Parenting Quotes

“Don't go overboard in praising required behavior: 'We have only done our duty' (Luke 17:10). But do go overboard when your child confesses the truth, repents honestly, takes chances, and loves openly. Praise the developing character in your child as it emerges in active, loving, responsible behavior.”
― Dr. Henry Cloud & Dr. John Townsend

“The woods were my Ritalin. Nature calmed me, focused me, and yet excited my senses.”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

“Misbehavior and punishment are not opposites that cancel each other - on the contrary they breed and reinforce each other.”
― Haim G. Ginott

“Don't try to make children grow up to be like you, or they may do it.”
― Russell Baker

“Ask your child for information in a gentle, nonjudgmental way, with specific, clear questions. Instead of “How was your day?” try “What did you do in math class today?” Instead of “Do you like your teacher?” ask “What do you like about your teacher?” Or “What do you not like so much?” Let her take her time to answer. Try to avoid asking, in the overly bright voice of parents everywhere, “Did you have fun in school today?!” She’ll sense how important it is that the answer be yes.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“So much is asked of parents, and so little is given.”
― Virginia Satir

“We have such a brief opportunity to pass on to our children our love for this Earth, and to tell our stories. These are the moments when the world is made whole. In my children's memories, the adventures we've had together in nature will always exist.”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

“We tend to take whatever’s worked in our particular set of circumstances (big family, small family, AP, Ezzo, home school, public school) and project that upon everyone else in the world as the ideal.”
― Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood

“But a mountain of recent evidence suggests that teacher skill has less influence on a student's performance than a completely different set of factors: namely, how much kids have learned from their parents, how hard they work at home, and whether the parents have instilled an appetite for education.”
― Steven D. Levitt, Think Like a Freak

“We want our children to become who they are--- and a developed person is, above all, free. But freedom as we define it doesn't mean doing what you want. Freedom means the ability to make choices that are good for you. It is the power to choose to become what you are capable of becoming, to develop your unique potential by making choices that turn possibility into reality. It is the ability to make choices that actualize you. As often as not, maybe more often than not, this kind of freedom means doing what you do not want, doing what is uncomfortable or tiring or boring or annoying.”
― Gregory Millman, Homeschooling: A Family's Journey

“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, Gold Cord

“The French believe that kids feel confident when they're able to do things for themselves, and do those things well. After children have learned to talk, adults don't praise them for saying just anything. They praise them for saying interesting things, and for speaking well.”
― Pamela Druckerman, Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting

“The raising of a child is the building of a cathedral. You can't cut corners.”
― Dave Eggers, A Hologram for the King

“Responsible parenting is NOT a crime. Responsible parenting is most valuable tool of our society.”
― Mick Karabegovic

“أشفق على ولدك من إشفاقك عليه" علي بن أبي طالب رضي الله عنه”
― عبدالله محمد الداوود

“No, Miss Wright didn't want to meet her kid. To her, that relationship was just as important, just as ideal and impossible as it would be to the child. She'd expect that young man to be perfect, smart, and talented, everything to compensate for all the mistakes that she'd made. The whole wasted, unhappy mess of her life.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Snuff

“Raising teenage sons and daughters is a long and tiresome journey. With God's help the final outcome will be worthwhile.”
― Ana Monnar

“Orphans? Would you really?Adoptchildren? "
"There are advantages. If they turn out badly, we can blame their natural parents. We can also choose our own assortment of ages and genders. We can even get them ready-grown, if we wish.”
― Loretta Chase, Captives of the Night

“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, Mitten Strings for God: Reflections for Mothers in a Hurry

“Respecting a child teaches them that even the smallest, most powerless, most vulnerable person is worthy of respect. And that is a lesson our world desperately needs to learn.”
― L.R. Knost

“I thought of all the magazine article I'd read on mothers who worked and constantly felt guilty about leaving their children with someone else. I had trained myself to read pieces like that and silently say to myself, 'See how lucky you are?' But it had been gnawing at the inside, that part that didn't fit, that I never let myself even think about. After all, wasn't it a worse kind of guilt to be with your child and to know that you wanted to be anywhere but there?”
― Jodi Picoult

“In its complexity and sensuality, nature invites exploration, direct contact, and experience. But it also inspires a sense of awe, a glimpse of what is still" un-Googleable "... life's mystery and magnitude.”
― Kim John Payne, Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids

“Father had stretched out his long legs and was tilting back in his chair. Mother sat with her knees crossed, in blue slacks, smoking a Chesterfield. The dessert dishes were still on the table. My sisters were nowhere in evidence. It was a warm evening; the big dining-room windows gave onto blooming rhododendrons.

Mother regarded me warmly. She gave me to understand that she was glad I had found what I had been looking for, but that she and father were happy to sit with their coffee, and would not be coming down.

She did not say, but I understood at once, that they had their pursuits (coffee?) and I had mine. She did not say, but I began to understand then, that you do what you do out of your private passion for the thing itself.

I had essentially been handed my own life. In subsequent years my parents would praise my drawings and poems, and supply me with books, art supplies, and sports equipment, and listen to my troubles and enthusiasms, and supervise my hours, and discuss and inform, but they would not get involved with my detective work, nor hear about my reading, nor inquire about my homework or term papers or exams, nor visit the salamanders I caught, nor listen to me play the piano, nor attend my field hockey games, nor fuss over my insect collection with me, or my poetry collection or stamp collection or rock collection. My days and nights were my own to plan and fill.”
― Annie Dillard, An American Childhood

“Children need time to become themselves--through play and social interaction. If you overwhelm a child with stuff--with choices and pseudochoices--before they are ready, they will only know one emotional gesture: More!”
― Kim John Payne, Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids

“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

“Let’s be Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. Atticus’s children, Scout and Jem, carefully watch their father’s behavior as the house next door to theirs burns to the ground. As the fire creeps closer and closer to the Finches’ home, Atticus appears so calm that Scout and Jem finally decide that “it ain’t time to worry yet.” We need to be Atticus. Hands in our pockets. Calm. Believing. So that our children will look at us and even with a fire raging in front of them, they’ll say, “Huh. Guess it’s not time to worry yet.”
― Glennon Doyle Melton, Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed

“Rest nurtures creativity, which nurtures activity. Activity nurtures rest, which sustains creativity. Each draws from and contributes to the other.”
― Kim John Payne, Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids

“Instead of celebrating what makes each child unique, most parents push their children to" fit in "so that they don't" stick out. "This unwittingly stomps out individuality and encourages conformity, despite these parents' good intentions”
― Tom Rath, How Full Is Your Bucket?

“Love itself is what is left over when one being in love is burned away, and this is both an art and option that accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that group of each other on the ground and when all the pretty blossoms branches. We found that we were one tree and not two.”
― Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli's Mandolin filmscript

“How often does a man know, without question, that he has done well? I do not think it happens often in anyone's life, and it becomes even rarer once one has a child.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin