Parenting Quotes

“Why do women waste their time trying to convince their insecure family members and girlfriends that they are beautiful? Self esteem is not a beauty cream that you can rub all over them and see instant results. Instead, convince them they are not stupid. Every intelligent woman knows outward beauty is a nip, tuck, chemical peel or diet away. If you don't like it, fix it.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“People treat having a kid as somehow retiring from success. Quitting. Have you seen a baby? They’re pretty cute. Loving them is pretty easy. Smiling babies should actually be categorized by the pharmaceutical industry as a powerful antidepressant. Being happy is really the definition of success, isn’t it?”
― Jim Gaffigan, Dad Is Fat

“I used to wonder why I had hair on my legs, but now I know it's for my toddler sons and daughters to pull themselves up off the ground with as I scream in pain.”
― Jim Gaffigan, Dad Is Fat

“The single greatest reason why we are losing a generation is because the home is no longer the place of the transference of the faith. We live in a day of ‘outsourcing’…Today, we have a generation of people that outsource their kids.”
― Tony Evans

“Occasionally, a dog will be presented as some training method for having a baby." My girlfriend and I got a dog. We are going to see if we can handle that before we have kids. "This is a little like testing the waters of being a vegetarian by having lettuce on your burger. Okay, maybe that metaphor doesn't make sense, but neither does using a dog as a training method for having a baby.”
― Jim Gaffigan, Dad Is Fat

“Embrace your beautiful mess of a life with your child. No matter how hard it gets, do not disengage... Do something—anything—to connect with and guide your child today. Parenting is an adventure of the greatest significance. It is your legacy." - Andy Kerckhoff, from Critical Connection”
― Andy Kerckhoff, Critical Connection: A Practical Guide to Parenting Young Teens

“Adoption is grief in reverse.”
― Jody Cantrell Dyer, The Eye of Adoption: The True Story of My Turbulent Wait for a Baby

“Kid's don't care how many sermons you preach to them. The only sermon they'll hear is how you live your life in front of them.”
― Bruce Van Horn

“Adoption is a beautiful, burdensome blessing.”
― Jody Cantrell Dyer, The Eye of Adoption: The True Story of My Turbulent Wait for a Baby

“Adoption is the most intentional process on Earth.”
― Jody Cantrell Dyer, The Eye of Adoption: The True Story of My Turbulent Wait for a Baby

“Mothering while grieving should involve being understanding and keeping a gentle attitude toward yourself as you work to balance your own needs and your child's. You become stronger by remaining aware of your own well-being, which in turn makes you a stronger person for your child or children.”
― Elizabeth Berrien, Creative Grieving: A Hip Chick's Path from Loss to Hope

“But I don't think any parent can expect to escape this life without disappointing his child at some point. And the same could be said the other way around. We all of us fall short now and again, and disappoint someone dear to us, or ourselves. Thankfully, my parents have always been the forgiving sort.”
― Julie Klassen, The Dancing Master

“Ironically, to my children, bedtime is a punishment that violates their basic rights as human beings. Once the lights are out, you can expect at least an hour of inmates clanging their tin cups on the cell bars.”
― Jim Gaffigan, Dad Is Fat

“What you call your life is not yours at all--not yours to plan, manipulate, or control, at least not very often.... In fleeting moments of deep satisfaction and insight, I saw the absolute truth of life: the unbroken line of love that had led to my existence and would lead on through my daughter. My mother's love, her mother's love, her mother's love, and back and back forever ago. Love that is no mere word, love that goes beyond feeling, love that is life itself.... What miracles, what sacrifice, what love!... Can you imagine this love? Can you anticipate it, fabricate it, measure and evaluate it? No you can't, you can onlybelove, and your child will release its magnitude within you.”
― Karen Maezen Miller, Momma Zen: Walking the Crooked Path of Motherhood

“Remember, Little Ones, everything is not important all the time. Only living is important all the time. Not things. Not money. Not more things and more endless money. Spend well the quality of your time. And yes, be greedy with your hours. If only to then give those hours away as the most precious gifts you have to offer to yourself, your family, and your friends. And yes, to my Little Ones.” –From The Legacy Letters– “The Everything and Nothing of Money.”
― Carew Papritz, The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift

“I had uncovered a widely held but overlooked attachment: our attachment to the view that every problem must have a solution. We delude ourselves that we can think our way out of a problem or we see it as a matter of finding the right person to advise us. We become beggars for our problems, asking numerous people for an opinion. So often, we refuse to relax until a problem is fixed, only to discover our inability to relax was most of the problem.”
― Sarah Napthali, Buddhism for Mothers of Young Children: Becoming a Mindful Parent

“To begin perfect happiness at the respective ages of twenty-six and eighteen, is to do pretty well; and professing myself moreover convinced, that the General's unjust interference, so far from being really injurious to their felicity, was perhaps rather conducive to it, by improving their knowledge of each other, and adding strength to their attachment, I leave it to be settled by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“People tend to raise the child inside of them rather than the child in front of them.”
― Joe Newman, Raising Lions

“Little things spell LOVE. Beware the spouse or marriage that places a premium on expensive gifts and 'toys.”
― David R. Wommack

“Since taking are of one small baby is the hardest job on earth, I am constantly late, as I am today.”
― Sally Koslow, The Widow Waltz

“For me, adoption was grief in reverse.”
― Jody Cantrell Dyer, The Eye of Adoption: The True Story of My Turbulent Wait for a Baby

“Mantras are the past & the future.”
― David R. Wommack

“Define your mantras, your adages, and bear down repetitively -- over and over and over!”
― David R. Wommack

“A marvelous feeling -- that you love someone deeply -- and in turn, that person loves you back so sincerely.”
― David R. Wommack

“The world (including Drapervilleh is not a nice place, and the innocent and the young have to take their chances. They cannot be watched over, twenty-four hours of the day. At what moment, from what hiding-place, the idea of evil will strike, there is no telling. And when it does, the result is not always disastrous. Children have their own incalculable strength and weakness, and this, for all their seeming helplessness, will determine the pattern of their lives. Even when you suspect why they fall downstairs, you cannot be sure. You have no way of knowing whether their fright is permanent or can be healed by putting butter on the large lump that comes out on their foreheads after a fall.”
― William Maxwell, Time Will Darken It

“When we pour out our miseries, He hears a melody of us needing and desiring what only He can give.”
― Stacey Thacker, Hope For The Weary Mom

“That is the most godlike feeling a human can experience; being ignored by rebellious child.”
― Dennis Garvin, Case Files of an Angel

“It's a fool who thinks that having a kid is a right, which is the biggest crock of fishheads I’ve ever heard. You have a responsibility, not only to a person but also to a spirit because that’s what a child is. A pissing, crying, yawning, giggling, laughing package of spirit that is looking for you to take the lead. It’s a heck of a responsibility to look after a spirit.”
― Carew Papritz, The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift

“Bedtime makes you realize how completely incapable you are of being in charge of another human being. My children act like they've never been to sleep before." Bed? What's that? No, I'm not doing that. "They never want to go to bed. This is is another thing that I will never have in common with my children.”
― Jim Gaffigan, Dad Is Fat

“The best parenting strives to educate their children in HOW TO LIVE LIFE -- competitive, compassionate, void of greed, & striving to make a better world.”
― David R. Wommack