Parenthood Quotes - Page 7

Goldfish get big enough only for the bowl you put them in. Bonsai trees twist in miniature. I would have given anything to keep her little. They outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow them.

Jodi Picoult

As I grew into womanhood my confusion at the world became more apparent. I was taking comfort in behaviours that were familiar, not bathing, wearing multiple layers of clothes and, like my mother, I was bingeing on food. Of course I was still very much a lonely unsupported child myself when I got pregnant - one who had never been nurtured or mothered and as such I struggled with the responsibilities of parenthood.

Jane Hersey

We are all the product of our past and have to live with our memories and personality they cannot be erased.

Jane Hersey

It takes a society to raise a generation.

David Berman

He never had nothing of his own before, except the kid, and he can’t claim but half the credit, there, maybe less. T.J.’s blond like his mamma, and stubborn, too. Won’t let nobody hold him except her. Cries every time his daddy picks him up. Every time he looks in those wet blue eyes, he nearly loses it. His own son hates him. Can’t blame the kid for having an opinion.

Nadria Tucker

It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day-A sunny day with the leaves just turning,The touch-lines new-ruled - since I watched you playYour first game of fotball, then, like a satelliteWrenched from its orbit, go drifting awayBehind a scatter of boys. I can seeYou walking away from me towards the schoolwith the pathos of a half-fledged thing set freeInto a wilderness, the gait of oneWho finds no path where the path should be.That hesitant figure, eddying awayLike a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,Has something I never quite grasp to conveyAbout nature's give-and-take - the small, the scorchingOrdeals which fire one's irresolute clay.I had worse partings, but none that soGnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughlySaying what God alone could perfectly show-How selfhood begins with a walking away,And love proved in the letting go.

Cecil Day-Lewis

I guess you just have to trust your kids, trust that their innate interest in life will win out in the end, don’t you think?

George Saunders

What is much harder to handle is the sense that you have to live up to the mark someone else has set for you. The grades become too important, the competition too frantic, the fear of disappointing those who believe in you turns into an overwhelming nightmare. And it is desperately unfair to the boy. He cannot live his parents' life over again for them. He cannot make up for their own lacks, their own unfulfillments. He cannot carry their torch -- only his own.

Sydney J. Harris

And most of the failures in parent-child relationships, from my observation, begin when the child begins to acquire a mind and a will of its own, to make independent decisions and to question the omnipotence or the wisdom of the parent.

Sydney J. Harris

Parents are programmed to want the best for their kids, regardless of what they get in return. That's what love is supposed to be like, right? But in fact, if you think about it, that's kind of a strange belief. Given what we know about the way people really are. Selfish and shortsighted and egotistical and needy. Why should being a parent, in and of itself, somehow confer superior-personhood on everybody who tries it? Obviously it doesn't.

Jonathan Franzen

Memory loss is the key to human reproduction. If you remembered what new parenthood was actually like you wouldn’t go around lying to people about how wonderful it is, and you certainly wouldn’t ever do it twice.

Michael Lewis

We should teach our kids that they're blessing and not a burden and that they're valuable beyond what they can imagine - in God's eyes, in the world's eyes - that they're purpose is so important to fulfill and it's gonna make a difference in the world. And they're the only ones that can make the difference that they can make, in the way that they can make it. That's why we all have different fingerprints. And I feel like the message is not clear enough. It's not clear because they go to school and they get challenged and they're bombarded with the idea that abortion is okay, that we can just go ahead and, you know, if we're not ready to have a kid we can just take care of that problem. But kids are not a problem, they're not a mistake, they're not a burden. They're blessing from God and that's what we don't understand. My mom was sixteen when she had me and we both almost died, I was a second kid, she had my brother when she was fifteen. And we both almost died and the doctors told her to abort me and I think that a lot of people gave her that advice. So when I grew up I think I had a sense of being a burden. And I think a lot of kids actually have that sense.

Lacey Sturm

Every moment I have ever experienced as a child is as important as every moment I am experiencing now, or will experience ever. I guess what I'm saying is that not everybody should have children.

Gary Shteyngart

Drawing from 1.7 million Gallup surveys collected between 2008 and 2012, researchers Angus Deaton and Arthur Stone found that parents with children at home age fifteen or younger experience more highs, as well as more lows, than those without children... And when researchers bother to ask questions of a more existential nature, they find that parents report greater feelings of meaning and reward -- which to many parents is what the entire shebang is about.

Jennifer Senior

Mothers burning inside the risen suns of their children.

Karen Russell

Parents in the early half of the twentieth century were primarily concerned with the development of character in their children. They wanted to be certain that their children were ready to cope with adversity, for it was surely coming to them one day whether in personal or national life. The development of character involves self-discipline and often sacrifice of one's own desires for the good of self and others. Montessori education, developed in this historical period, reflects this emphasis on the formation of the child's character. However, parents today are more likely to say their primary wish for their children is that they be happy. In pursuit of this goal they indulge their children, often unconsciously, to a degree that is startling to previous generations. All parents need to remember that true happiness comes through having character and discipline, and living a life of meaningful contribution -- not by having and doing whatever you wish.

Paula Polk Lillard

At first parenthood was as I had expected, exhausting, sometimes heinous, and occasionally divine. I held my children close enough to feel them breathe, laugh, swallow.

Kelly Corrigan

When your children arrive, the best you can hope for is that they break open everything about you. Your mind floods with oxygen. Your heart becomes a room with wide-open windows. You laugh hard every day. You think about the future and read about global warming. You realize how nice it feels to care about someone else more than yourself. And gradually, through this heart-heavy openness and these fresh eyes, you start to see the world a little more. Maybe you start to care a teeny tiny bit more about what happens to everyone in it.

Amy Poehler

I swear, if I could eat my children, I would. I'd consume them like some beast in a Hieronymus Bosch painting, but in a friendlier, more momlike way. Their little bodies make me salivate. It takes everything I have not to swallow them whole.

Amy Poehler

The most incredible thing about being a parent is seeing your own personality come out in your children.

Anonymous

If we reward our children for doing the right things, or discipline for intentionally doing the wrong things, then we might be viewed as doing the right thing. On the other hand, we (or parents) might not fully grasp the right thing—as the “right thing” becomes convoluted in the mix of the time and period, the latest “grand experiment”, and other influences of parenthood and childrearing.

H. Kirk Rainer

The child's existence turned a plain world to riches. Her life raised up like this, the child giving point and purpose to each day, the care of him transforming her, widening and deepening her.

Mary Costello

If children matter, than whom more to stand in the gap than their parents; yet sadly, the parents (or a parent) can ironically become the chief enemy for which the children may hold in contempt…rather than care. Under the “abuse card”, the custodial parent has the aforementioned ability to operate as a double agent: on the one-side, the protector and caretaker; while on the other side, the divider and abuser. Similarly, the state can be integral to The System of dismantling the dad while appearing (and attesting) to be acting in the best interest of the children. Within the second of these two is the divorce industry that has benefited from the spoils of war without regard to the incomparable costs borne by our community and culture.

H. Kirk Rainer

Children act on the words they hear.May your words be gracious to the hearing of children.May your words inspire and challenge children to fulfill their true potential.

Lailah Gifty Akita

Though I suppose people do reproduce sometimes for that reason - for insurance against later regret. I think people have children for all manner of reasons - sometimes out of a pure desire to nurture and witness life, sometimes out of an absence of choice, sometimes in order to hold on to a partner or create an heir, sometimes without thinking about it in any particular way. Not all the reasons to have children are the same, and not all of them are necessarily unselfish. Not all the reasons not to have children are the same, either, though. Nor are all those reasons necessarily selfish.

Elizabeth Gilbert

A good example is the best gift you can offer to your children. In your absence, your example is present, which means you are present always!

Israelmore Ayivor

If your child is constantly interrupting or doing other things to get your attention, he is not getting enough communication of the right kind. Just the fact that you are in the house with him all day does not mean that you are necessarily devoting any time to com- munication of his choice.

Ruth Minshull

If Mom is convinced that ballet lessons are a must, she shouldtake them.Although it may look odd to see a thirty-year old woman hang- ing onto a bar and flinging a slightly plump leg in the air, the sight is not as pathetic as seeing her seven-year old daughter grimly going through such motions just to please her mother, when she would prefer to be at home designing new doll clothes.Although some parents are never quite ready to accept this fact, the child is not one of our possessions. We don’t own him; we never will. We gave birth to his body; he may share some of our physical characteristics; but he does not inherit our desires.He’s a different person, a separate entity, with his own likes and dislikes.It’s a grave mistake to try to override a child’s power of choice in what he wants to be and do. Some parents do this in an attempt to live their lives through the child.

Ruth Minshull

To have children is to plant roses, muguets, lavender, lilac, gardenia, stock, peonies, tuberose, hyacinth ...it is to achieve a whole sense,a grand sense one did not priorly know. It is to give one's garden another dimension. Perfume of life itself.

Julia Glass

But Nita had always seen having a child as selfish. Why bring another soul into this world, she'd say, when there are so many out there that need our help?

Ramez Naam

Sum of life; Birth, childhood, youth, adulthood, parenthood, old age and death.

Lailah Gifty Akita

If we throw blankets over our children's dreams, we darken their world and extinguish their desire to live. I'd rather my kid die with a wild fire in his/her heart than with a malfunctioning or drained out fuse. Always allow your kids to keep humming with dreams and ideas that fuel their passions. Never tell them something is impossible. If you have a really strong determined kid, they'll go out there killing themselves trying to do the unachievable just to prove you wrong. And if you have a weak kid, they'll give up on life and settle for bagging Cokes and potato chips at your local grocery store.

Suzy Kassem

Everybody has it wrong way round. Parents don't make children--children make parents. They shape our behavior from the first wail. Mold us into what they need. It can be a pretty rough process, too

Lois McMaster Bujold

Well, there is a piece of famous advice, grand advice even if it is German, to forget what you can't bear. The strong can forget, can shut out history. Very good. Even if it is self-flattery to speak of strength--these aesthetic philosophers, they take a posture, but power sweeps postures away. Still, it's true you can't go on transposing one nightmare into another, Nietzsche was certainly right about that. The tender-minded must harden themselves. Is this world nothing but a barren lump of coke? No, no, but what sometimes seems a system of prevention, a denial of what every human being knows. I love my children, but I am the world to them, and bring them nightmares. I had this child by my enemy. And I love her. The sight of her, the odor of her hair, this minute, makes me tremble with love. Isn't it mysterious how I love the child of my enemy? But a man doesn't need happiness for himself. No, he can put up with any amount of torment--with recollections, with his own familiar evils, despair. And this is the unwritten history of man, his unseen, negative accomplishment, his power to do without gratification for himself provided there is something great, something into which his being, and all beings can go. He does not need meaning as long as such intensity has scope. Because then it is self-evident; it is meaning.

Saul Bellow

To receive children’s love and to come home to a child who runs to you with a hug, among the most powerful emotional experiences available.

Dennis Prager

The Child is the Alpha and the Omega of a parent’s happiness.

Amit Abraham

Help me to love them better and more. Fill in the cracks that formed when I failed to be careful enough with them. Let their innocent minds remember the happy times more often than they remember the sad. Fill them with your love and grace.

Hallie Lord

Thus bound together, they sheltered the child from the cold, dark night, enveloping him in warmth.

Seth Adam Smith

It'll be when you first learn to walk that I get daily demonstrations of the asymmetry in our relationship. You'll be incessantly running off somewhere, and each time you walk into a door frame or scrape your knee, the pain feels like it's my own. It'll be like growing an errant limb, an extension of myself whose sensory nerves report pain just fine, but whose motor nerves don't convey my commands at all. It's so unfair: I'm going to give birth to an animated voodoo doll of myself.

Ted Chiang

I struggle to discover what these silent sons of mine want, but words have always failed me. They are sullen even as they tell me they are okay. I know they are lying but there is nothing I can do.

Jinat Rehana Begum

Parenthood is a walk in the park...A park full of scorpions that you can't leave without jumping through fiery hoop on a pogo stick.

Brenda Lochinger

If we fail to instill a fixed sense of confidence in our children, we will raise handicapped children who have no handicap other than the conviction that they believe they do.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

There is no such thing as illegitimate children, only illegitimate parents.

J.Adam Snyder

Reject the fearmongering. Adopt best practices. Slow down.

Jane Scott

More than Captain America your kids need Amelia Earhart – more than Ant Man, they need Abraham Lincoln - more than Green Arrow they need Gandhi – more than Iron Man they need Isaac Newton.

Abhijit Naskar

Force your kids to pursue success and they shall be drowned into the abyss of characterlessness, but let them pursue excellence and they shall rise as glorious Gods.

Abhijit Naskar

Human making is our mission, but if you break the very soul of the would-be humans, then there will be no human to raise.

Abhijit Naskar

Let your children nourish their knack, for that knack shall one day provide them with the way to live with dignity and contentment.

Abhijit Naskar

Let your child be the torch of truth and they shall shine over the entirety of the human society brightening even the darkest corners.

Abhijit Naskar

There is nothing glorious about creating life out of passionate penetration. Even the animals can do that. The real glory comes when the life you create becomes the help in the lives of countless other humans.

Abhijit Naskar

Do not raise creepy crawlers my dear braveheart parents. Raise mighty humans with Himalayan strength in their veins. Give them the voice that has gone extinct in today’s society. And if there is only one thing you could give to your children, then give them courage – courage to pursue their passion – courage to trample every obstacle in their path – courage to keep walking even when their heart bleeds in agony.

Abhijit Naskar

Just that sons and fathersAre like mirrors and daughters are soft

Richard L. Ratliff

The fullness ends when we give Nature her ransom, when we make children for her. Then she is through with us, and we become, first inside, and then outside, junk. Flower stalks.

John Updike

You see how it is godlike to love the being of someone. Your existence is a delight to us. I hope you never have to long for a child as I did, but oh, what a splendid thing it has been that you came finally, and what a blessing to enjoy you now for almost seven years.

Marilynne Robinson

A single action can cause a life to veer off in a direction it was never meant to go. Falling in love can do that, you think. And so can a wild party. You marvel at the way each has the power to forever alter an individual's compass. And it is the knowing that such a thing can so easily happen, as you did not know before, not really, that has fundamentally changed you and your son.

Anita Shreve

We both liked children; we just didn't want any ourselves. There were children everywhere, and we saw no reason to start our own brand. Young couples plunge into parenthood and about half the time they end up with some ghastly problem on their hands. We thought we'd leave that to others.

Thomas McGuane

Without you there would be no me. I am everything reflected in your eyes. I am everything approved by your smile. I am everything born of your guidance. I am me only because of you.

Richelle E. Goodrich

Through the blur, I wondered if I was alone or if other parents felt the same way I did - that everything involving our children was painful in some way. The emotions, whether they were joy, sorrow, love or pride, were so deep and sharp that in the end they left you raw, exposed and yes, in pain. 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.

Debra Ginsberg

We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The birth of a child is a joy to the parent and the world.

Lailah Gifty Akita

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Parenthood Quotes - Page 7

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