Your Kids Growing Up Quotes & Sayings

If we don't give kids the opportunity to fail when they're growing up, and to fail productively, to fail creatively, that they're going to get out there into the world and they're going to hit some kind of setback, like everybody does, and they're going to get completely derailed. — Paul Tough

Growing up, I thought I'd have at least five kids. — Minnie Driver

I just didn't work that much while the kids were growing up. — Jill Clayburgh

I paid for my name a lot when I was growing up because other kids teased me. — Karin Slaughter

Growing up, we had 30, 40, 50 people coming through the house some Thanksgivings. Sometimes there was a kids' table; other times, the plate was just sitting on your lap. You get in where you fit in at that house. — Michael Strahan

I don't want my kids growing up with the image of God that I had
Plato's white grandfatherly god
because that god is not a very good father. When it comes down to it, you can't trust him with your kids. — William P. Young

Make your kids go out and play. Kids ought to grow up the way you and I grew up and we grew up fifty years apart or maybe more. But we did the same things. Now who's out playing in the afternoon? Nobody. — C. Everett Koop

I'd never had money growing up, and it's never been that important to me, except maybe to take our kids on a nice vacation or something like that. — Harlan Coben

The problem with growing up in a cafe was the cafe never closed, my parents worked every day of the year from morning to night. So it was a big menagerie of kids, business and cooking! — Anthony Minghella

I didn't grow up in a creative environment. It was very boring town, boring everything. You go to school and you basically hate all the other kids because you don't understand them or what it's all about. At the same time I'm happy for that because I became very withdrawn and when you become withdrawn you develop your own bizarre-o personality. — Rob Zombie

Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the sidewalk before it stops snowing. — Phyllis Diller

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

When I was growing up, there weren't any Little Leagues in the city. Parents worked all the time. They didn't have time to take their kids out to play baseball and football. — Mike Krzyzewski

Since Catherine [Zeta-Jones] and I got together, I've cut back dramatically. My priorities changed, and I still love acting and all that, but not as much as I love watching my two kids grow up. — Michael Douglas

I like that in 'Caprica' the virtual world is a new thing. The parents didn't have that growing up. And it's the same thing about the Internet and all the current technology. It didn't exist like it does now for our parents' generation. Kids aren't relating to their parents anymore, and I just find that so honest. — Magda Apanowicz

I feel like kids that grew up in New York City or in L.A. were exposed to all these subcultures and subgenres, whereas I was only exposed to the poppiest of pop music so I never had this negative connotation towards pop music. That's not South African music having an effect on me, but just how international music was filtered through South Africa affected me. It gave me a not-negative connotation towards pop music growing up. — St. Lucia

I've grown up with kids watching me and as they're growing up, I'm growing up. — Amanda Bynes

Where do I get my seriousness? You can't help but grow up fast when your parents get divorced. You see your mother go to get food stamps and she's making fifty dollars too much to get them, with four kids to support. — Tom Cruise

I was part of that group of kids growing up in the '80s under the Reagan regime, what I used to call 'living in the shadow of Dr. Manhattan,' where we would have dreams all the time that New York City was being destroyed, and that that wall of light and destruction was rolling out and would just devour our neighborhood. — Junot Diaz

As a little kid growing up in Hollywood, I was called 'a little crazy'. And now I guess I'm still that way. — Leonardo DiCaprio

One of my pleasantest memories as a kid growing up in New Orleans was how a bunch of us kids, playing, would suddenly hear sounds. It was like a phenomenon, like the Aurora Borealis
maybe. The sounds of men playing would be so clear, but we wouldn't be sure where they were coming from. So we'd start trotting, start running
'It's this way! It's this way!'
And sometimes, after running for a while, you'd find you'd be nowhere near that music. But that music could come on you any time like that. The city was full of the sounds of music. — Danny Barker

You know what happens to guys? There's what I call the individual time of their career, and the team time of their career. This is the team time. You don't care about all the other stuff. You just want to live in one place, and watch your kids grow up and go to the same school. You say, 'Hey, maybe I'd better play well and be a good enough guy that they keep me.' — Mike Babcock

To this day, we get letters at Alternative Tentacles from young teenagers who hide their Dead Kennedys albums behind their mirror or in the mattress of their bed. Wouldn't it be better if the parents just discussed this with the kids instead of creating this culture of sneaking and dishonesty within the family? The moral of the story being, you don't hide reality from your kids because then they grow up to be smarter, more aware adults. — Jello Biafra

Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult, I've decided, is only a slow sewing shut. — Jodi Picoult

Oh, my other goal was that I wanted to talk about this area and this time in history. I wanted to talk about growing up in Oakland, a white kid, from this kind of generation of broken homes and listening to hip-hop. — Moshe Kasher

I wanted to be an actor because it gave me the opportunity to express myself in ways I wasn't comfortable expressing myself, as a kid growing up in St. Louis. — Scott Bakula

If you're a white kid growing up and you see a Black player and he's got the name of your college or your town across his chest, that means something. — Frank Deford

Most kids who grow up in Alaska and spend a fair degree of time in the wilderness, grow up being pretty self-reliant. You have to be, in order to survive all the animals and cliffs and crevasses and rapids - at some point, your brain has to kick [out of] that childish daydream world and start making I-want-to-live decisions. — Leigh Newman

Some of what makes growing up hard for famous kids is that they don't have room to do immature stuff. I was really happy that I could go to school and hang out behind the alley and be somewhat irresponsible. — Tavi Gevinson

When we grow up," she said, "we'll have amazing families. Our dens will be better than this. Your kids and my kids will play together in a humongous room with every kind of toy and game." "Except I won't have kids," Dan said. "I'll come over myself and play ... — Peter Lerangis

If social cohesion is one of the good things about growing up in a small town, the downside is the unchallengeable power of cliques. That sort of thing is in the nature of the teenage beast, but in bigger towns and cities there are usually so many different social groups within a single school or locality that most kids can find others they feel comfortable with. Not so in a small town. If you don't conform, even at the cost of sacrificing your principles and self-respect, you will be an outcast. And if you have a sensitive nature, it will mark you for life. — Sela Ward

I think there's a level at which you think that there's a reason that you're being singled out, that you're being chosen. As a kid, I was always mistaken for a girl. Before you reach that age where your sexuality starts to display itself, kids can look very androgynous, and I guess I leaned more toward the feminine. All those things were very hard, growing up, because you're trying to create an identity, and you're feeling shameful about the one that you're making. So, I identified with it a lot. — Matt Reeves

Virtual Piggy was created to provide a safe way for kids to shop online with parental approval, in recognition of growing digital world kids live in. — Jo Webber

I was a very determined kid. I couldn't imagine any other life for myself. This happens to kids who are different in any way. How am I going to make a life? Who am I going to be when I grow up? Will there be a place for me in the world? Acting gave me a sense of purpose, but it also gave me a sense that I would survive, that I would find my place. — Linda Hunt

In giving our daughter life, her father and I had also given her death, something I hadn't realized until that new creature flailed her arms in what was now infinite space. We had given her disease and speeding cars and flying cornices: once out of the fortress that had been myself, she would never be safe again ... We disappoint our kids and they disappoint us, and sometimes they grow up into people we don't like very much. We go on loving, though what we love may be more memory than actuality. And until the day we die we fear the phone that rings in the middle of the night. — Mary Cantwell

I was very protected growing up. My dad was very strict with me. I was the oldest of four kids, and there are three girls. So I kind of paved the way of what it was like to raise a teenage daughter. — Dominik Garcia-Lorido

Where I grew up - I grew up on the north side of Akron, lived in the projects. So those scared and lonely nights - that's every night. You hear a lot of police sirens, you hear a lot of gunfire. Things that you don't want your kids to hear growing up. — LeBron James

Our kids are growing up with more privilege than we had; that's true for most of my friends in L.A. I don't know any actor who grew up with any particular privilege, so everyone wrestles with this. And I think, a lot of times, it's about being patient with your kids. — Matt Damon

When you hear about gay pride, do not think of the silly men in their drag queen outfits - think of kids being kicked out of their homes for something all evidence shows is genetic. Think of the higher rate of suicide, alcoholism, drug abuse among young gay people. Think of the children growing up in a church where they are taught to love God but taught that God has no place for them, no matter how good they are. It's what you do with your sexuality that makes a difference. — Laura Allen

Growing up is something that you do your whole life. I want to always feel that I can be a kid if I want. Growing up has some negative connotations. Like, you're not supposed to roll around on the ground anymore. You're not supposed to make fun of yourself. You're not supposed to ride a bicycle. But I'm a Toys-R-Us kid. — Robert Downey Jr.

Nookie." I giggle because the word itself is funny but hearing her say it makes it even more so. "I'm going to give you some advice because you're still a new wife - and because my son can be a little shit at times. I know; I'm his mum." She looks around as though she's about to reveal top-secret information. "Nookie equals power and there's a reason he wants it from you all the time. It levels the playing field. Don't like something he's doing? Take the nookie away. Get the results you want. Need him to see things your way but he refuses? Withhold the nookie and he'll make the fastest attitude adjustment you've ever seen. Want your husband to retire because he's going to work himself into an early grave and miss his grandchildren growing up the way he missed his kids? Close the gates of nookie and get your husband home with you instead of burying him. That's how you work it, darling. You use the power of the nookie to get the results you want. — Georgia Cates

I hate when people think you're broken because your parents are divorced. And I really reject the idea of staying together for the kids. If they're growing up in a house that's not healthy, it's better to know that's not the model of what marriage should be. — Anna Kendrick

Instead of treating your child like how you were treated. Treat them with the same love and attention you wanted from your parents while growing up. — Jonathan Anthony Burkett

Working 14 hours a day until you're 55 and missing your kids growing up is not what I would consider a recipe for happiness. — Robert Harris

There is a real problem with the lack of diversity, specifically in genre films and the superheroes our kids grow up watching and emulating, they can't really identify with. When you see the same thing, over and over again, and it seems not to speak of you and your heritage and your culture, it leaves you out of this world, a little bit. It gives a certain social distance with your world. — Djimon Hounsou

We bring champagne to Franklin and Jeffrey, and I offer a final toast, 'Wishing you all good things in your life together.' Short, simple, to the point.
I look at Meredith, relaxed in her ivory gown, my sister is all grown up. I'm grateful we did our growing up together. — Steven Rowley

Growing up in Australia, you never feel like you're going to live beyond that place. You wake up and you go to the beach, and you do your homework. You're just a kid. — Heath Ledger

Maybe espresso is one of those universal words because it's a little like life. You have to enjoy life slowly, savoring every single moment so you don't miss anything important. Like your brother's despair and your own self-destruction. Like surprise honeymoons and your kids growing up before your very eyes.
Slow down, pay attention, and drink it in. And don't forget to share it with the ones you love. — Cassia Leo

The kids growing up is a separate strand to your life. However bad a day you've had, that's the most important thing, and you have to remember that. — Michael Palin

You literally can shoot someone in the face on television and a 7-year-old can watch it. But you can't show the slight of a man's hip, because dear God, someone might think of sex. And while we all hope our kids grow up to have sex, we do not hope they grow up to shoot someone in the face. — Shonda Rhimes

This was middle school, the age of miracles, the time when kids shot up three inches over the summer, when breasts bloomed from nothing, when voices dipped and dove. Our first flaws were emerging, but they were being corrected. Blurry vision could be fixed invisibly with the magic of the contact lens. Crooked teeth were pulled straight with braces. Spotty skin could be chemically cleared. Some girls were turning beautiful. A few boys were growing tall. — Karen Thompson Walker

[There's] a joke that I've done forever: 'Nowadays they say that the largest majority of people will be Latino and you'll tell scary stories to your grandkids: "A long time ago when I was growing up, there used to be people who were white," and the kid says, "Really?" and you say, "Yeah, like the man who cuts our grass."' I've had that line forever and I love it. — George Lopez

You dream that you want to be a monster maker when you grow up, and that's what happened. I refused to take no for an answer. I just was a very driven kid, who's now a very driven semi-adult. — Howard Berger

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

There may be something in the fact that when I was a little kid I'd been told growing up that we had some degree of native American blood in us, I always found that a point of pride. So, when it came to cowboys and Indians I most certainly did not want to be John Wayne. I wanted to be one of the Indians. — Johnny Depp

That is what happens when you put your soul in charge of your life. You dare to claim the sky. That sky is different for everyone. For one person, maybe the sky is having a baby, being a parent, growing a family. But for another it's never having kids; it's traveling the globe; it's saving the world... You know your sky. And if you don't, it's because you haven't listened closely enough. — Elizabeth Lesser

Or perhaps a widow found him and took him in: brought him an easy chair, changed his sweater every morning, shaved his face until the hair stopped growing, took him faithfully to bed with her every night, whispered sweet nothings into what was left of his ear, laughed with him over black coffee, cried with him over yellowing pictures, talked greenly about having kids of her own, began to miss him before she became sick, left him everything in her will, thought of only him as she died, always knew he was fiction but believed in him anyway. — Jonathan Safran Foer

For years I've been interested in a fundamental question concerning what I call the psychology of evil: Why is it that good people do evil deeds? I've been interested in that question since I was a little kid. Growing up in the ghetto in the South Bronx, I had lots of friends who I thought were good kids, but for one reason or another they ended up in serious trouble. They went to jail, they took drugs, or they did terrible things to other people. My whole upbringing was focused on trying to understand what could have made them go wrong. — Philip Zimbardo

I don't know what I could say specifically, except that everything I've learned as a kid of course must somehow play into what I do now. I think when everything kind of drifted away, I had to go out into the world and learn how to emotionally be okay with all that, which to me was a decades-long process. But also I happened to find my way in life, to find a living, to figure out what I wanted to be when I grow up. I think all of that now probably helps me. It probably gives me more life experience to draw from. — Jackie Earle Haley

My father used to say that when he was growing up the water was clear and there were tons of fireflies everywhere ... He felt sorry for the kids growing up today ... But it is really beautiful ... Time will just keep on passing ... we'll get old ... and look back on the past. I hope we can always say ... how great things were. — Fuyumi Soryo

But in short, the recipe for a growing person is always grace plus truth over time. Give a person grace (unmerited favor) an truth (structure), and do that over time, and you have the greatest chance of this person growing into a person of good character. Grace includes support, resources, love, compassion, forgiveness, and all of the relations sides of God's nature. Truth is the structure of life; it tells us how we are supposed to live our lives and how life really works. — Henry Cloud

When we were kids, growing up in the sixties, the only images we had of ourselves were either still photographs or 8mm movies ... Now we have video, digital cameras, MP3s, and a million other ways to document ourselves. But the still photograph continues to hold a sense of mystery and awe to me. — Catherine Opie

I'm first generation American, and my parents were both from Nigeria. And so I always say that I'm literally an African American. So my last name is Famuyiwa, it's different. And so that was a part of my experience from people not being able to pronounce it to not sort of having sort of a shared, common history with a lot of the kids that I was growing up with because my parents were from Africa. — Terry Gross

I think it's very important that we instill in our kids that it has nothing to do with their name or their situation that they're growing up in; it has to do with who they are as an individual. — Melinda Gates

As a kid, I wanted to be a boy because I equated that with strength. There's a problem with that. It's only growing into my own womanhood that I realize how warped that is that I was attributing strength to male qualities. — Tatiana Maslany

When I was a kid growing up in New York, I was pretty unaware of racism. I think when we're young - before we lose our innocence - we're sort of unaware of the more flawed qualities of each other. — Dave Matthews

I want to be someone that kids in my community look up to and want to strive to give back when they grow up. — Ray Rice

I suppose I was artistic as a child. Our house was so full of art and artists that it never occurred to me not to be constantly making things. I just assumed that all kids liked to work with their hands as much as I did. I was an only child so I did have a lot of time to be creative by myself and with my parents. — Wendy Froud

There are generations of women who left the workforce to be moms, and their kids grow up, and they think, "Well, what now?" — Kathryn Hahn

[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

I always challenged men, in foot races or whatever as a kid growing up, because it was a way of pushing myself and challenging myself against the best - but you have to know and accept that men are born with testosterone. You can beat them for so long, but eventually they'll catch up. — Katie Uhlaender

I wonder if kids growing up now are actually going to have that - if they're ever going to be able to unplug and have that ability to concentrate, or if it's just never going to happen for them. It's a little unnerving, frankly. — Ron Currie Jr.

The only guy that speaks at any sort of depth is, in my mind, Eminem. He's a guy that does music that talks about the struggles of addiction and before that violence, with growing up in a broken family, not being a good enough father. So, you know that's what I enjoy about it. It's harder to listen to than ever before because I have a bunch of kids and you just can't put it on. — Marco Rubio

Kids are constantly evolving, learning, and growing. They aren't who they were yesterday. — Rachel Vail

I was the youngest of six kids, so yeah, feeding myself was important, but it's not like I was obsessed with food growing up. — Jim Gaffigan

Growing up, I loved the tale of Peter Rabbit and also books on Pippi Longstocking. Pippi was a girl who had so much fun and was very daring. My sons loved all the Dr. Seuss books — Soraya Diase Coffelt

I think we need to do as much as we can to give back to these young kids growing up. I think we've done a pretty decent job so far. — Mario Lemieux

Helicopter parents. Before I started at Pirriwee Public, I thought it was an exaggeration, this thing about parents being overly involved with their kids. I mean, my mum and dad loved me, they were, like, interested in me when I was growing up in the nineties, but they weren't, like, obsessed with me. — Liane Moriarty

I am a little discouraged and irritated at the welfare recipient families growing in size all the time. Those of us who work and pay taxes all the time shouldn't have to pay for these kids. — Hilmar Moore

There's absolutely no sort of acknowledgment or reward for this - except for the intangible of my kids growing up to be wonderful people. — Jodie Foster

Part of growing up is developing a bullshit detector, and kids usually do a pretty fair job of wising each other up. — Pauline Kael

Gideon and I sit there in the dark, wordless for a while, only our ragged breaths disturbing the silence. Memories of my sister overwhelm me - I see her impish grin as she leans over me at the orphanage, tugging on my hair until I wake up. I remember us climbing up to the roof as kids, sitting cross-legged next to the herbs and vegetables our caretakers were growing while we read the English books Rose had "borrowed" from her class at school. And then there was L.A. - all of our hope for a better life so quickly crushed, but Rose never let despair overtake her. She was there after every single night to hold me until the pain went away. And later, when I got numb to it all, she still made a point of holding me, of promising me that one day things would be different. — Paula Stokes