Parenting Quotes

“Dads. Do you not realize that a child is what you tell them they are? That people almost always become what they are labeled? Was whatever your child just did really the “dumbest thing you’ve ever seen somebody do”? Was it really the “most ridiculous thing they ever could have done”? Do you really believe that your child is an idiot? Because she now does. Think about that. Because you said it, she now believes it. Bravo.”
― Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing: The Best of Year One

“If there is one thing developmental psychologists have learned over the years, it is that parents don’t have to be brilliant psychologists to succeed. They don’t have to be supremely gifted teachers. Most of the stuff parents do with flashcards and special drills and tutorials to hone their kids into perfect achievement machines don’t have any effect at all. Instead, parents just have to be good enough. They have to provide their kids with stable and predictable rhythms. They need to be able to fall in tune with their kids’ needs, combining warmth and discipline. They need to establish the secure emotional bonds that kids can fall back upon in the face of stress. They need to be there to provide living examples of how to cope with the problems of the world so that their children can develop unconscious models in their heads.”
― David Brooks, The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement

“It is a violation of trust to use your kids as caulking for the cracks in you.”
― Anne Lamott, Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son's First Son

“Dads. It’s time to tell our kids that we love them. Constantly. It’s time to show our kids that we love them. Constantly. It’s time to take joy in their twenty-thousand daily questions and their inability to do things as quickly as we’d like. It’s time to take joy in their quirks and their ticks. It’s time to take joy in their facial expressions and their mispronounced words. It’s time to take joy in everything that our kids are.”
― Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing: The Best of Year One

“The danger of motherhood. you relive your early self, through the eyes of your mother.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Gravedigger's Daughter

“Most of the time, it felt like my father and I were completely different species. Possibly literally, depending on the day and whether or not I actually qualified as human at the time.”
― Jennifer Lynn Barnes, Every Other Day

“what I want you to be - I don't mean physically but morally: you are very well physically - is a firm fellow, a fine firm fellow, with a will of your own, with resolution. with determination. with strength of character that is not to be influenced except on good reason by anybody, or by anything. That's what I want you to be. That's what your father, & your mother might both have been”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

“Scorned and torn, former love mates aim and shoot childish devastating daggers that penetrate beyond target to pierce the heart of their offspring.”
― T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence

“Father has a strengthening character like the sun and mother has a soothing temper like the moon.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“Let children alone... the education of habit is successful in so far as it enables the mother to let her children alone, not teasing them with perpetual commands and directions - a running fire of Do and Don’t ; but letting them go their own way and grow, having first secured that they will go the right way and grow to fruitful purpose.”
― Charlotte Mason

“If you wanted to create an education environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a classroom. If you wanted to create a business environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a cubicle. And if you wanted to change things, you might have to tear down both and start over.”
― John Medina, Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School

“There's a lot of talk these days about giving children self-esteem. It's not something you can give; it's something they have to build.”
― Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

“Everything that isn't gospel is law. Let us say it again: Everything that isn't gospel is law. Every way we try to make our kids good that isn't rooted in the good news of the life, death, ressurection, and assension of Jesus Christ is damnable, crushing, despair-breeding, Pharisee-producing law. We won't get the results we want from the law. We'll get either shallow self-righteousness or blazing rebellion or both (frequently from the same kid on the same day!). We'll get moralistic kids who are cold and hypocritical and who look down on others (and could easily become Mormons), or you'll get teens who are rebellious and self-indulgent and who can't wait to get out of the house. We have to remember that in the life of our unregenerate children, the law is given for one reason only: to crush their self-confidence and drive them to Christ.”
― Elyse Fitzpatrick, Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus

“New mothers are often told that once they've fed, burped, and changed their baby they should leave their baby alone to self-soothe if they cry because all of their needs have been met. One day I hope all new mothers will smile confidently and say, "I gave birth to a baby, not just a digestive system. My baby as a brain that needs to learn trust and a heart that needs love. I will meet all of my baby's needs, emotional, mental, and physical, and I'll respond to every cry because crying is communication, not manipulation.”
― L.R. Knost, Two Thousand Kisses a Day: Gentle Parenting Through the Ages and Stages

“The parent is protector and trainer, but never the ultimate teacher. Every parent is responsible for teaching their kid basic moral conduct, manners, the difference between love and hate, and right from wrong. However, after maturity, the child must set off to seek knowledge on their own. Religion is never to be forced. And you cannot threaten your child with hell and tell them your religion is the only right way. There is no one right way. The many ways to the Creator are as varied as the colors of a rainbow.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“What is called family pride is often founded on the illusion of self-love. A man wishes to perpetuate and immortalize himself.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Volume 1

“When you see a dandelion do you see a wish or a weed? When you hear a child cry do you hear a need or a demand? When you wash a sticky face do you feel blessed or burdened? As parents, our perspective determines our response, and our response determines our children's reality. So let's wish wishes, meet needs, and count blessings to make childhood a magical, peaceful, joy-filled reality for both our children and ourselves.”
― L.R. Knost

“The only persons who seem to have nothing to do with the education of the children are the parents.”
― G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World

“To abandon a child, she had once said to someone, when she thought Cassandra couldn't hear, was an act so cold, so careless, it refused forgiveness.”
― Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden

“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.”
― Sally Clarkson, The Mission of Motherhood: Touching Your Child's Heart for Eternity

“One must make allowances for a parental instinct that has been starving for twenty-five or thirty years. It is famished, it is crazed with hunger by that time, and will be entirely satisfied with anything that comes handy; its taste is atrophied, it can't tell mud cat from shad. A devil born to a young couple is measurably recognizable by them as a devil before long, but a devil adopted by an old couple is an angel to them, and remains so, through thick and thin.”
― Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson

“That was the tricky part. You poured inordinate amounts of time and attention and affection into your kids, but the result was indirect. You didn't point out a cat to your one-year-old and then watch him, minutes later, say 'Cat.' Instead, you pointed out a hundred cats to your one-year-old and then, one day, watched him point to a cat and say 'Mama.”
― Katherine Center, Everyone is Beautiful

“As parents we carry the blueprints, the dreams of what our family could be. The plans change, the whole thing goes way over budget, there are unexpected additions, and the work never ends. Still, through the messiness of construction we see each other with such depth and hope. Our five year-old boy is still so clearly the baby he once was and sometimes—can you see it?—the young man he will one day be. We draw energy and inspiration from our dreams; our simple, common motivations. --SIMPLICITY PARENTING”
― Lisa Ross

“If there is a single factor that spells out the difference between the cafeteria fringe headed for greatness and those doomed for low self-worth, even more than a caring teacher or a group of friends, it is supportive, accepting parents who not only love their children unconditionally, but also don't make them feel as if their idiosyncrasies qualify as "conditions" in the first place.”
― Alexandra Robbins, The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School

“We begin to understand that to co-parent is to one day look up and notice that you are on a roller coaster with another human being. You are in the same car, strapped down side by side and you can never, ever get off. There will never be another moment in your lives when your hearts don't rise and fall together, when your stomach doesn't churn in tandem, when you stop seeing huge hills emerge in the distance and simultaneously grab the sides of the car and hold on tight. No one except for the one strapped down beside you will ever understand the particular thrills and terrors of your ride.”
― Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

“We begin to understand that to coparent is to one day look up and notice that you are on a roller coaster with another human being. You are in the same car, strapped down side by side and you can never, ever get off. There will never be another moment in your lives when your hearts don't rise and fall together, when your minds don't race and panic together, when your stomachs don't churn in tandem, when you stop seeing huge hills emerge in the distance and simultaneously grab the side of the car and hold on tight. No one except for the one strapped down beside you will ever understand the particular thrills and terrors of your ride.”
― Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

“When the baby cries, she could be hungry or thirsty or angry or cranky or sick or sleepy or paranoid or jealous or she had planned something but it went horribly awry. So you'll need to take care of that, when it happens.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

“The parent must always self-parent first, self-preach before child-teach, because who can bring peace unless they’ve held their own peace?”
― Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are

“Too many parents fail to understand that there is a difference between fitting in and being liked, that there is a difference between being "normal" and being happy. High school is temporary. Family is not.”
― Alexandra Robbins, The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School

“She was deemed an unfit mother, in spite of the fact that she goes to the gym every day,' Hal once told me.
. . .Beautiful people are often forgiven for many things--and maybe she's gotten through life that way, but I don't forgive her for anything--and I don't even know what awful things she's done other than showing a lack of parental fitness.”
― Neal Shusterman, Challenger Deep