Parenting famous quotes
04-27-2025
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I suppose that every parent loves his child, but I know, without any suppossing, that in a large number of homes the love is hidden behind authority, or its expression is crowded out by daily duties and cares
-- Abbott Eliot Kittredge -
If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money.
-- Abigail Van Buren -
Give a small boy a hammer and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.
-- Abraham Kaplan -
Family involvement is a valuable thing and playing together actively can be the '90s version of it. Instead of just watching, you can do it together... something we don't spend enough time on. We can motivate and excite each other about fitness.
-- Alan Thicke -
The mind is like the stomach. It not how much you put into it, but how much it digests.
-- Albert J. Nock -
Was it Gorky who said: "If your children are no better than you are, you have fathered in vain, indeed you have lived in vain.
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn -
In search of my mother's garden, I found my own.
-- Alice Walker -
Parenthood remains the greatest single preserve of the amateur.
-- Alvin Toffler -
~One surprise of motherhood for me was how little control I have. I thought it would be a blissful romance with me at the helm, cuddling this little creature. It's been bittersweet and humbling to let her lead and to not try to be perfect myself.~
-- Amanda Peet -
~Sometimes, when I want to take on the world, I try to remember that it's just as important to sit down and ask my son how he's feeling or talk to him about life.~
-- Angelina Jolie -
Expectations are resentments under construction.
-- Anne Lamott -
(About parenting:) ... all that tedium, broken up by little spurts of high drama.
-- Anne Tyler -
Each generation has been an education for us in different ways. The first child-with-bloody-nose was rushed to the emergency room. The fifth child-with-bloody-nose was told to go to the yard immediately and stop bleeding on the carpet.
-- Art Linkletter -
A lot of mothers will do anything for their children, except let them be themselves.
-- Banksy -
I'm worried about parents who aren't parenting.
-- Barbara Bush -
What's a good investment? Go home from work early and spend the afternoon throwing a ball around with your son.
-- Ben Stein -
Screaming at children over their grades, especially to the point of the child's tears, is child abuse, pure and simple. It's not funny and it's not good parenting. It is a crushing, scarring, disastrous experience for the child. It isn't the least bit funny.
-- Ben Stein -
The child supplies the power but the parents have to do the steering.
-- Benjamin Spock -
All the time a person is a child he is both a child and learning to be a parent. After he becomes a parent he becomes predominantly a parent reliving childhood.
-- Benjamin Spock -
The children who are appreciated for what they are, even if they are homely, or clumsy, or slow, will grow up with confidences in themselves - happy. They will have a spirit that will make the best of all the capacities that they have, and of all the opportunities that come their way. They will make light of any handicaps.
-- Benjamin Spock -
The fact is that child rearing is a long, hard job, the rewards are not always immediately obvious, the work is undervalued, and parents are just as human and almost as vulnerable as their children.
-- Benjamin Spock -
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
-- Bertrand Russell -
OF COURSE I'd like to be the ideal mother. But I'm too busy raising children.
-- Bil Keane -
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 -
You know the only people who are always sure about the proper way to raise children? Those who've never had any.
-- Bill Cosby -
Parents are not interested in justice, they're interested in peace and quiet.
-- Bill Cosby -
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 -
My childhood should have taught me lessons for my own fatherhood, but it didn't because parenting can only be learned by people who have no children.
-- Bill Cosby -
A child who is allowed to be disrespectful to his parents will not have true respect for anyone.
-- Billy Graham -
The family should be a closely knit group. The home should be a self-contained shelter of security; a kind of school where life's basic lessons are taught; and a kind of church where God is honored; a place where wholesome recreation and simple pleasures are enjoyed.
-- Billy Graham -
Childhood obesity is best tackled at home through improved parental involvement, increased physical exercise, better diet and restraint from eating.
-- Bob Filner -
No matter how far we come, our parents are always in us.
-- Brad Meltzer -
Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren't always comfortable, but they're never weakness.
-- Brené Brown -
If you raise your children to feel that they can accomplish any goal or task they decide upon, you will have succeeded as a parent and you will have given your children the greatest of all blessings.
-- Brian Tracy -
~Trust me when I tell you I'm on my girls. And every time I am, I know from the outside it looks like I'm an overbearing, controlling parent. But I don't think we are responsible to anybody but our kids and ourselves.~
-- Brooke Shields -
Life affords no greater responsibility, no greater privilege, than the raising of the next generation
-- C. Everett Koop -
Slow parents understand that childrearing should not be a cross between a competitive sport and product-development. It is not a project; it's a journey. Slow parenting is about giving kids lots of love and attention with no conditions attached.
-- Carl Honore -
Children are educated by what the grown-up is and not by his talk.
-- Carl Jung -
The greatest tragedy of the family is the unlived lives of the parents.
-- Carl Jung -
Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.
-- Carl Jung -
For a woman, a son offers the best chance to know the mysterious male existence.
-- Carol Klein -
In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.
-- Charles Dickens -
Parents should not smoke in order to discourage their kids from smoking. A child is more likely to smoke when they have been raised in the environment of a smoker.
-- Christy Turlington -
It's a huge change for your body. You don't even want to look in the mirror after you've had a baby, because your stomach is just hanging there like a Shar-Pei.
-- Cindy Crawford -
If we are to prevent the fabric of our society from coming apart, we must teach our children to excel not only academically, but also in their appreciation of their obligation to others.
-- Clarence Page -
Parenthood and family come first for me, and when I'm not working I'm cool with the Teletubbies.
-- Clive Owen -
Very often when you see families it's all perfect and neat, and parenting isn't like that. You do have constant negotiations. Things are ever developing and ever changing, and you constantly have to evaluate how you deal with your kids.
-- Clive Owen -
Mama and Daddy King represent the best in manhood and womanhood, the best in a marriage, the kind of people we are trying to become.
-- Coretta Scott King -
~[My daughter is] very artistic, but she's also a perfectionist. I feel a little bad: That's the part I see in her that's like me - and you don't want them to have that at age 5.~
-- Courteney Cox -
Parenting classes should be mandatory, whether you are adopting or not, and would include an evaluation of your current physical, mental and financial state as well as how ready you are to take on the rigors of parenthood. Our children are our most precious natural resource, and there is absolutely no other way to parent but to put them first.
-- Dale Archer -
Your children will become what you are; so be what you want them to be
-- David Bly -
Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you. - Robert Fulghum Your children will become what you are; so be what you want them to be.
-- David Bly -
I hope to find the roles that are age appropriate but not yearning to be younger, or parenting ad nauseam.
-- Debra Winger -
Listen to the desires of your children. Encourage them and then give them the autonomy to make their own decision.
-- Denis Waitley -
Parenting is the most important job on the planet next to keeping Gary Busey off the nation's highways.
-- Dennis Miller -
Motherhood has completely changed me. It's just about like the most completely humbling experience that I've ever had. I think that it puts you in your place because it really forces you to address the issues that you claim to believe in and if you can't stand up to those principles when you're raising a child, forget it.
-- Diane Keaton -
If a child lives with acceptance and friendship, he learns to find love in the world
-- Dorothy Nolte -
We're living in a time when parenting is not at all mirroring the way I was parented. For me, I just followed my parents around on their errands; when they were busy on the phone, I was quiet. It's a different kettle of fish these days: They run the house, and you listen to their music, and you go to their appointments.
-- Edie Falco -
Where parents do too much for their children, the children will not do much for themselves.
-- Elbert Hubbard -
Adults find pleasure in deceiving a child. They consider it necessary, but they also enjoy it. The children very quickly figure it out and then practice deception themselves.
-- Elias Canetti -
Don't reward bad behavior. It is one of the first rules of parenting. During the financial cataclysm of 2008, we said it differently. When we bailed out banks that had created their own misfortune, we called it a 'moral hazard,' because the bailout absolved the bank's bad acts and created an incentive for it to make the same bad loans again.
-- Eliot Spitzer -
~I got pregnant, and I was like, 'Oh God, it worked! Oh no!' Chris [Ivery, her husband] and I were super happy, then I got terrified! Will I know how to do everything right? Of course, nobody does everything right, but as long as your baby is the priority, that's the best you can do.~
-- Ellen Pompeo -
~I'm strict about manners. I think that kids have a horrible time with other people if they have bad manners.... The one thing you've got to be prepared to do as a parent is not to be liked from time to time.~
-- Emma Thompson -
Whatever happened to the good ole days, when children worked in factories?
-- Emo Philips -
Giving kids whatever they ask for is disastrous parenting. There's no sense of something earned. I'm sorry, but when you're 12, you don't need a new cell phone every few months just because a new one comes out.
-- Ewan McGregor -
The thing about parenting rules is there aren't any. That's what makes it so difficult.
-- Ewan McGregor -
~Before, my career came first. All I had to think about was myself. Now my children prevail. It doesn't mean my career is less important; I just have to position things differently.~
-- Faith Hill -
The family is the school of duties - founded on love.
-- Felix Adler -
The most important thing that parents can teach their children is how to get along without them.
-- Frank A. Clark -
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 -
You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.
-- Franklin P. Adams -
When we choose to be parents, we accept another human being as part of ourselves, and a large part of our emotional selves will stay with that person as long as we live. From that time on, there will be another person on this earth whose orbit around us will affect us as surely as the moon affects the tides, and affect us in some ways more deeply than anyone else can. Our children are extensions of ourselves.
-- Fred Rogers -
Mann There are two kinds of people: those who GIVE energy and those who DRAIN energy.
-- Freeman A. Hrabowski III -
Many things can wait. Children cannot. Today their bones are being formed, their blood is being made, their senses are being developed. To them we cannot say "tomorrow." Their name is today.
-- Gabriela Mistral -
~There are moments when I feel like I have a looong road ahead of me, with college and dating and driving and all of that. But then I realize it just means that I have so much time left to enjoy my kids. And it really does go by so quickly.~
-- Geena Davis -
Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face.
-- George Eliot -
Don't let yourself become so concerned with raising a good kid that you forget you already have one.
-- Glennon Melton -
Work at our responsibility as parents as if everything in life counted on it.
-- Gordon B. Hinckley -
Parents, they're strict on you when you're little, and you don't understand why. But as you get older, you understand and you appreciate it.
-- Grant Hill -
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 -
If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.
-- Haim Ginott -
When a child hits a child, we call it aggression. When a child hits an adult, we call it hostility. When an adult hits an adult, we call it assault. When an adult hits a child, we call it discipline.
-- Haim Ginott -
Attachment parenting demands not just certain actions you take with your baby but also certain emotional states to accompany those actions.
-- Hanna Rosin -
~I'm not someone who [lives] like, 'OK, this is a museum and you can't sit here and you can't touch this and everything has to be put in its place - [the kids] live here as much as we do. You come into our house and a giant elephant and lion are welcoming you. We have toys and things everywhere.~
-- Heidi Klum -
We change our behavior when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing. Consequences give us the pain that motivates us to change.
-- Henry Cloud -
Leave your pride, ego, and narcissism somewhere else. Reactions from those parts of you will reinforce your children's most primitive fears.
-- Henry Cloud -
A torn jacket is soon mended; but hard words bruise the heart of a child.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow -
Children are unpredictable. You never know what inconsistency they are going to catch you in next.
-- Henry Ward Beecher -
A mother who is really a mother is never free.
-- Honore de Balzac -
My mom's a Catholic, and my dad's a Jew, and they didn't want anything to do with anything.
-- Isabelle Huppert -
Conduct yourself towards your parents as you would have your children conduct themselves towards you.
-- Isocrates -
Parents are teachers, guides, leaders, protectors and providers for their children.
-- Iyanla Vanzant -
A man can't be in the space where there is feminine rage and bitterness. He doesn't know how to navigate it.
-- Iyanla Vanzant -
If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do matters very much.
-- Jackie Kennedy -
If you can control your behavior when everything around you is out of control, you can model for your children a valuable lesson in patience andunderstanding...and snatch an opportunity to shape character.
-- Jane Clayson Johnson -
One thing I had learned from watching chimpanzees with their infants is that having a child should be fun.
-- Jane Goodall -
We realized that the version of the world they rendered for us was not the version of the world they really believed in...
-- Jeffrey Eugenides
