Parenting Quotations

Everything is funny, as long as it's happening to somebody else.

The family is the school of duties - founded on love.

Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face.

Even as kids reach adolescence, they need more than ever for us to watch over them. Adolescence is not about letting go. It's about hanging on during a very bumpy ride.

I think a generation ago, dads went to work, they came home, and they had their dinner, had a drink, and then went to bed. I don't know what it was like in your house, but that is how it was in mine. I think it is cool to have the dads in the trenches and doing the real parenting work.

My father didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.

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.

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.

Free the child's potential, and you will transform him into the world.

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.

Many people think that discipline is the essence of parenting. But that isn't parenting. Parenting is not telling your child what to do when he or she misbehaves. Parenting is providing the conditions in which a child can realize his or her full human potential.

Parenting girls makes you quite gender-conscious - it's almost impossible to fight the power of pink. It's not such a terrible thing to want to be a princess when you're five, but it would be nice if there were some other options.

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.

I'm not a parenting expert by any means, but I've been interviewing and writing about kids for almost 20 years.

We put more emphasis on who can drive a car than on who can be a parent. And I think there ought to be mandatory parenting classes starting in high school, and you should have to have a license to be able to be a parent to explain that you don't give alcohol to kids.

I've decided the secret of parenting is benevolent neglect.

If we had paid no more attention to our plants than we have to our children, we would now be living in a jungle of weed.

Loving a child doesn't mean giving in to all his whims; to love him is to bring out the best in him, to teach him to love what is difficult.

Relationships are complicated no matter what style of parenting you choose.

I'm hosting weekend retreats all over America. It is like a 24-hour slumber party for moms. We laugh, eat, play games, get massages, win prizes, talk about parenting and even cry a bit.

The family teaches us about the importance of knowledge, education, hard work and effort. It teaches us about enjoying ourselves, having fun, keeping fit and healthy.

As a rule, I try to steer clear of opinions pertaining to your parenting. I assume you're doing the best you can, and God bless.

Some men don't want to be responsible fathers. It's easier to say 'Let's just turn the kids over to the state.' Women end up bearing the entire load, raising kids alone without a husband to share the parenting.

Few things are more satisfying than seeing your children have teenagers of their own.

No work-family balance will ever fully take hold if the social conditions that might make it possible - men who are willing to share parenting and housework, communities that value work in the home as highly as work on the job, and policymakers and elected officials who are prepared to demand family-friendly reforms - remain out of reach.

Believe me, my children have more stamina than a power station.

A truly appreciative child will break, lose, spoil, or fondle to death any really successful gift within a matter of minutes.

What lingers from the parent's individual past, unresolved or incomplete, often becomes part of her or his irrational parenting.

We are apt to forget that children watch examples better than they listen to preaching.

I think parenting these days is definitely different from when a lot of people grew up. As much blame as we give a lot of our kids for what they're not doing... I also try to give them as much credit for dealing with things that we didn't have to deal with. Bullying was one on one and face to face. Now it's all over the Internet.

I told my kids when they were little, 'Look, kids, your mother and I are screwing you up somehow. We don't understand how, or we wouldn't do it. But we're parents. So somehow we're damaging you, and I want you to know that early. So just ignore me when I go to that part of my parenting.'

Parenthood and family come first for me, and when I'm not working I'm cool with the Teletubbies.

Dad was a strict disciplinarian and would give us a wallop with a wooden spoon if we were out of order. But we really respected him - he didn't try to be our best friend.

The child supplies the power but the parents have to do the steering.

Childhood obesity is best tackled at home through improved parental involvement, increased physical exercise, better diet and restraint from eating.

What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give.

My kids love it. I thought I was the coolest dad in the world when I got to be in a Bond film, but 'Harry Potter', too? Well, I think I qualify for a medal for exceptional parenting or something, don't you?

When a parent shows up with an attitude of entitlement, understand that under it is a boatload of anxiety.

A child who is allowed to be disrespectful to his parents will not have true respect for anyone.

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.

Single parenting is sometimes just a case of sitting around by yourself in mild despair, not knowing what to do.

Among my most prized possessions are words that I have never spoken.

My mom's a Catholic, and my dad's a Jew, and they didn't want anything to do with anything.

The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children.

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.

If help and salvation are to come, they can only come from the children, for the children are the makers of men.

Alas, regardless of their doom, the little victims play! No sense have they of ills to come nor care beyond today.

A parentologist is a person who writes a book about parenting that is very clear about answers to, 'How am I supposed to raise my child?' Some of these well-intentioned people may be a bit too sure-footed on the sometimes slippery slope of parenting.

The well-being and welfare of children should always be our focus.

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.

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.

Always render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what your task may be.

I take my children everywhere, but they always find their way back home.

There is no job more important than parenting. This I believe.

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.

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.

I get whatever placidity I have from my father. But my mother taught me how to take it on the chin.

Welcome to Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.

Children are our second chance to have a great parent-child relationship.

My parenting style is probably like that of my parents, because you do how you learn. My mother was very nurturing and loving, but very stern. She was a disciplinary. My dad was also very loving.

Being a father of three children and grandfather to nine, I do think that this thing called 'parenting' is becoming increasingly difficult.

Autism is a neurological disorder. It's not caused by bad parenting. It's caused by, you know, abnormal development in the brain. The emotional circuits in the brain are abnormal. And there also are differences in the white matter, which is the brain's computer cables that hook up the different brain departments.

To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one's family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one's own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.

No one knows his true character until he has run out of gas, purchased something on the installment plan and raised an adolescent.

If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest in judging other people's choices. If I feel good about my body, I don't go around making fun of other people's weight or appearance. We're hard on each other because we're using each other as a launching pad out of our own perceived deficiency.

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.

The most important thing that parents can teach their children is how to get along without them.

I'm trying to break any chain of negative parenting that I might have survived.

The challenging part of parenting for me is to make sure that an individual person is an individual and not some sort of cookie-cutter version of me. At the same time, I want to make sure that I impart my sense of the world as an adult.

It's hard enough to work and raise a family when your kids are all healthy and relatively normal, but when you add on some kind of disability or disease, it can just be such a burden.

Telling a teenager the facts of life is like giving a fish a bath.

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.

Parenthood remains the greatest single preserve of the amateur.

That's my ideal day, time with my boys.

Abortion is defended today as a means of ensuring the equality and independence of women, and as a solution to the problems of single parenting, child abuse, and the feminization of poverty.

You see much more of your children once they leave home.

Children should be led into the right paths, not by severity, but by persuasion.

Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.

I think that the ideal of parenting can make people unhappy. It's that this lie that they're being told by society that parenting is one thing - and when parenting is something completely different - that's what makes them unhappy.

An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.

There's nothing to be gained, and much to be lost, in trying to bend every child to match a one-size-fits-all notion of what it means to be a boy or girl of a specific age. Better to set a few parameters and then go with the flow. Call it 'jazz parenting.'

There are some great questions to ask your doctor. If he says 'no,' then you find yourself a different doctor. There really has to be a change in how we medically look at women at this time. I mean, this is not just baby gloom.

The secret to success, to parenting, to life, is to not count up the cost. Don't focus on all the steps it will take. Don't stare into the abyss at the giant leap it will take. That view will keep you from taking the next small step.

When you hold your baby in your arms the first time, and you think of all the things you can say and do to influence him, it's a tremendous responsibility. What you do with him can influence not only him, but everyone he meets and not for a day or a month or a year but for time and eternity.

We all, as parents, are laughing at ourselves and helicopter parenting and saying, 'This isn't the way we were parented; we were allowed to run free.' When I talk to my friends, we are all fascinated by what we are doing, but we can't seem to stop ourselves.

Don't try to make children grow up to be like you, or they may do it.

When you are dealing with a child, keep all your wits about you, and sit on the floor.

The interesting thing about being a mother is that everyone wants pets, but no one but me cleans the kitty litter.

We all have an interest in making sure teens grow up healthy and drug-free.

Attachment parenting demands not just certain actions you take with your baby but also certain emotional states to accompany those actions.

Parents forgive their children least readily for the faults they themselves instilled in them.

The Internet is just bringing all kinds of information into the home. There's just a lot of distraction, a lot of competition for the parent's voice to resonate in the children's ears.

A child, like your stomach, doesn't need all you can afford to give it.

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.

In search of my mother's garden, I found my own.

In Los Angeles, parenting is a competitive sport. From Beverly Hills baby boutiques to kids' yoga classes, L.A. fuses high style, industrial-strength materialism, and parental outsourcing into our own unique version of child-rearing.

The thing about parenting rules is there aren't any. That's what makes it so difficult.

It's hilarious to me that by writing an obscene fake children's book I am mistaken for a parenting expert.

I thought that once we were out of the baby stage, parenting would be a breeze.

Children are educated by what the grown-up is and not by his talk.