is to believe that we're enough. Because when we work from a place, I believe, that says, "I'm enough," then we stop screaming and start listening, we're kinder and gentler to the people around us, and we're kinder and gentler to ourselves. — Brene Brown

Being a parent means my time use has to be a bit more focused, but it also gives me a new non-writing dimension to my life, which is a healthy thing. I can't wander along for weeks with an idea drifting through my head - I have someone who will drag me back into life, and that's a good thing. — Nick Earls

A parent's experience is an unknowable one. How, after all, can a child fathom what it means to be a parent, let alone a parent of a certain generation, with a certain personal history, with a certain spouse, with even a certain child? I get ready for my meeting with — Deb Caletti

The parent knows instinctively that if they're working and setting an example for their child that means that child is more likely to be in school, more likely to stay out of trouble and more likely to complete their education. — John Engler

No matter how many years pass, it means something to a parent when their child needs them. At first, kids need you so much, all you want them to do is grow up so they can do things for themselves. Then you learn. You learn you should have savored every time they reached for you or called your name. — Kristen Ashley

When you lose a parent, you realize how vital they are to the foundation of your life. It's impossible to understand what it means until that curtain is pulled. You're an orphan. But then I think that life is kind of remarkable, and the thing that causes the biggest pain can also bring amazing energy. — Neneh Cherry

Children need their parents' time and attention. Giving one's time is part of the work of love. It means being there for the child, attending to the child's needs rather than the parent's needs. — John Bradshaw

If you're reading this book, you're probably already interested in being green, and almost certainly already a parent (or about to become one), so I won't trouble too much with the semantics of what 'being green' means, but just say that doing the 'green' thing here means being as environmentally friendly as possible, while considering your child's everyday personal health as well, and taking into account social-justice issues to some degree, because no-one is an island and humans and animals are part of the environment too. Even if you're new to this, it's entirely
possible, with a little helping hand, to form new, green lifestyle habits, so long as you're prepared to take baby steps to begin with (and pardon the pun). — Zion Lights

We cannot hope only to leave our children a bigger car, a bigger bank account. We must hope to give them a sense of what it means to be a loyal friend, a loving parent, a citizen who leaves his home, his neighborhood and town better than he found it. — George H. W. Bush

I don't care if you're a parent giving to a child, a worker to a company, or a romantic to a lover, this behavior eventually leads to resentment. There's always a hidden agenda of What's in it for me? It's often suppressed, and this is why sacrifice is ultimately unwise and incomplete. Does this mean that there's no such thing as altruism, philanthropy, or generosity? No, it just means that anytime these exist, so do egocentricity, misanthropy, and greed. There's always a balancing force, even if it's sometimes hidden or unconscious. — John Frederick Demartini

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

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

EMOTIONAL ABANDONMENT AND NARCISSISTIC DEPRIVATION Children need mirroring and echoing. These come from their primary caregiver's eyes. Mirroring means that someone is there for them and reflects who they really are at any given moment of time. In the first three years of our life each of us needed to be admired and taken seriously. We needed to be accepted for the very one we are. Having these mirroring needs met results in what Alice Miller calls our basic narcissistic supplies. These supplies result from good mirroring by a parent with good boundaries. When this is the case, as Miller states in The Drama of the Gifted Child, the following dynamics take place: 1. The child's aggressive impulses can be neutralized because they do not threaten the parent. 2. The child's striving for autonomy is not experienced as a threat to the parent. — John Bradshaw