Quotes About Parenting

“What a kid I got, I told him about the birds and the bees and he told me about the butcher and my wife.”
― Rodney Dangerfield

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.”
― Anne Frank

“Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.”
― Benjamin Spock

“Your children are not your children.
They are sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For thir souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the make upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness.
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He also loves the bow that is stable.”
― Kahlil Gibran

“What it's like to be a parent: It's one of the hardest things you'll ever do but in exchange it teaches you the meaning of unconditional love.”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Wedding

“Your children are the greatest gift God will give to you, and their souls the heaviest responsibility He will place in your hands. Take time with them, teach them to have faith in God. Be a person in whom they can have faith. When you are old, nothing else you've done will have mattered as much.”
― Lisa Wingate

“I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.”
― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum

“Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.”
― Emilie Buchwald

“We may not be able to prepare the future for our children, but we can at least prepare our children for the future.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt

“To be in your children's memories tomorrow,
You have to be in their lives today.”
― Barbara Johnson

“It's impossible to protect your kids against disappointment in life.”
― Nicholas Sparks, Message in a Bottle

“Your kids require you most of all to love them for who they are, not to spend your whole time trying to correct them.”
― Bill Ayers

“I don't remember who said this, but there really are places in the heart you don't even know exist until you love a child.”
― Anne Lamott, Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year

“Each suburban wife struggles with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night- she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question-- 'Is this all?”
― Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique

“If your kid needs a role model and you ain't it, you're both fucked.”
― George Carlin, Brain Droppings

“The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant, and let the air out of the tires.”
― Dorothy Parker

“That's the nature of being a parent, Sabine has discovered. You'll love your children far more than you ever loved your parents, and -- in the recognition that your own children cannot fathom the depth of your love -- you come to understand the tragic, unrequited love of your own parents.”
― Ursula Hegi

“Children are people, and they should have to reach to learn about things, to understand things, just as adults have to reach if they want to grow in mental stature. Life is composed of lights and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows. Most things are good, and they are the strongest things; but there are evil things too, and you are not doing a child a favor by trying to shield him from reality. The important thing is to teach a child that good can always triumph over evil.”
― Walt Disney Company

“Adults constantly raise the bar on smart children, precisely because they're able to handle it. The children get overwhelmed by the tasks in front of them and gradually lose the sort of openness and sense of accomplishment they innately have. When they're treated like that, children start to crawl inside a shell and keep everything inside. It takes a lot of time and effort to get them to open up again. Kids' hearts are malleable, but once they gel it's hard to get them back the way they were.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Be sure to lie to your kids about the benevolent, all-seeing Santa Claus. It will prepare them for an adulthood of believing in God.”
― Scott Dikkers, You Are Worthless: Depressing Nuggets of Wisdom Sure to Ruin Your Day

“No matter how calmly you try to referee, parenting will eventually produce bizarre behavior, and I'm not talking about the kids. Their behavior is always normal.”
― Bill Cosby

“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”
― James Baldwin

“Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and crimes from society.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“Babies are soft. Anyone looking at them can see the tender, fragile skin and know it for the rose-leaf softness that invites a finger's touch. But when you live with them and love them, you feel the softness going inward, the round-cheeked flesh wobbly as custard, the boneless splay of the tiny hands. Their joints are melted rubber, and even when you kiss them hard, in the passion of loving their existence, your lips sink down and seem never to find bone. Holding them against you, they melt and mold, as though they might at any moment flow back into your body.

But from the very start, there is that small streak of steel within each child. That thing that says "I am," and forms the core of personality.

In the second year, the bone hardens and the child stands upright, skull wide and solid, a helmet protecting the softness within. And "I am" grows, too. Looking at them, you can almost see it, sturdy as heartwood, glowing through the translucent flesh.

The bones of the face emerge at six, and the soul within is fixed at seven. The process of encapsulation goes on, to reach its peak in the glossy shell of adolescence, when all softness then is hidden under the nacreous layers of the multiple new personalities that teenagers try on to guard themselves.

In the next years, the hardening spreads from the center, as one finds and fixes the facets of the soul, until "I am" is set, delicate and detailed as an insect in amber.”
― Diana Gabaldon, Dragonfly in Amber

“When a child is locked in the bathroom with water running and he says he's doing nothing but the dog is barking, call 911. ”
― Erma Bombeck

“...the love, respect, and confidence of my children was the sweetest reward I could receive for my efforts to be the woman I would have them copy.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“To you who are parents, I say, show love to your children. You know you love them, but make certain they know it as well. They are so precious. Let them know. Call upon our Heavenly Father for help as you care for their needs each day and as you deal with the challenges which inevitably come with parenthood. You need more than your own wisdom in rearing them.”
― Thomas S. Monson

“I know it is hard for you young mothers to believe that almost before you can turn around the children will be gone and you will be alone with your husband. You had better be sure you are developing the kind of love and friendship that will be delightful and enduring. Let the children learn from your attitude that he is important. Encourage him. Be kind. It is a rough world, and he, like everyone else, is fighting to survive. Be cheerful. Don't be a whiner.”
― Marjorie Pay Hinckley, Small and Simple Things

“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. ”
― Erma Bombeck