Parenting Quotes - Page 7

A child needs both to be hugged and unhugged. The hug lets her know she is valuable. The unhug lets her know that she is viable. If you're always shoving your child away, they will cling to you for love. If you're always holding them closer, they will cling to you for fear.

I think once you sign on to be a mother, that's the only shift they offer.

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.

~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.~

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.

When correcting a child, the goal is to apply light, not heat.

The greatest happiness is family happiness.

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.

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.

Love is the chain whereby to bind a child to its parents.

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

Dance. Dance for the joy and breath of childhood. Dance for all children, including that child who is still somewhere entombed beneath the responsibility and skepticism of adulthood. Embrace the moment before it escapes from our grasp. For the only promise of childhood, of any childhood, is that it will someday end. And in the end, we must ask ourselves what we have given our children to take its place. And is it enough?

The gain is not the having of children; it is the discovery of love and how to be loving.

My parents were neither very poor nor conspicuously honest.

The human heart was not designed to beat outside the human body and yet, each child represented just that - a parent’s heart bared, beating forever outside its chest.

If you're asking your kids to exercise, then you better do it, too. Practice what you preach.

And my parents finally realize I'm kidnapped and they snap into action immediately: They rent out my room.

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.

The woods were my Ritalin. Nature calmed me, focused me, and yet excited my senses.

Of course, everyone's parents are embarrassing. It goes with the territory. The nature of parents is to embarrass merely by existing, just as it is the nature of children of a certain age to cringe with embarrassment, shame, and mortification should their parents so much as speak to them on the street.

Parenting, as an unpaid occupation outside the world of public power, entails lower status, less power, and less control of resources than paid work.

We do not develop habits of genuine love automatically. We learn by watching effective role models - most specifically by observing how our parents express love for each other day in and day out.

Little girls love dolls. They just don't love dolls clothes

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."

The joys of parents are secret, and so are their grieves and fears.