“It’s not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can’t tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself.”— Joyce Maynard
“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
“we can learn to trust our maternal selves and to have faith in the innate goodness and purity of our children – even when we feel overwhelmed and the kids are pushing all our buttons. we can support one another….we can be understanding of each other and easier on ourselves.”— Katrina Kenison
“We all know that parents do not make children but that children make parents…Authentic parenting is one long sacrificial act…parenting reveals the way that sacrifice at once diminishes our life as we knew it…while at the same time revealing to us larger and infinitely more fascinating forms of life…Parents know experientially that the very process which makes them suffer also makes them grow.”— Luke Timothy Johnson
“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
“Oh fer Christ’s bloody sake Martha I didna’ raise ye to be well regarded. To be liked. Any puny weak-waisted slut can be liked. I raised ye to be reckoned with.”— Kathleen Kent
“If a child sees something in a parent that the child aspires to, he or she will copy that parent and be content. If a children feel that a parent is living a life that shows compassion and understanding, patience and love, that child will not have to reach a stage of rebellion against that parent. Why rebel against someone who has listened to you and wants to help you fufill your dreams? A parent who has proven time and again that growth and happiness of his or her children is priority number one does not have to worry about where these children are heading in life. They will be sensitive and productive members of society for as long as they live.”— Alice Ozma
“To gain the spiritual ascendancy over ourselves, and the influences with which we are surrounded, through a rigid course of self-discipline, is our first consideration, it is our first labor, before we can pave the way for our children to grow up without sin unto salvation.”— Brigham Young
“I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won’t tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it won’t change the fact that they are upset.”— Stephen Chbosky
“You are the reason why he exists on this earth. You don’t have the right to abandon him just because he’s inconvenient or has trouble in school.”— Michael Crichton
“If our children were to grow up truthful they much be taught by those who had a regard for truth; and not just a casual regard, a delicate regard. On this point we were adamant.”— Amy Carmichael
“I want my girls to see their relationship with me as a place of refuge, a place they can retreat to for honesty, unconditional love, and support. I want to teach them and have them trust me, not fear me. I want to preserve the gentle souls that I see in them.” -Liz. M.”— Hilary Flower
“Society tried to teach me that children are by nature selfish, out-of-control, and demanding, that their goal is power and that they are always trying to see how much they can get away with, that you can’t let children manipulate you or become too dependant, and that disobedience equals disrespect. As a mother, I have come to believe strongly that my child’s primary goals are having his needs met, feeling connected to others, and feeling self-worth. His misbehavior is an attempt to get a need met or to feel significance and connection, done in an appropriate way…. my job as a parent is to help my child identify and meet those needs in appropriate ways.” – Lisa S.”— Hilary Flower
“The guys who fear becoming fathers don’t understand that fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man. The end product of child raising is not the child, but the parent.”— Frank Pittman
“Always be nice to your children because they are the ones who will choose your rest home.”— Phyllis Diller
“No blade can puncture the human heart like the well-chosen words of a spiteful son.”— Abraham Verghese
“He thought about the story his daughter was living and the role she was playing inside that story. He realized he hadn’t provided a better role for his daughter. He hadn’t mapped out a story for his family. And so his daughter had chosen another story, a story in which she was wanted, even if she was only being used. In the absence of a family story, she’d chosen a story in which there was risk and adventure, rebellion and independence.”— Donald Miller
“There are no moments more painful for a parent than those in which you contemplate your child’s perfect innocence of some imminent pain, misfortune, or sorrow. That innocence (like every kind of innocence children have) is rooted in their trust of you, one that you will shortly be obliged to betray; whether it is fair or not, whether you can help it or not, you are always the ultimate guarantor or destroyer of that innocence.”— Michael Chabon
“As someone very sagely said during the parricide trials of the Menendez Brothers: anytime your kids kill you, you are at least partly to blame.”— Elizabeth Wurtzel
“What do we say to a guest who forgets her umbrella? Do we run after her and say “What is the matter with you? Every time you come to visit you forget something. If it’s not one thing it’s another. Why can’t you be like your sister? When she comes to visit, she knows how to behave. You’re forty-four years old! Will you never learn? I’m not a slave to pick up after you! I bet you’d forget your head if it weren’t attached to your shoulders.” That’s not what we say to a guest. We say “Here’s your umbrella, Alice,” without adding “scatterbrain.” Parents need to learn to respond to their children as they do to guests.”— Haim G. Ginott
“If we never have headaches through rebuking our children, we shall have plenty of heartaches when they grow up.”— Charles Haddon Spurgeon
“If you want to love a parent you have to understand the incredible investment he or she has in you. If you are a parent, and you want to be loved, you have to deserve it.”— Jodi Picoult
“The most important thing that parents can teach their children is how to get along without them.”— Frank Clark
“Say “no” only when it really matters. Wear a bright red shirt with bright orange shorts? Sure. Put water in the toy tea set? Okay. Sleep with your head at the foot of the bed? Fine. Samuel Johnson said, “All severity that does not tend to increase good, or prevent evil, is idle.”— Gretchen Rubin