Parenting Quotes

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

Children harbor a great many doubts and sorrows that could be eased by a loving hug from a parent.

Age is only a number. Keep an active life.

Don't be preoccupied with something that drags your mind downhill. Be someone who could be destined to shine and can have the ability reach ultimate goals for the future."

I feel like I've lived numerous lives...and you can explore my incarnations through my works.

Children do not experience our intentions, no matter how heartfelt. They experience what we manifest in tone and behavior.

We're constantly judging and grading other parents, just to make sure that they aren't any better than us. I'm as guilty as anyone. I see some lady hand her kid a Nintendo DS at the supermarket and I instantly downgrade that lady to Shitty Parent status. I feel pressure to live up to a parental ideal that no one probably has ever achieved. I feel pressure to raise a group of human beings that will help America kick the shit out of Finland and South Korea in the world math rankings. I feel pressure to shield my kids from the trillion pages of hentai donkey porn out there on the Internet. I feel pressure to make the insane amounts of money needed for a supposedly 'middle-class' upbringing for the kids, an upbringing that includes a house and college tuition and health care and so many other expenses that you have to be a multimillionaire to afford it. PRESSURE PRESSURE PRESSURE.

A lifetime of memories does not provide empirical proof of the value of living. No one memory has a quantifiable value to anyone expect the holder of the memory. Parenting in large part consists of creating positive memories for children. An accumulation of a lifetime of memories does create a musical score that we can assess from an artistic if not scientific perspective. Each happy memory generates a beat of minor joy that when strung together form the musical notes demarking a person’s prosodic inner tune.

Ironically, pretending that parenting is easy diminishes the value of family. As truth seekers and truth speakers, we need to be honest about the cost of parenting.

What is shaping the way we dream? Yes we dream of our selves, of what we will become, but it's the environment that tells us what is possible. I don't think our dreams are limitless; they are bounded by the society we live in and its conception of what is respectable and good.

I know what it feels like to miss everything about him--the way he smells, the way his mouth curls up when he laughs, his voice.

We usually need to have pain, trial or challenge to be motivated to learn or change. Learning in the midst of ease and prosperity comes from the pure inner soul’s inspired desire for improvement.

Raising human offspring is an endeavor nothing less than a continued labor of patience, hard work, organization and ongoing adaptation. All of which is unlike that expected of any other living creatures on the planet (or this sector of the universe, as far as we can tell). It demands the most complex responsibility and long-term commitment of any parenting life-form. Indeed, it is at times, at least for quality parents, an overwhelming, exhausting, even daunting task. Albeit, one that in the end, (and, most of the time even in the middle of it), is more than worth it.

One of the reasons we judge each other so harshly in this world of parenting is because... we perceive anyone else who's doing anything differently than what we're doing as criticizing our choices.

The more love and support your child receives, the richer his or her life becomes, and nurses can certainly add to the circle of love surrounding your child.

Parenting the outside of the child is as useless as polishing a rotten apple.

Parents are not really interested in justice. They just want quiet.

Occasionally, a dog will be presented as some training method for having a baby. "My girlfriend and I got a dog. We are going to see if we can handle that before we have kids." This is a little like testing the waters of being a vegetarian by having lettuce on your burger. Okay, maybe that metaphor doesn't make sense, but neither does using a dog as a training method for having a baby.

And whose fault was it that the boy swallowed down lies, when no one would feed him the truth?

There’s a wound most troubled boys share, which, at its core, comes from the feeling that they don’t have their father’s unconditional love.

He knocked politely and entered the principal’s office with his dad face in full effect. He put his hand on my shoulder in a way that came off as both stern and proud. He was dad-ing it up for the principal, which I was actually a little grateful for, but it also made me mad.

The endorphin high of birth will fade, but its trace remains with you forever, its fingerprints indelible proof of love's presence and daily grandeur. You have offered up your prayer. You have vowed service to a new world and laid a bedrock of earthly faith. You have chosen your sword, your shield, and where you will fall. Whatever the morrow brings, these things, these people, will be with you always. The power of choice, of a life, a lover, a place to stand, will be there to be called upon and make fresh sense of your tangled history. More important, it will also be there when you waver, when you're lost, providing you with the elements of a new compass, encased within your heart.

The best parenting strives to educate children in how to live -- enthusiastically, compassionately, without greed, striving for a better world.

It's easy to love kids who make you feel competent.

I tell Esther she should ease up on lard. There's no need to mix lard in with Scottie's rice, chicken, and beans. I tell her she hasn't read the blogs. I've read the blogs. I know what Scottie should eat.

Be very attentive towards the child’s evolving World of Senses that needs Stability, Routine, & Structure, World of Emotions that needs Love, Freedom & Creativity and World of Thoughts that needs Discrimination as an Ability to choose Right Thinking, Emotions, Behaviour.

Luxury is the enemy of growth. This is the one thing that I learnt from my father, and I approve of it fully. Abundance is neither good nor healthy for the growth of a child’s mind.

I often must sacrifice my own needs and desires for the purpose of giving my children what they need and modeling for them the depths of Christ's love."...make myself available in the routine tasks and myriad interruptions of daily life b/c I believe it is God's will for me to serve my family through them.

When a boy feels as if no one cares about him, or as if he will never amount to anything, he truly believes it doesn’t matter what he does.

Adelaide believes that all children should have enough grown-ups around who love them so that one can tell them to fight, one can tell them not to, and one can tell them not to worry so much.

Then we talked a lot about our parents and how we didn't want to become them, but we had no other role models--or "maps," Alex kept saying. "My father is a terrible map, mostly because he doesn't ever lead me anywhere." And I thought about my parents being maps that led to places I didn't want to go-- and it made a shocking amount of sense, using the word maps to describe parents. If almost made you feel like you could fold Mom and Dad up and lock them away in the glove compartment of your car and just joyride for the rest of your life maybe.

Let them learn at school whatever they learn to pass the examinations, but at home let the education that you provide be the kind that widens their perceptions and takes away the germs of prejudices that infect them while they are out in the world.

Start working on your child’s mind. Start building your child’s character. Raise your child as a human being, instead of raising boys and girls. Raise human beings with the religion of love in their hearts. Raise human beings with the language of compassion on their lips. Raise human beings with the color of joy on their face. Raise human beings with the force of bravery in their nerves. And these brave conscientious souls with the flames of compassion in their hearts shall one day change the course of human history.

He sounded absolutely miserable. “Are you ever going to speak to me?

The one encouragement we can always give our children (and one another) is that God is more powerful than our sin, and He's strong enough to make us want to do the right thing.

Remember, you are not managing an inconvenience; You are raising a human being.

Expect progress, not perfection.

Well, we spent enough on gymnastics.''Christ, did we,' said Maureen. 'So many lessons.'So many lessons, it was true: art and music and ice-skating; Lily's every fleeting interest enthusiastically, abundantly indulged. Not to mention the many more practical investments--chemistry tutoring when she struggled, English enrichment when she excelled, SAT courses to propel her to the school and then, presumably, the career of her dreams. What costs had been sunk, what objections had been suppressed, to deliver their daughter into the open and waiting arms of her beautiful life.

There’s nothing wrong with an adult being a child, except whining like one.

We are partners with our children because we are just like them, dearly loved sinners.

As a parent who raised his children in dysfunction, I know the parental wounds my children received were not intentional; often they were my best expression of love, sometimes coming out sideways, not as I intended.

Recognizing that God has called you to function as his agent defines your task as a parent. Our culture has reduced parenting to providing care. Parents often see the task in these narrow terms. The child must have food, clothes, a bed, and some quality time. In sharp contrast to such a weak view, God has called you to a more profound task than being only a care-provider. You shepherd your child in God's behalf. The task God has given you is not one that can be conveniently scheduled. It is a pervasive task. Training and shepherding are going on whenever you are with your children. Whether waking, walking, talking or resting, you must be involved in helping your child to understand life, himself, and his needs from a biblical perspective (Deuteronomy 6:6-7).

Ah, cruel parents indeed, who neglect the religious education of their children; more cruel in some respects than Herod; he slew the bodies of children, these murder souls; he murdered the children of others, these murder their own; he employed the agency of his servants, these do the work of slaughter themselves.

Give people room to be what God created them to be, don't force them to fit into your own mold

Uselessness, she thought, was the permanent condition of parenthood.

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.

It's easier to say (I'm going to be myself and if anyone wants to be with me, then she/he has to accept me as I am...flaws and all) than it is for us to work at reducing our flaws and making ourselves more acceptable.

I slid down in the seat and began to weep. I wept for her, for me, but mostly because the siren call of my first big story with a yellow border around it was more powerful than the call of fatherhood.

If we fail to instill a fixed sense of confidence in our children, we will raise handicapped children who have no handicap other than the conviction that they believe they do.

Ninja's understand that training time is never wasted time.

children need love most when they don't deserve it

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.

It was love without reason, love for something futureless, love that appeared to exist only to be itself, imperious and all demanding, the kind that would cause him to make a fool of himself in an instant.

When we start to realize how amazing God's story is, a question naturally arises: "Who am I that I should get to be a part of the greatest story ever told?

Pulling at the hem of my emotion was the creeping sense that it might well take until 2036 for this child in my arms to feel a fraction of what I already felt for her.

The mind you use to try to see your true self does not recognise if it has never seen. Once you stop looking within and realise you are the one doing the looking to recognise yourself, the mind will understand.

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.

In order for them to be the best they can be, my children need me to be the best version of me I can be. That meanstaking charge of our lives, being strong even if I don’t feel it,being brave and believing that I can make things better.

Resilience is rooted in habits we can cultivate and change.

Loving my son, building my son, touching my son, playing with my son, being with my son… these aren’t tasks that only super dads can perform. These are tasks that every dad should perform. Always. Without fail.