Parenting Yourself Quotes

Begin to nurture yourself…Some grew up expecting their romantic partners to give them the nurturing they hungered for, only to be disappointed. But our partners are not our parents, no matter how much we try to make them into parents. No one can make up for the deprivation you experienced, and no one should be expected to. ~ Beverly Engel

In the quiet of the graveyard, the couple knelt together in soul-stretching silence - wishing, waiting, hoping, praying. ~ Seth Adam Smith

Decoding (a child's difficult) behavior is like looking at a rain wrapped tornado crossing the road in front of you. You see the fury of rain, hail, wind and debris, but you have to look real hard to see the driving force behind it. ~ Deborah A. Beasley

Speak to them as if you were on stage in front of thousands of people. Respond to them with the respect they deserve. They are our future. Guard your tongue. Be brave enough to try harder.
Let's create a childhood that our children won't have to recover from. ~ Brooke Hampton

There is no such thing as reproduction, only acts of production. ~ Andrew Solomon

The best way to love your children is to love their mother [father]. That's true. The quality of your marriage greatly affects the way you relate to your children - and the way they receive love. If your marriage is healthy - both partners treating each other with kindness, respect, and integrity - you and your spouse will feel and act as partners in parenting. ~ Gary Chapman

Reina sounds awesome," Sid says. "I'm digging her more and more."

"Were you there?" I ask. "Have you seen one of these movies?"

"No," Scottie says.

"Scottie," Alex says, kicking Sid in the ribs. "Reina is a fuckedup ho bag, and you need to stay away from her. I've already told you that. Do you want to end up like me?"

"Yes," Scottie says.

"I mean the earlier me, when I was yelling at Mom."

"No," Scottie says.

"Well, Reina is going to be a crackhead, and she's going to get used. She's a twat. Say it."

"Twat," Scottie says. She gets up and runs across the room, saying, "Twat twat twat twat twat."

"Holy shit," Sid says. "This is some messed-up parenting. Isn't it?"

Alex shrugs. "Maybe. I guess we'll see."

"I don't get it," I say. "I don't know what to do. These things she does, they keep happening."

"It will go away," Alex says.

"Will it? I mean, look at how you kids talk. In front of me, especially. It's like you don't respect authority."

The kids stare at the television. I tell them to get out. I'm going to bed. ~ Kaui Hart Hemmings

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. ~ Zach Cregger

The task of being right is a task the father perfects over time. ~ Ben Marcus

There's no handbook for parenting. So you walk a very fine line as a parent because you are civilizing these raw things. They will tip the coffee over and finger-paint on the table. At some point, you have to say, 'We're gonna have to clean that up because you don't paint with coffee on a table.' ~ Gary Oldman

The greatest challenge of parenting is in the inner work it requires: the strength and confidence in believing that we are not in control of, but the answer for our children. ~ Kelly Bartlett

They'd have people out looking for her, and nothing makes grown-ups quite so mad as finding a child safe when they'd been scared silly that they might find that child dead. ~ Jenny Wingfield

That thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you is usually what you need to find, and finding it is a matter of getting lost. The word 'lost' comes from the old Norse 'los' meaning the disbanding of an army…I worry now that people never disband their armies, never go beyond what they know.

Advertising, alarmist news, technology, incessant busyness, and the design of public and private life conspire to make it so. A recent article about the return of wildlife to suburbia described snow-covered yards in which the footprints of animals are abundant and those of children are entirely absent. Children seldom roam, even in the safest places… I wonder what will come of placing this generation under house arrest. ~ Rebecca Solnit

Parents are not interested in justice, they're interested in peace and quiet. ~ Bill Cosby

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

Mostly they all were products of single parents, and in the most tragic category - black boys, with no particular criminal inclinations but whose very lack of direction put them in the crosshairs of the world. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Our children's rebellion is not the problem. It is the symptom. Why they are rebelling is the problem. And unless we address the "why," the external things we do in reaction to their rebellion will not make much of a difference. ~ Tim Kimmel

The child you hold in your arms is your gift to a future that you will not see. Therefore, we must turn a blind eye to ourselves and selflessly pour the best of ourselves into our children while rigorously sifting out the worst of ourselves. And once we are utterly spent by such daring gestures, we will shockingly discover the resulting emptiness as astonishingly filled. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

That is the flip side, you see, to laissez-faire parenting. It succeeds or not, throughout the animal kingdom as it does with humans, in direct relationship to the strength of the offspring. Some of us don't need very much. Some of us need a lot. ~ Cynthia Rogers Parks

My earliest childhood memory was watching my parents loosen the wheels on my stroller. ~ Joan Rivers

Research tells us that we judge people in areas where we're vulnerable to shame, especially picking folks who are doing worse than we're doing. 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 shaming deficiency. ~ Brene Brown

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. ~ Brene Brown

A good father loves his daughter with no strings attached. He is available. He is both strong and tender. Being big and strong doesn't mean being separate from one's feelings; to the contrary, it means being very much in touch with them. Women who experienced fathers like that know that a strong man can cry, and that a man who can cry can also be very strong. ~ Marlin S. Potash

If you wanted to create an education environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a classroom. If you wanted to create a business environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a cubicle. And if you wanted to change things, you might have to tear down both and start over. ~ John Medina

Dads. It's time to tell our kids that we love them. Constantly. It's time to show our kids that we love them. Constantly. It's time to take joy in their twenty-thousand daily questions and their inability to do things as quickly as we'd like. It's time to take joy in their quirks and their ticks. It's time to take joy in their facial expressions and their mispronounced words. It's time to take joy in everything that our kids are. ~ Dan Pearce

Take any two-year-old through a car wash and their skulls are blown. FLAPS! FOAM! ROLLING THINGS! It's the closest they'll ever get to being inside a working spaceship. ~ Drew Magary

It's the curse of motherhood. You're required to love us even when we vex you. ~ Julia Quinn

Show as much interest in what your children tell you as they have in telling you. ~ Wes Fesler

What it says is that when going against your teenage child's wishes, the greatest wisdom is to say what you have to say, do what you have to do, and then stop - because they will not. An overwhelmingly valuable skill in the parenting of today's teenagers is learning to disengage - sooner rather than later. ~ Anthony E. Wolf

To make your goals savvy, keep them both personal (meaningful to you and aligned with your values) and positive (so you feel good about what you're trying to accomplish. ~ Beverly K. Bachel

When I was a young man, I didn't think about having a family. My wife and I were too poor to have babies. Then all of a sudden, one came along and scared the hell out of us because we had no money. Once the baby arrives, you make do somehow. You fall in love with the baby and life adjusts itself. You find you don't need as much money as you thought. When that happens, you can ask the questions that should have come before the baby. ~ Ray Bradbury

I know it is hard for you young mothers to believe that almost before you can turn around the children will be gone and you will be alone with your husband. You had better be sure you are developing the kind of love and friendship that will be delightful and enduring. Let the children learn from your attitude that he is important. Encourage him. Be kind. It is a rough world, and he, like everyone else, is fighting to survive. Be cheerful. Don't be a whiner. ~ Marjorie Pay Hinckley

Sociologists well understand that chaos at home causes violent behavior, educational failure and social alienation among children. Yet, many of us in America stay far, far away from this topic. That in itself is a national scandal. Bad parenting is gravely harming this nation. ~ Bill O'Reilly

I wish you the sweetness of sticky kisses,
the fragrance of muddy bouquets of weeds,
the simplicity of macaroni necklaces,
the warmth of bedtime snuggles,
the promise of beautiful tomorrows.
I wish you the hope to carry your heart
through the hard times,
the grace to forgive your inevitable mistakes,
the strength to start again every morning,
the wisdom to enjoy the journey.
I wish you enough joy and laughter in the present
to fill the silence that comes too soon
when life grows quiet and rooms grow still
and your heart beats in constant prayer
for the once-small feet
that now choose their own path
guided by the whisper of their childhood. ~ L.R. Knost

I've realised now that the reality of children is you have to be in the right place with the right person. ~ Benedict Cumberbatch

Soccer's appeal lay in its opposition to the other popular sports. For children of the sixties, there was something abhorrent about enrolling kids in American football, a game where violence wasn't just incidental but inherent. They didn't want to teach the acceptability of violence, let alone subject their precious children to the risk of physical maiming. Baseball, where each batter must stand center stage four or five times a game, entailed too many stressful, potentially ego-deflating encounters. Basketball, before Larry Bird's prime, still had the taint of the ghetto.
But soccer represented something very different. It was a tabula rasa, a sport onto which a generation of parents could project their values. Quickly, soccer came to represent the fundamental tenets of yuppie parenting, the spirit of Sesame Street and Dr. Benjamin Spock. ~ Franklin Foer

I think a dad has to make his daughter feel that he's genuinely interested in what she's going through. ~ Harry Connick, Jr.

I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: He is nothing but a boy
a little boy! ~ Dale Carnegie

It is horrifyingly obvious now that getting more attention isn't necessarily favoritism. ~ N.K. Jemisin

Join them in their world when they're little so you'll be welcome in their world when they get big. ~ L.R. Knost

What I want you to be - I don't mean physically but morally: you are very well physically - is a firm fellow, a fine firm fellow, with a will of your own, with resolution. with determination. with strength of character that is not to be influenced except on good reason by anybody, or by anything. That's what I want you to be. That's what your father, & your mother might both have been ~ Charles Dickens

KIDS. They know a BRIBE when they see one. They want a PARENT, not a PAY-OFF. They don't care if you're Jack-King-Rodeo or Mister-You-Own-New-York. All they understand is time spent WITH YOU or WITHOUT YOU. It's that SIMPLE. ~ Carew Papritz

It must be this overarching commitment to what is really an abstraction, to one's children right or wrong, that can be even more fierce than the commitment to them as explicit, difficult people, and that can consequently keep you devoted to them when as individuals they disappoint. On my part it was this broad covenant with children-in-theory that I may have failed to make and to which I was unable to resort when Kevin finally tested my maternal ties to a perfect mathematical limit on Thursday. I didn't vote for parties, but for candidates. My opinions were as ecumenical as my larder, then still chock full of salsa verde from Mexico City, anchovies from Barcelona, lime leaves from Bangkok. I had no problem with abortion but abhorred capital punishment, which I suppose meant that I embraced the sanctity of life only in grown-ups. My environmental habits were capricious; I'd place a brick in our toilet tank, but after submitting to dozens of spit-in-the-air showers with derisory European water pressure, I would bask under a deluge of scalding water for half an hour. My closet wafter with Indian saris, Ghanaian wraparounds, and Vietnamese au dais. My vocabulary was peppered with imports -- gemutlich, scusa, hugge, mzungu. I so mixed and matched the planet that you sometimes worried I had no commitments to anything or anywhere, though you were wrong; my commitments were simply far-flung and obscenely specific.

By the same token, I could not love a child; I would have t ~ Lionel Shriver

Was Vianne really supposed to let Sophie starve to prove her loyalty to France? ~ Kristin Hannah

Your offspring are primarily PEOPLE. Secondarily, they are your children. But primarily: they are persons. The most exciting aspect of being a parent, is not the fact that you can dictate another person's life; rather, it is the fact that another person has been brought into your life for you to get to know more each day and for them to get to know you more also. The revelation of souls, the unveiling of souls, the becoming of souls: THAT is what parenting is truly, truly about. Parenting is the process of metamorphosizing alongside someone you have brought into this world. It is the relationship of life that speaks of the utmost respect; a respect that goes both ways, not just one way. Until everyone realises this, we cannot solve the current crisis that is parenting. Because, yes, there IS a crisis, and no, nobody is talking about it. ~ C. JoyBell C.

Pray regularly for the members of your family. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita