I became the kind of parent my mother was to me.

When you’re around the kids, you feel like you act the most grown up just because you’re supposed to lead. I say things, like every other parent, that reminds you of your own parents. One thing I do know about being a parent, you understand why your father was in a bad mood a lot.

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

I didn’t start sweating until I had children. That was one of the first things I realized when my daughter Violet was born – I started getting wicked BO. You know there’s a difference between basketball BO and stress BO? This was definitely stress BO. Like, new dad BO.

I mean, I look at my dad. He was twenty when he started having a family, and he was always the coolest dad. He did everything for his kids, and he never made us feel like he was pressured. I know that it must be a great feeling to be a guy like that.

Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.

Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.

Somewhere it is written that parents who are critical of other people’s children and publicly admit they can do better are asking for it.

My mom, she was a very, very soft woman. It was hard for her to yell or even curse. But when it came to fighting for her kids, she found a strength she didn’t always know she had.

I do not raise brats!

Do you know what you call those who use towels and never wash them, eat meals and never do the dishes, sit in rooms they never clean, and are entertained till they drop? If you have just answered, ‚A house guest,‘ you’re wrong because I have just described my kids.

Whoever does not have a good father should procure one.

I’m not great at bedtime stories. Bedtime stories are supposed to put the kid to sleep. My kid gets riled up and then my wife has to come in and go, ‚All right! Get out of the room.‘

I remember thinking quite logically that I didn’t want to spoil my children with wealth and so that I would create a foundation, but not knowing exactly what it would focus on.

My parents were just constantly affirming me in everything that I did. Late at night, I’d wake up and hear my mother talking over my bed, saying, ‚You’re going to do great on this test. You can do anything you want.‘

The trend of opinion among eugenists is that we must make marriage more difficult. Certainly no one who is not a desirable parent should be permitted to produce progeny.

Modern cynics and skeptics… see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing.

My mother did not like children.

Ironically, parenting is a shame and judgment minefield precisely because most of us are wading through uncertainty and self-doubt when it comes to raising our children.

Treat your kid like a darling for the first five years. For the next five years, scold them. By the time they turn sixteen, treat them like a friend. Your grown up children are your best friends.

It is a wise father that knows his own child.

If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example.

My son is becoming me – just a silly, silly prankster guy.

I don’t take pictures when I’m with my kids, for the sake of my kids. It’s important when you’re as busy as I am that you give your kids your time when you’re with them, and nothing compromises that. I’ve been lucky enough to have fans that understand that.

When a child is locked in the bathroom with water running and he says he’s doing nothing but the dog is barking, call 911.

I have ‚Parents‘ magazine in my home.

Too many people treat parenting like it’s the 20th item on their to-do list.

If you want someone to say, ‚She’s so sweet, and she’s so cute, and, honey, point your foot,‘ that’s not my school. You can go to the YMCA and have a nobody teach your kid if that’s what you want to hear.

I was raised by a mother who told me I was great every day of my life.

When your mother asks, ‚Do you want a piece of advice?‘ it is a mere formality. It doesn’t matter if you answer yes or no. You’re going to get it anyway.

My first job in all honesty is going to continue to be mom-in-chief. Making sure that in this transition, which will be even more of a transition for the girls… that they are settled and that they know they will continue to be the center of our universe.

I go to sleep thinking about my kids being spoiled and I wake up thinking about it.

The one thing I want to leave my children is an honorable name.

When I get up and work out, I’m working out just as much for my girls as I am for me, because I want them to see a mother who loves them dearly, who invests in them, but who also invests in herself. It’s just as much about letting them know as young women that it is okay to put yourself a little higher on your priority list.

I would like to see people more aware of where their food comes from. I would like to see small farmers empowered. I feed my daughter almost exclusively organic food.

Yes, Mother. I can see you are flawed. You have not hidden it. That is your greatest gift to me.

My children, to the extent that they have found religion, have found it from me, in that I insist on at least a modicum of religious education for them.

In my divorce, I stood up and said to my ex-wife, ‚Hey, I messed up. This had nothing to do with you. I didn’t understand what marriage was. I cheated. I was wrong. We couldn’t fix it; it got worse. I stepped away because I didn’t want it to get any worse. You’re the mother of my kids – I don’t want to hate you.‘

You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.

I just want to make sure when I have kids, I can spend time with them. That’s the whole point.

What I tell my kids is, ‚I’m preparing you for college and for life. So, having independence, knowing how to set your own boundaries, figuring out how to make that balance. We still have screen-time rules.‘

I have no problem yelling at anybody’s kid – free of charge!

When I was four, my mother insisted I get out of the car and find my own way home. Although I got lost, I did find my way home. It taught me the value of independence at an early age.

My daughter doesn’t even get my humor. She’s like, ‚Um, no. I don’t get it, Dad. Mmm, no, not that one, Dad.‘

Historically, the family has played the primary role in educating children for life, with the school providing supplemental scaffolding to the family.

Taking care of children has nothing to do with politics. I think perhaps with time, instead of there being a politicization of humanitarian aid, there will be a humanization of politics.

I’ve learned a lot since I was a new mother. My approach to struggle and shame now is to talk to yourself like you’d talk to someone you love and reach out to tell your story.

Only God Himself fully appreciates the influence of a Christian mother in the molding of character in her children.

I do not think that I am a natural born mother… If I ever wanted to mother anyone, it was my father.

The kids are a big part of my schedule.

A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.

We’re all bombarded with so many dietary messages that it’s hard to find time to sort through all this information, but we do have time to take a look at our kids‘ plates.

You’re never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read to a child.

We were never intimate mother and children while she was our mother – but… when she became our child, the affection came.

All my stepchildren carried the burden of my fame. Sometimes they would read terrible things about me, and I’d worry about whether it would hurt them. I would tell them: ‚Don’t hide these things from me. I’d rather you ask me these things straight out, and I’ll answer all your questions.‘

Men are what their mothers made them.

Brad and I have never wanted our kids to be actors, but we also want them to be around film and be a part of Mommy and Daddy’s life and for it not to be kept from them, either. We just want them to have a good, healthy relationship with it.

You learn that there’s no right way to do it, no wrong way to do it. It’s just what you feel comfortable with, to trust that, and don’t let anybody box you in to a certain style of parenting or make you feel a certain way about what your kids do.

When I was growing up, I wanted to adopt, because I was aware there were kids that didn’t have parents.

Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.

I have spent the greater part of my life in a hotel room with seven or eight kids, looking after everyone, sorting out fights, wiping noses, handing out towels, not having a clean towel left for me.