Parenthood Quotes - Page 2

When you push your stroller past a group of elderly women, you'll see in the turning gladness of their bodies a glimpse of the children they had been, turning toward the tin music of the ice cream van.

Kids don't always stop to judge or analyze a new experience unless the adults around them react strongly. Otherwise, they just take in the experience and move on to the next one.

Parenthood...It's about guiding the next generation, and forgiving the last.

You don't have to deserve your mother's love. You have to deserve your father's. He's more particular.

As there would be no more inheritance, there would be no more greed. Peter Kropotkin

Despite what you might believe right now, your son’s future is bright. You only need the right tools to help him get there.

I said that additionally, since I was planning to nurse, it be best if you were off the breast before I came back to work. My boss just looked at me dreamily and said, 'That won't be for sixty years, at least.

He felt her heartbeat against his shoulder, through his jacket, light as raindrops.

If children matter, than whom more to stand in the gap than their parents; yet sadly, the parents (or a parent) can ironically become the chief enemy for which the children may hold in contempt…rather than care. Under the “abuse card”, the custodial parent has the aforementioned ability to operate as a double agent: on the one-side, the protector and caretaker; while on the other side, the divider and abuser. Similarly, the state can be integral to The System of dismantling the dad while appearing (and attesting) to be acting in the best interest of the children. Within the second of these two is the divorce industry that has benefited from the spoils of war without regard to the incomparable costs borne by our community and culture.

Healing, it turns out, is a journey. It doesn’t happen all at once.

I wanted to explain so much to him at that moment, but you can't give a six-year-old the perspective of a 40-year-old, not really, so I gave him the short course.

Is there a word for adults when they aren't parents?"Steppa laughs. "Folks with other things to do?""Like what things?""Jobs, I guess. Friends. Trips. Hobbies.

I inherited curiosity from my Dad.

Anything which parents have not learned from experience they can now learn from their children.

Adams looks forward to teaching his granddaughters about planting trees, noting that they already show inclination toward this and need only be encouraged in the naturalist pursuits he has found so healthy.

On my fifteenth birthday, I came to realize that the expression spoiled rotten meant exactly that. We kids were the apples of our parents' eyes, and I, for one, was rotting from inside out.

As parents we're meant to help each other out and build each other up.

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.

Make me the father, O Lord, who will show my sons enough of a sense of humor, so that they will always be serious, but never take themselves too seriously. Give them humility, so they will always remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.

the real tests of life can come a child’s way at any moment,

Coming back last time to the house she grew up in, Isabel had been reminded of the darkness that had descended with her brothers' deaths, how loss had leaked all over her mother's life like a stain. As a fourteen-year-old, Isabel had searched the dictionary. She knew that if a wife lost a husband, there was a whole new word to describe who she was: she was now a widow. A husband became a widower. But if a parent loss a child, there was no special label for their grief. They were still just a mother or a father, even if they no longer had a son or daughter. That seemed odd. As to her own status, she wondered whether she was still technically a sister, now that her adored brothers had died.

Most people who are would each not be in love with their partner, if they did not have the kind of genitals they have.

One of the ridiculously difficult things about raising children is that they are constantly developing and changing so that just when you think you have them figured out, they throw you a curve, a new twist you never saw coming. They are like mutating viruses - as soon as you have become immune to their latest shenanigans, they develop a new strain to which you have yet to be exposed. While this constant shape-shifting is one of the greatest challenges of parenting, it is also one of the things which makes them so fascinating and wonderful.

We both liked children; we just didn't want any ourselves. There were children everywhere, and we saw no reason to start our own brand. Young couples plunge into parenthood and about half the time they end up with some ghastly problem on their hands. We thought we'd leave that to others.

There goes a lot of pain in raising children. But the pain is equally or overtly compensated by the joy of parenthood.

The highway of grace will get you somewhere a whole lot faster then the freeway of spite.

Parenthood makes such sweet hypocrites of us all.

He saw the pleasure you took from your job every day of his life, and THAT was what he wanted.

My dear Watson, you as a medical man are continually gaining light as to the tendencies of a child by the study of the parents. Don't you see that the converse is equally valid. I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.”—Sherlock Holmes, “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches

I looked at Lucas with the pang that a parent feels when he knows his child will be hurt and that it's no one's fault and that to try to preempt the rites of passage is an act of contempt for the child's courage.

The struggles we endure today will be the ‘good old days’ we laugh about tomorrow.

Miseries of a birth.

Then keep your confidence in the infinite mercy of the Savior. Say, like one mother I know who was distressed by the conduct of her children, 'Jesus, You love them too much not to save them.' Thank Him in advance for the Heaven which He is preparing for them...but, and this is very, very important--while you are suffering, wait in peace for the time of Jesus, the time chosen by Him to grant your request. He will perhaps make you wait a long time, precisely as a proof of your confidence...tell Him whatever your trial, that with His grace nothing will make you lose your profound peace, because you are sure of Him.

A single action can cause a life to veer off in a direction it was never meant to go. Falling in love can do that, you think. And so can a wild party. You marvel at the way each has the power to forever alter an individual's compass. And it is the knowing that such a thing can so easily happen, as you did not know before, not really, that has fundamentally changed you and your son.

One of the main functions of a push-up bra is to lower the number of mothers who seem like mothers.

We can't surrender to the culture. We've minimized the role of fathers, so we've created a generation of barbarians, children who become men without growing up. They stay in boyhood through their 20s and 30s, sometimes their whole lives. They think of themselves first, indulge in pornography, do what they feel like, leave their wives, and culture, and churches to raise their children.

You're so haunted by other people's futures that you forget, the only future you cannot see is your own.

Why did you do it? Give up everything to raise another man's son?'His father did look up at that. 'I didn't raise another man's son,' he said sharply. 'I raised my own.

Conscious parenting is not about being perfect, it's about being aware. Aware of what your kids need from you to reach more of their full potential.

It'll be when you first learn to walk that I get daily demonstrations of the asymmetry in our relationship. You'll be incessantly running off somewhere, and each time you walk into a door frame or scrape your knee, the pain feels like it's my own. It'll be like growing an errant limb, an extension of myself whose sensory nerves report pain just fine, but whose motor nerves don't convey my commands at all. It's so unfair: I'm going to give birth to an animated voodoo doll of myself.

If Mom is convinced that ballet lessons are a must, she shouldtake them.Although it may look odd to see a thirty-year old woman hang- ing onto a bar and flinging a slightly plump leg in the air, the sight is not as pathetic as seeing her seven-year old daughter grimly going through such motions just to please her mother, when she would prefer to be at home designing new doll clothes.Although some parents are never quite ready to accept this fact, the child is not one of our possessions. We don’t own him; we never will. We gave birth to his body; he may share some of our physical characteristics; but he does not inherit our desires.He’s a different person, a separate entity, with his own likes and dislikes.It’s a grave mistake to try to override a child’s power of choice in what he wants to be and do. Some parents do this in an attempt to live their lives through the child.

Parents accept their obsolescence with the best grace they can muster. . . they do all they can to make it easy for the younger generation to surpass the older while secretly dreading the rejection that follows.

What is success, after all, but doing what you really want to do?

There are only three ways to teach a child. The first is by example, the second is by example, the third is by example.

Thing about boats is, you can always sell them if you don't like them. Can't sell kids.

But I got through the review, for all their Latin and French; I did, and if you doubt me, you just look at the end of the great ledger, turn it upside down, and you'll find I've copied out all the fine words they said of you: "careful observer," "strong nervous English," "rising philosopher."Oh! I can nearly say it all off by heart, for many a time when I am frabbed by bad debts, or Osborne's bills, or moidered with accounts, I turn the ledger wrong way up, and smoke a pipe over it, while I read those pieces out of the review which speak about you, lad!

If you are financially affluent, think of adopting a kid and raise him or her right next to your biological offspring. And let your love become the proof of your parenthood, instead of your DNA.

Their lifelong love of learning, their remarkable wide-ranging intellectual curiosity, was fostered primarily by their father. He read aloud to them at night, eliciting their responses to works of history and literature. He organized amateur plays for them, encourage pursuit of special interests, prompted them to write essays on their readings, and urge them to recite poetry.

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.

It’s about Nietzsche’s theory of universal debt. Your parents make it possible for you to believe a far better myth than Santa. They let you think that you, as a kid, don’t owe the world a thing. The world can give you, even if just for a few minutes, utter joy without requiring anything from you. It’s not about consumerism. As far as you know, no one buys you these presents. They come out of nothingness, with fantasies of elves attached. You aren’t required to be grateful to your parents or anything like that. They can give to you and nothing is required in return. When you get old enough, when you have kids, you get to enact this myth for them. It has nothing to do with any fat man in a red suit, no matter what we tell ourselves. It’s about owing nothing, and then realizing that you have to do this job of perpetuating this… this fantasy world, whether you like it or not.

There has always been a sliver of panic in him, deeply buried, when it comes to his daughter: a fear that he is no good as a father, that he is doing everything wrong. That he never quite understood the rules. …There is pride, too, though–pride that he has done it alone. That his daughter is so curious, so resilient. There is the humility of being a father to someone so powerful, as if he were only a narrow conduit for another, greater thing. That’s how it feels right now, he thinks, kneeling beside her, rinsing her hair: as though his love for his daughter will outstrip the limits of his body. The walls could fall away, even the whole city, and the brightness of that feeling would not wane.

Mothers burning inside the risen suns of their children.

The thing is, after having your first baby - there is no 'normal'. The reason form this is that there is actually no time for normality. Feeding, changing, washing muslins and generally cooing over your baby takes 25 hours a day and there is little room for anything else. Plus, you also need time to nap if you are going to recover well from your pregnancy and birth. So if you are pressurising yourself on top of that to make plans or worry about underarm depilation, you are pushing yourself far too much. Keep everything calm so you stay calm. Listen to your body. Trust yourself to know how much is 'too much'.

... the worst possible heritage to leave with children: high spiritual pretensions and low performance.

This anxiety to keep his father from anger was wearisome to him.

Millions of deaths would not have happened if it weren’t for the consumption of alcohol. The same can be said about millions of births.

I can do one of two things. I can be President of the United States or I can control Alice Roosevelt. (His 19-year-old daughter.) I cannot possibly do both.

I assumed my first undivided responsibility.

What was I waiting for with regards to the sea-soaked woman laughing in front of me? What would I tell myself if I didn't watch her grow gorgeously ripe with our baby? If we didn't become sleep-deprived and snappy with each other as we tried to navigate the stormy seas of parenthood together.

He could tune her, bringing out her better instincts and filtering out her lesser ones.