parenting quotes

With every word we utter, with every action we take, we know our kids are watching us. We as parents are their most important role models.

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.‘

My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost.

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

I’ve never been pregnant, so I just feel God didn’t mean for me to have kids so that everybody else’s children could be mine.

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.

After momma gave birth to 12 of us kids, we put her up on a pedestal. It was mostly to keep Daddy away from her.

Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.

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.

Kids will remind you that, even though you’ve gone down a road 100 times, it’s brand new for them – and that’s healthy.

Clearly this is a tough economic time, and a lot of families are hurting. So when we talk to parents, we talk about small changes for kids and things that don’t cost extra money. Like adding water and eliminating sugary drinks and sodas. That’s going to save money right there. Or adding a few more vegetables.

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

It took Simone a long time to understand why people want Daddy’s autograph. I’d tell her, and my wife would tell her, too, ‚People see Daddy in the movies, and they are excited to meet him.‘ But she couldn’t really grasp it.

Sometimes, it’s just easier to say yes to that extra snack or dessert, because frankly, it is exhausting to keep saying no. It’s exhausting to plead with our kids to eat just one more bite of vegetables.

When we talk about mortality, we are talking about our children.

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.

As a mom, I know it is my responsibility, and no one else’s, to raise my kids. But we have to ask ourselves, what does it mean when so many parents are finding their best efforts undermined by an avalanche of advertisements aimed at our kids.

All things considered, there’s nobody better for children than parents.

As a father, safety is always a top of mind issue for me.

The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded with this aggravation, that those whom he injures are always in his sight.

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.

Ultimately this issue is on us. We’re the ones who make the decisions about what our kids eat.

If you’ve ever hauled a 28-pound two-year-old around New York, you’ll find that men fold at the knees a lot quicker than women.

I think about my own sons and my own daughters, and I’m sure that many parents are concerned about what their children are exposed to.

It wasn’t so long ago that I was a working mom myself. And I know that sometimes, much as we all hate to admit it, it’s just easier to park the kids in front of the TV for a few hours, so we can pay the bills or do the laundry or just have some peace and quiet for a change.

Never fret for an only son, the idea of failure will never occur to him.

My own eight children all march to the beat of their inner music, and in some cases, it is definitely far away from what I hear. I’ve had to honor their instincts and their choices, and merely guided them out of harm’s way until they could be their own guides.

I always joke that my kids‘ favorite holiday is Father’s Day. They love the way I celebrate the occasion by writing each of them a thank-you letter and a generous check. It’s my way of letting them know how much I appreciate the great pleasure and privilege of being their dad.

As a father and now a grandfather to three wonderful grandchildren, I know how magical the first year of a child’s life is but also how much hard work it takes. Being able to spend as much time as possible with your loved ones is absolutely vital, especially early on.

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.‘

We cannot fashion our children after our desires, we must have them and love them as God has given them to us.

The kids are old enough now – I just want to let them be kids. I don’t want to comment on them too much. They’re at an age where I just want to let them be kids.

Do I worry about being in the public eye and raising kids? Yeah. Any situation you’re in, you’re gonna worry about raising kids. But it’s champagne problems, too. There are people who can’t feed their kids.

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.‘

The influence of a mother upon the lives of her children cannot be measured. They know and absorb her example and attitudes when it comes to questions of honesty, temperance, kindness, and industry.

If you’re the parent, be a parent. You know what I mean? I’m a parent. I have daughters.

A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.

Kids are watching us. I experience it every single day. They hang on my every word, what I wear, what I say.

While I believed deeply in my husband’s vision for this country… and I was certain he would make an extraordinary President… like any mother, I was worried about what it would mean for our girls if he got that chance. How would we keep them grounded under the glare of the national spotlight?

My son’s full real name is Duncan Zowie Haywood. As a toddler, he was called by his second name Zowie. But it was such an identifiable name during the Seventies that if I called him loudly in public places, everyone would turn to stare, so I started calling him Joey to take the pressure off.

We make the Sabbath a delight when we teach the gospel to our children.

We can’t form our children on our own concepts; we must take them and love them as God gives them to us.

Men are what their mothers made them.

My kids are coming up in a different time then me. Interracial couples are of the norm. With me, it’s about making sure my kids understand the importance of education and having opportunities that I didn’t. My goal as a parent is to make sure they don’t take what they have for granted.

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.

Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.

Plumbers can be masters, the guy who did my patio is a master, some people are masters at raising really great children.

The difference between us and them, between you and success, is not that you never fail, but it’s how you recover from those failures – is that you keep getting up time and time again. You figure out what you did wrong, and then you make it right. I say that to my kids every day.

I have a son, who is my heart. A wonderful young man, daring and loving and strong and kind.

A child who is allowed to be disrespectful to his parents will not have true respect for anyone.

I love to dance, but my children tell me I shouldn’t. Can’t see why.

My mother insisted that her children read.

For me, often, there’s such a cloud of melancholia about knowing I’m going to have to leave my daughter on her own. I don’t know what age that is going to be, thank God. It just doubles me up in grief.

Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.

My friend has a baby. I’m recording all the noises he makes so later I can ask him what he meant.

People have told me, ‚You shouldn’t bring your daughter onto the podium, ‚cause it’s the workplace,‘ and things like that. But I’m not gonna really listen to that. I’m gonna do what I think is fun for me and my family, and everything’ll be all right.

When a father puts in long hours at work, he’s praised for being dedicated and ambitious. But when a mother stays late at the office, she’s sometimes accused of being selfish, neglecting her kids.

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.

You send a boy to school in order to make friends – the right sort.

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