I look at how my kids view exercise. They have a complete understanding that nutrition and exercise go hand in hand. I didn’t think like that when I was a kid. But they have a real consciousness about it that I’d like to think comes from the years of attention we’ve put into this.

My three children have brought me great joy.

According to Ethiopian custom, parents wait to name a baby because children often die in the first weeks of life.

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 used to meditate all the time in bed. That was when I was raising my daughter, and I’d get her up and off to school, and then I would go back to bed and meditate. And then I would do the same in the evening, and that was very good for that period because I had so many things to juggle as a single mother.

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.‘

I take my kids to school. And if I go to work, I go to work, and they visit me on set. I come home. I have dinner with my family. I have breakfast with my family. I have a very solid, very warm home.

I can encourage my daughter to love her body, but what really matters are the observations she makes about my relationship with my own body.

I understand the importance of bondage between parent and child.

There is a ‚sanctity‘ involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.

My kids always perceived the bathroom as a place where you wait it out until all the groceries are unloaded from the car.

Nothing burns more calories than dancing in 5-inch heels… try it!

Sleep is all about recovering. So if you’re not sleeping, you’re not recovering. And if you’re going to break your body down a lot, you better find ways to build it back up. And the only way to do that is get a lot of sleep. So for me, I go to bed at like 8:30, 9:00. As soon as I put my kids to bed. Because I’m up at 5:30 the next day.

Exercise is bunk. If you are healthy, you don’t need it: if you are sick you should not take it.

I really love training and being in good shape, and it’s so much a part of my life now, so it never really feels like work to me.

See, people are watching you. Especially your children. They’re taking in every single thing you do. They are like video cameras with legs. And they are always in the record mode. They learn more from what you do than from what you say.

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.

Together, we can help make sure that every family that walks into a restaurant can make an easy, healthy choice.

People wonder aloud about whether I am an okay mother. That is obviously painful because it’s so important to me. It’s hard to hear that people think I’m not a capable mother and a good person, that they just think I’m nuts.

I eat fish, three times a week meat, and if not yogurt, something like this and it rarely continues.

From the moment I open my eyes, I’m trying to free my body. I’m trying to get looser, more flexible, to gain control. Movement is medicine to me.

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

Most of us are raised to believe we are ordinary. The anchor of the universe is present in every child. A parent only needs to guide and step aside and let them fulfill their dharma. Help children remember that they can do or be anything.

Our growing softness, our increasing lack of physical fitness, is a menace to our security.

Someday I want to have children and give them all the love I never had.

Being a housewife and a mother is the biggest job in the world, but if it doesn’t interest you, don’t do it – I would have made a terrible mother.

I did have two dads; one was a socialist, and one was a capitalist. I really decided I would rather be a capitalist.

Always kiss your children goodnight, even if they’re already asleep.

To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.

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.

Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid, one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory.

We’re African-American and we work together as a family, so people assume we’re like the Jacksons. But I didn’t have parents using me to get out of a bad situation.

Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.

The moment you have a child, in an instant your life is not for you, and your life is completely, 100 percent dedicated to another human being, and they will always come first. It changes you forever. It changes your perspective, and it gives you a nice purpose and focus.

It’s much worse to read criticism about your son than yourself.

The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.

My parents pretty much realized that I would do whatever I wanted, and that was it, really.

To bring a healthy child into this world, raise them right and watch them grow is the biggest miracle there is.

I’ve exercised with women so thin that buzzards followed them to their cars.

The biggest thrill a ballplayer can have is when your son takes after you. That happened when my Bobby was in his championship Little League game. He really showed me something. Struck out three times. Made an error that lost the game. Parents were throwing things at our car and swearing at us as we drove off. Gosh, I was proud.

I like sports, and I enjoy playing basketball and lifting weights.

People change because of kids. They change how they eat. They change the way they think. They change the way they see one another.

To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

No body can be healthful without exercise, neither natural body nor politic, and certainly, to a kingdom or estate, a just and honourable war is the true exercise.

My husband’s a pediatrician, so he and I talk about parenting all the time. You can’t raise children who have more shame resilience than you do.

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.

If I were a woman, I would love to have lots of kids. But for men, I don’t believe in it.

I have ‚Parents‘ magazine in my home.

Education commences at the mother’s knee, and every word spoken within hearsay of little children tends toward the formation of character.

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.

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.

When I take my kid to school, all the parents stop and stare.

I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.

Even if we give parents all the information they need and we improve school meals and build brand new supermarkets on every corner, none of that matters if when families step into a restaurant, they can’t make a healthy choice.

Remember a few years ago when Congress declared that the sauce on a slice of pizza should count as a vegetable in school lunches? You don’t have to be a nutritionist to know that this doesn’t make much sense.

My problem was my inability to spend much time at home. I thought my family was secure, so I went running around everyplace else. I guess I had more of an effect on other people’s kids than I did my own.

Remember that children, marriages, and flower gardens reflect the kind of care they get.

Now that I’m a parent, I understand why my father was in a bad mood a lot.

Our need for certainty in an endeavor as uncertain as raising children makes explicit ‚how-to-parent‘ strategies both seductive and dangerous.

There is one thing I have never taught my body how to do and that is to figure out at 6 A.M. what it wants to eat at 6 P.M.

Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.