122 Inspiring Parenting Quotes

Parenting is a journey filled with twists, turns, and countless memorable moments. At times, it can be both exhilarating and challenging, requiring every ounce of patience, love, and wisdom we possess. To help guide you through those tough days and celebrate the joyful ones, we've compiled an inspiring collection of the top 122 parenting quotes. These words of wisdom from various voices will offer you encouragement, perspective, and perhaps even a few chuckles along the way. Whether you're a new parent or a seasoned caregiver, these quotes are sure to resonate and remind you of the beauty and importance of the role you play in your child's life. Dive in and let these inspiring words uplift and fortify your parenting journey.

1. “If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent.” - Bette Davis

2. “Always be nice to your children because they are the ones who will choose your rest home.” - Phyllis Diller

3. “What a kid I got, I told him about the birds and the bees and he told me about the butcher and my wife.” - Rodney Dangerfield

4. “If you're like most members of the Baby Boom generation, you decided somewhere along the line, probably after about four margaritas, to have children. This was inevitable. Mother Nature, in her infinite wisdom, has instilled within each of us a powerful biological instinct to reproduce; this is her way of assuring that the human race, come what may, will never have any disposable income.” - Dave Barry

5. “You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.” - Franklin P. Adams

6. “That's the nature of being a parent, Sabine has discovered. You'll love your children far more than you ever loved your parents, and -- in the recognition that your own children cannot fathom the depth of your love -- you come to understand the tragic, unrequited love of your own parents.” - Ursula Hegi

7. “In the midst of the affliction He counsels, strengthens confirms, nourishes, and favors us.... More over, when we have repented, He instantly remits the sins as well as the punishments. In the same manner parents ought to handle their children.” - Martin Luther

8. “Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.” - Barbara Kingsolver

9. “He could not construct for the child's pleasure the world he'd lost without constructing the loss as well and he thought perhaps the child had known this better than he.” - Cormac McCarthy

10. “The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults.” - Peter De Vries

11. “we can learn to trust our maternal selves and to have faith in the innate goodness and purity of our children - even when we feel overwhelmed and the kids are pushing all our buttons. we can support one another....we can be understanding of each other and easier on ourselves.” - Katrina Kenison

12. “Before I got married I had six theories about raising children; now, I have six children and no theories.” - John Wilmot

13. “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

14. “Your children are the greatest gift God will give to you, and their souls the heaviest responsibility He will place in your hands. Take time with them, teach them to have faith in God. Be a person in whom they can have faith. When you are old, nothing else you've done will have mattered as much.” - Lisa Wingate

15. “Say “no” only when it really matters. Wear a bright red shirt with bright orange shorts? Sure. Put water in the toy tea set? Okay. Sleep with your head at the foot of the bed? Fine. Samuel Johnson said, “All severity that does not tend to increase good, or prevent evil, is idle.” - Gretchen Rubin

16. “Daddy, are you going to yell at us some more today?'Neary gazed down into her clear, guileless eyes. That was how he looked to her---a yelling machine. And she was prepared to accept more yelling because she loved him.” - Steven Spielberg

17. “Be sure to lie to your kids about the benevolent, all-seeing Santa Claus. It will prepare them for an adulthood of believing in God.” - Scott Dikkers

18. “You are the reason why he exists on this earth. You don't have the right to abandon him just because he's inconvenient or has trouble in school.” - Michael Crichton

19. “To abandon a child, she had once said to someone, when she thought Cassandra couldn't hear, was an act so cold, so careless, it refused forgiveness.” - Kate Morton

20. “If our children were to grow up truthful they much be taught by those who had a regard for truth; and not just a casual regard, a delicate regard. On this point we were adamant.” - Amy Carmichael

21. “It's a long haul bringing up our children to be good; you have to keep doing that — bring them up — and that means bringing things up with them: Asking, telling, sounding them out, sounding off yourself — finding, through experience, your own words, your own way of putting them together. You have to learn where you stand, and make sure your kids learn [where you stand], understand why, and soon, you hope, they'll be standing there beside you, with you.” - Erik Erikson

22. “When a child hits a child, we call it aggression.When a child hits an adult, we call it hostility.When an adult hits an adult, we call it assault.When an adult hits a child, we call it discipline.” - Haim G. Ginott

23. “There are a hundred ways in which a boy can injure—if not indeed kill—himself. The more adventurous he is and the greater his initiative, the more ways he will find. If you protect him from each of the first hundred, he is sure to find the hundred and first. Though most men can look back on their boyhood and tremble at the narrowness of some of their escapes, most boys do in fact survive more or less intact, and the wise father is the trusting father.” - Christopher Milne

24. “It's impossible to protect your kids against disappointment in life.” - Nicholas Sparks

25. “A daughter,' Rowley scooped up the child and held her high. The baby blinked from sleep and crowed with him. 'Any fool can have a son,' he said. 'It takes a man to conceive a daughter.” - Ariana Franklin

26. “One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.” - Aldous Huxley

27. “Dance. Dance for the joy and breath of childhood. Dance for all children, including that child who is still somewhere entombed beneath the responsibility and skepticism of adulthood. Embrace the moment before it escapes from our grasp. For the only promise of childhood, of any childhood, is that it will someday end. And in the end, we must ask ourselves what we have given our children to take its place. And is it enough?” - Richard Paul Evans

28. “Your children need your presence more than your presents.” - Jesse Jackson

29. “But she needs me more than she needs him and I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better.” - Betty Smith

30. “What do we say to a guest who forgets her umbrella? Do we run after her and say "What is the matter with you? Every time you come to visit you forget something. If it's not one thing it's another. Why can't you be like your sister? When she comes to visit, she knows how to behave. You're forty-four years old! Will you never learn? I'm not a slave to pick up after you! I bet you'd forget your head if it weren't attached to your shoulders." That's not what we say to a guest. We say "Here's your umbrella, Alice," without adding "scatterbrain." Parents need to learn to respond to their children as they do to guests.” - Haim G. Ginott

31. “Imagine a man who doesn't believe in anything, hope for anything, doesn't love anyone. This is a description of a dead or paralyzed soul. This happens from great grief, or from an unhappy upbringing when parents make from their children's souls paralytics.” - Simon Soloveychik

32. “That was the tricky part. You poured inordinate amounts of time and attention and affection into your kids, but the result was indirect. You didn't point out a cat to your one-year-old and then watch him, minutes later, say 'Cat.' Instead, you pointed out a hundred cats to your one-year-old and then, one day, watched him point to a cat and say 'Mama.” - Katherine Center

33. “Parenthood...It's about guiding the next generation, and forgiving the last.” - Peter Krause (Parenthood)

34. “To those of you who are yet to plunge into the zygote pool and want to know what both plumbless horror and pure love feels like, have yourself a baby...” - Conrad Williams

35. “We hear a great deal about the rudeness of the ris- ing generation. I am an oldster myself and might be expected to take the oldsters' side, but in fact I have been far more impressed by the bad manners of par- ents to children than by those of children to parents. Who has not been the embarrassed guest at family meals where the father or mother treated their grown-up offspring with an incivility which, offered to any other young people, would simply have termi- nated the acquaintance? Dogmatic assertions on mat- ters which the children understand and their elders don't, ruthless interruptions, flat contradictions, ridicule of things the young take seriously some- times of their religion insulting references to their friends, all provide an easy answer to the question "Why are they always out? Why do they like every house better than their home?" Who does not prefer civility to barbarism?” - C.S. Lewis

36. “A child may be "spoiled" by a lack of training or by inappropriate love that gives or trains incorrectly.” - Garry Chapman

37. “Your typical Six-year-old is a paradoxical little person, and bipolarity is the name of his game.” - Louise Bates Ames

38. “We change our behavior when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing. Consequences give us the pain that motivates us to change.” - Dr. Henry Cloud & Dr. John Townsend

39. “Parenting is really just a matter of tracking, of hoping your kids do not get so far ahead you can no longer see their next moves. ” - Jodi Picoult

40. “The woods were my Ritalin. Nature calmed me, focused me, and yet excited my senses.” - Richard Louv

41. “Praise your children openly, reprove them secretly.” - William Cecil

42. “Children are people, and they should have to reach to learn about things, to understand things, just as adults have to reach if they want to grow in mental stature. Life is composed of lights and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows. Most things are good, and they are the strongest things; but there are evil things too, and you are not doing a child a favor by trying to shield him from reality. The important thing is to teach a child that good can always triumph over evil.” - Walt Disney

43. “Much of life, fatherhood included, is the story of knowledge acquired too late: if only I’d known then what I know now, how much smarter, abler, stronger, I would have been. But nothing really prepares you for kids, for the swells of emotion that roll through your chest like the rumble of boulders tumbling downhill, nor for the all-enveloping labor of it, the sheer mulish endurance you need for the six or seven hundred discrete tasks that have to be done each and every day. Such a small person! Not much bigger than a loaf of bread at first, yet it takes so much to keep the whole enterprise going. Logistics, skills, materiel; the only way we really learn is by figuring it out as we go along, and even then it changes on us every day, so we’re always improvising, which is a fancy way of saying that we’re doing things we technically don’t know how to do.” - Ben Fountain

44. “I worry about exposing him to bands like Journey, the appreciation of which will surely bring him nothing but the opprobrium of his peers. Though he has often been resistant - children so seldom know what is good for them - I have taught him to appreciate all the groundbreaking musicmakers of our time - Big Country, Haircut 100, Loverboy - and he is lucky for it. His brain is my laboratory, my depository. Into it I can stuff the books I choose, the television shows, the movies, my opinion about elected officials, historical events, neighbors, passersby. He is my twenty-four-hour classroom, my captive audience, forced to ingest everything I deem worthwhile. He is a lucky, lucky boy! And no one can stop me.” - Dave Eggers

45. “If you want to love a parent you have to understand the incredible investment he or she has in you. If you are a parent, and you want to be loved, you have to deserve it.” - Jodi Picoult

46. “While you may be able to keep your son Jimmy from owning [a gun], if you try to talk him out of wanting one, you are up against a pretty strong argument: You mean I shouldn't want a device that grants me power and identity, makes me feel dangerous and safe at the same time, instantly makes me the dominant male, and connects me to my evolutionary essence? Come on, Mom, get real!” - Gavin De Becker

47. “No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education.” - Plato

48. “My life has been shaped by the decision two people made over 24 years ago. They decided to adopt a child. They got me, and I got a chance at the kind of life all children deserve.” - Karen Fowler

49. “Babies don't come with instruction booklets. You'd learn the same way we all do -- you'd read up on dinosaurs, you'd Google backhoes and skidders. And you don't need a penis to go buy a baseball glove.” - Jodi Picoult

50. “[My dad] didn't do much apart from the traditional winning of bread. He didn't take me to get my hair cut or my teeth cleaned; he didn't make the appointments. He didn't shop for my clothes. He didn't make my breakfast, lunch, or dinner. My mom did all of those things, and nobody ever told her when she did them that it made her a good mother.” - Michael Chabon

51. “Mother is a verb. It's something you do. Not just who you are.” - Cheryl Lacey Donovan

52. “I raised my three teens with love, perseverance, tenacity, sweat, tears, prayers, lighting candles, and the list could go on.” - Ana Monnar

53. “As parents we carry the blueprints, the dreams of what our family could be. The plans change, the whole thing goes way over budget, there are unexpected additions, and the work never ends. Still, through the messiness of construction we see each other with such depth and hope. Our five year-old boy is still so clearly the baby he once was and sometimes—can you see it?—the young man he will one day be. We draw energy and inspiration from our dreams; our simple, common motivations. --SIMPLICITY PARENTING” - Lisa Ross

54. “I want my girls to see their relationship with me as a place of refuge, a place they can retreat to for honesty, unconditional love, and support. I want to teach them and have them trust me, not fear me. I want to preserve the gentle souls that I see in them." -Liz. M.” - Hilary Flower

55. “He thought about the story his daughter was living and the role she was playing inside that story. He realized he hadn't provided a better role for his daughter. He hadn't mapped out a story for his family. And so his daughter had chosen another story, a story in which she was wanted, even if she was only being used. In the absence of a family story, she'd chosen a story in which there was risk and adventure, rebellion and independence.” - Donald Miller

56. “يا أبتاه .. إن عظيم حقك علي لا يبطل صغير حقي عليك” - عبدالله محمد الداوود

57. “أشفق على ولدك من إشفاقك عليه " علي بن أبي طالب رضي الله عنه” - عبدالله محمد الداوود

58. “Pendidikan pada diri seorang anak sesungguhnya dimulai jauh sebelum anak tersebut memiliki tubuh dan kesadaran manusiawinya” - Miranda Risang Ayu

59. “People who are not fully enlightened have no business becoming parents. This contradicts the conventionally accepted notion that people have an inherent "right" to have children. They do not. People who have a compulsion to traumatize a child, even in the mildest forms, are breaking the child's human rights, though of course the parental compulsion to find false pleasure through procreation obliterates their awareness of these rights. But interestingly, many parents would agree that convicted pedophiles and child murderers have no right to procreate, because of the dynamics in which they are so likely to engage.” - Daniel Mackler

60. “Most of the time, it felt like my father and I were completely different species. Possibly literally, depending on the day and whether or not I actually qualified as human at the time.” - Jennifer Lynn Barnes

61. “Once upon a time, all children were homeschooled. They were not sent away from home each day to a place just for children but lived, learned, worked, and played in the real world, alongside adults and other children of all ages.” - Rachel Gathercole

62. “Uselessness, she thought, was the permanent condition of parenthood.” - Lisa Unger

63. “Honor your relationships by developing listening skills.” - Allan Lokos

64. “Everything I had to give went to my children, and though I loved them and my husband utterly, the drudgery of the day-to-day made it seem as if not love but coffee, my Toyota and sheer logistics were what propelled me through life.” - Marcia DeSanctis

65. “Raising kids is part joy and part guerilla warfare.” - Ed Asner

66. “It's not politically correct to say that you love one child more than you love your others. I love all of my kids, period, and they're all your favorites in different ways. But ask any parent who's been through some kind of crisis surrounding a child--a health scare, an academic snarl, an emotional problem--and we will tell you the truth. When something upends the equilibrium--when one child needs you more than the others--that imbalance becomes a black hole. You may never admit it out loud, but the one you love the most is the one who needs you more desperately than his siblings. What we really hope is that each child gets a turn. That we have deep enough reserves to be there for each of them, at different times.All this goes to hell when two of your children are pitted against each other, and both of them want you on their side.” - Jodi Picoult

67. “I mean, when the world comes for your children, with the knives out, it's your job to stand in the way.” - Joe Hill

68. “The fact is that Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable-even legally actionable-to Westerners. Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, "Hey fatty-lose some weight." By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue, talking in terms of "health" and never ever mentioning the f-word, and their kids still end up in therapy for eating disorders and negative self image.” - Amy Chua

69. “Once when I was young-maybe more than once-when I was extremely disrespectful to my mother, my father angrily called me "garbage" in our native Hokkien dialect. It worked really well. I felt terrible and deeply ashamed of what I had done. But it didn't damage my self esteem or anything like that. I knew exactly how highly he thought of me. I didn't actually think I was worthless or feel like a piece of garbage. As an adult, I once did the same thing to Sophie, calling her garbage in English when she acted extremely disrespectful toward me. When I mentioned I had done this at a dinner party, I was immediately ostracized. One guest named Marcy got so upset she broke down in tears and had to leave early. My friend Susan, the host, tried to rehabilitate me with the remaining guests. "Oh dear, it's just a misunderstanding. Amy was speaking metaphorically-right, Amy? you didn't actually call Sophie 'garbage.'""Um, yes I did. But it's all in the context," I tried to explain. "It's a Chinese immigrant thing.” - Amy Chua

70. “It is a violation of trust to use your kids as caulking for the cracks in you.” - Anne Lamott

71. “But to be a parent is to live in the past-present-future all at once. It is to hug your children and be intensely aware of how much smaller they felt last year ... even as you wonder how much bigger they will feel the next. It is to be a time-shifter, to marvel at the budding of their intellect, their verbal dexterity, their sense of humor ... at the same time rewinding and fast-forwarding ... to when they were younger, to when they'll be older. It is to experience longing for the here and now, which I know sounds flaky - sort of like complaining about being homesick when you're already home - but can happen, trust me, when you live in multiple time zones all at once.” - Youngme Moon

72. “Babbit was an average father. He was affectionate, bullying, opinionated, ignorant, and rather wistful. Like most parents he enjoyed the game of waiting till the victim was clearly wrong, then virtuously pouncing.” - Sinclair Lewis

73. “The reality is that most of us communicate the same way that we grew up. That communication style becomes our normal way of dealing with issues, our blueprint for communication. It’s what we know and pass on to our own children. We either become our childhood or we make a conscious choice to change it.” - Kristen Crockett

74. “When dreaded outcomes are actually imminent we don't worry about themwe take action. Seeing lava from the local volcano make its way down the street toward our house does not cause worry it causes running. Also we don't usually choose imminent events as subjects for our worrying and thus emerges an ironic truth: Often the very fact that you are worrying about something means that it isn't likely to happen.” - Gavin De Becker

75. “I didn’t know how I could live with that knowledge, without it eating me up, without it poisoning every happy memory I had of growing up. Without it ruining everything Beck and I had.I didn’t understand how someone could be both God and the devil. How the same person could destroy you and save you. When everything I was, good and bad, was knotted with threads of his making, how was I supposed to know whether to love or hate him?” - Maggie Stiefvater

76. “I went away and cried to the Master of the Universe, "What have you done to me? A mind like this I need for a son? A heart I need for a son, a soul I need for a son, compassion I want from my son, righteousness, mercy, strength to suffer and carry pain, that I want from my son, not a mind without a soul!” - Chaim Potok

77. “All parents set out with expectations, hopes and dreams for their child. When a child is diagnosed with a health problem, these aspirations are altered. While one parent is hoping to see their child graduate from university, another is praying that they can live pain free” - Sharon Dempsey

78. “... be radical about grace and relentless about truth and resolute about holiness...” - Ann Voskamp

79. “It still remains unrecognised, that to bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind, is a moral crime, both against the unfortunate offspring and against society; and that if the parent does not fulfil this obligation, the State ought to see it fulfilled, at the charge, as far as possible, of the parent.” - John Stuart Mill

80. “Don't even think about it.""Well, when can I walk by myself?""When you get your driver's license.""You always, always say that." Dillie scowled at him. "That's when everything happens.""It's going to be a busy day," Phin agreed.” - Jennifer Crusie

81. “Being a parent is dirty and scary and beautiful and hard and miraculous and exhausting and thankless and joyful and frustrating all at once. It’s everything. (Confessions of a Scary Mommy, Gallery Books 2012).” - Jill Smokler

82. “The only power that can effect transformations of the order (of Jesus) is love. It remained for the 20th century to discover that locked within the atom is the energy of the sun itself. For this energy to be released, the atom must be bombarded from without. So too, locked in every human being is a store of love that partakes of the divine- the imago dei, image of god…And it too can be activated only through bombardment, in its case, love’s bombardment. The process begins in infancy, where a mother’s initially unilateral loving smile awakens love in her baby and as coordination develops, elicits its answering smile… A loving human being is not produced by exhortations, rules and threats. Love can only take root in children when it comes to them- initially and most importantly from nurturing parents. Ontogenetically speaking, love is an answering phenomenon. It is literally a response.” - Huston Smith

83. “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

84. “The best way to guide children without coercion is to be ourselves.” - Madeleine L'Engle

85. “People worried too much about their children. Suffering when you're young is good for you. It immunized your body and soul...” - Jeannette Walls

86. “Fussing over children who cry only encourages them. That's positive reinforcement for negative behavior.” - Jeannette Walls

87. “If you want to be treated like a mother, act like one.” - Jeannette Walls

88. “At what age did I start to think that where I was going was more important than where I already was? When was it that I began to believe that the most important thing about what I was doing was getting it over with? Knowing how to live is not something we have to teach children. Knowing how to live is something we have to be careful not to take away from them.” - Colin Beavan

89. “Had I catalogued the downsides of parenthood, "son might turn out to be a killer" would never have turned up on the list. Rather, it might have looked something like this:1. Hassle.2. Less time just the two of us. (Try no time just the two of us.)3. Other people. (PTA meetings. Ballet teachers. The kid's insufferable friends and their insufferable parents.)4. Turning into a cow. (I was slight, and preferred to stay that way. My sister-in-law had developed bulging varicose veins in her legs during pregnancy that never retreated, and the prospect of calves branched in blue tree roots mortified me more than I could say. So I didn't say. I am vain, or once was, and one of my vanities was to feign that I was not.)5. Unnatural altruism: being forced to make decisions in accordance with what was best for someone else. (I'm a pig.)6. Curtailment of my traveling. (Note curtailment. Not conclusion.)7. Dementing boredom. (I found small children brutally dull. I did, even at the outset, admit this to myself.)8. Worthless social life. (I had never had a decent conversation with a friend's five-year-old in the room.)9. Social demotion. (I was a respected entrepreneur. Once I had a toddler in tow, every man I knew--every woman, too, which is depressing--would take me less seriously.)10. Paying the piper. (Parenthood repays a debt. But who wants to pay a debt she can escape? Apparently, the childless get away with something sneaky. Besides, what good is repaying a debt to the wrong party? Only the most warped mother would feel rewarded for her trouble by the fact that at last her daughter's life is hideous, too.)” - Lionel Shriver

90. “I'd rather be a 'THINKER' - Two Healthy Incomes No Kids Early Retirement!” - Kaye D. Walters

91. “Perhaps I did nothing because I don't have enough fear to be a good parent.” - Kaui Hart Hemmings

92. “Quality time is not the same as the everydayness of being together. Let’s neither glorify nor undervalue.” - Don Elium

93. “I often must sacrifice my own needs and desires for the purpose of giving my children what they need and modeling for them the depths of Christ's love."...make myself available in the routine tasks and myriad interruptions of daily life b/c I believe it is God's will for me to serve my family through them.” - Sally Clarkson

94. “I figure when my husband comes home from work, if the kids are still alive, then I've done my job.” - Roseanne Barr

95. “He welcomes the chance to do fatherly things with the little girl, and those ten morning minutes with dear little four-year-old Ruby, with her deep soulful eyes, and the wondrous things she sees with them, and her deep soulful voice, and the precious though not entirely memorable things she says with it, and the smell of baby shampoo and breakfast cereal filling the car, that little shimmering capsule of time is like listening to cello music in the morning, or watching birds in a flutter of industry building a nest, it simply reminds you that even if God is dead, or never existed in the first place, there is, nevertheless, something tender at the center of creation, some meaning, some purpose and poetry.” - Scott Spencer

96. “Interesting how fashion is cyclical,” Jaccob said when she came out of the store with two black plastic bags. “Goth was the look when I was young, too.” “It’s not a look,” Chuck said. “I’m just wearing my feelings on the outside.” “Uh huh.” His phone buzzed. “Hang on a second." He rolled up his sleeve to check his HUD, but the call hadn’t come through there. Huh. He had to pick up his phone and check the read-out, which listed a phone number: an old school page. “That’s funny…” “Dad, you’re doing that thing again,” Chuck said. “What thing?” Jaccob asked. “That thing where you have to check every single doohickey you carry around.” “I am not.” Jaccob took his hand out of his coat pocket, where he’d been reaching to check his police scanner or music player (he hadn’t decided which to use first).” - Erik Scott de Bie

97. “To look deep into your child's eyes and see in him both yourself and something utterly strange, and then to develop a zealous attachment to every aspect of him, is to achieve parenthood's self-regarding, yet unselfish, abandon. It is astonishing how often such mutuality had been realized - how frequently parents who had supposed that they couldn't care for an exceptional child discover that they can. The parental predisposition to love prevails in the most harrowing of circumstances. There is more imagination in the world than one might think.” - Andrew Solomon

98. “When you get born your father and mother lost something out of themselves, and they are going to bust a ham trying to get it back, and you are it. They know they can't get it all back but they will get as big a chunk out of you as they can.” - Robert Penn Warren

99. “When I ask French parents what they most want for their children, they say things like "to feel comfortable in their own skin" and "to find their path in the world." They want their kids to develop their own tastes and opinions. In fact, French parents worry if their kids are too docile. They want them to have character. But they believe that children can achieve these goals only if they respect boundaries and have self-control. So alongside character, there has to be cadre.” - Pamela Druckerman

100. “The French believe that kids feel confident when they're able to do things for themselves, and do those things well. After children have learned to talk, adults don't praise them for saying just anything. They praise them for saying interesting things, and for speaking well.” - Pamela Druckerman

101. “It's a fathers job to spoil his daughters shamelessly, it's their husbands job to tame them. Prince Zehava-The Dragon Prince” - Melanie Rawn

102. “Surely, our greatest parental hope is that our children attain a state of righteousness. It is the only sure road to happiness. But to attain such a state requires that they be decent as well as compliant. I know many, many young people who are not "righteous" in the usual sense. But they are wonderfully decent people with many praiseworthy qualities. They are not "devout" in the sense that they attend church faithfully, dress or groom themselves traditionally, or publicly declare their devotions, but they are kind, honest, hard working, concerned for others, and unselfish.” - Dr. Glenn I. Latham

103. “I had been running as fast as I could for all of my adult life. A person can’t listen effectively while running. A running mother is not able to pick up clues. She is not able to let go of her own agenda long enough to stop and listen.” - Irene Tomkinson

104. “Mina wanted some of the kind of love Momma gave to her children, wheere love was the first and deepest thing, and the questions came later and the answers wouldn't matter much measured up against the love.” - Cynthia Voigt

105. “Fifteen-year-old girls produce children with sixteen-year-old boys in the backseat of cars and in the stairwells of apartment buildings. Why can't two loving adults who have contemplated parenthood and are prepared to offer love, patience, and devotion come up with enough chromosomal matter to stick together and create a child?” - Scott Simon

106. “Only those few who are able to surpass their fear of death completely can fully experience the highest forms of life; not the mundane life of the mortal, but the godly life of the resurrected.” - Zeena Schreck

107. “Stories arrest us. Parents use stories to capture the attention of active children. Preachers use stories to capture the attention of sleepy adults.” - Tony Reinke

108. “The most important thing anyone can do is raise their kids well.” - Claire Cross

109. “Nurturing a child’s sense of personal worth and therefore hope and dreams for a wonderful future is perhaps the most important responsibility of every grownup in a child’s life.” - Wess Stafford

110. “The key to activating maturation is to take care of the attachment needs of the child. To foster independance we must first invite dependance; to promote individuation we must provide a sense of belonging and unity; to help the child separate we must assume the responsibility for keeping the child close. We help a child let go by providing more contact and connection than he himself is seeking. When he asks for a hug, we give him a warmer one than he is giving us. We liberate children not by making them work for our love but by letting them rest in it. We help a child face the separation involved in going to sleep or going to school by satisfying his need for closeness.” - Gordon Neufeld

111. “Children learn best when they like their teacher and they think their teacher likes them.” - Gordon Neufeld

112. “The biggest test for parents is not how they parent, but how the respond to disorder and unpredictability.” - Sarah Newton

113. “Resolution, like responsibility, is a product of ownership, and kids can't resolve a conflict until they figure out how they contributed to it.” - Richard Eyre

114. “One of pleasures of parenting, future reader: parent can positively influence kid, make moment kid will remember for rest of life, moment that alters his/her trajectory, opens up his/her heart + mind.” - George Saunders

115. “She brought a chair into the room and placed it alongside the top of his bed. Then she held his hand as he drifted off to sleep. It was so small in her own hand, and it felt warm and dry. She pressed his hand gently, and his fingers returned the pressure, but only just, as he was almost asleep by then. She remembered, but not very well, what it was to fall asleep holding the hand of another; how precious such an experience, how fortunate those to whom it was vouchsafed by the gods of Friendship, or of Love. She thought she had forgotten that, but now she remembered.” - Alexander McCall Smith

116. “We all know many people who come from hard-working families, where they had to grow up with a bare minimum and become self-sufficient and independent at a very young age. We look at them now and see responsible citizens, self-reliant adults, successful members of the business community, outstanding performers, and just happy people. Yes, they’re happy, because they know the meaning of labor, they appreciate the pleasure of leisure, they value relationships with others, and they respect themselves. In contrast, there are people who come from wealthy families, had nannies to do everything for them, went to private schools where they were surrounded with special attention, never did their own laundry, never learned how to cook an omelet for themselves, never even gained the essential skills of unwinding on their own before bedtime, and of course, never did anything for anyone else either. You look at their adult life and see how dependent they are on others and how unhappy they are because of that. They need someone to constantly take care of them. They may see no meaning in their life as little things don’t satisfy them, because they were spoiled at a very young age. They may suffer a variety of eating disorders, use drugs, alcohol and other extremes in search of satisfaction and comfort. And, above all, in search of themselves.” - Anna Stevens

117. “I think . . . you should have children, John." At least he's no longer talking about bugs."I'm too young, Dad.""It's the most important thing . . . I've done in . . . my life.” - Ursula Hegi

118. “For a child, it is in the simplicity of play that the complexity of life is sorted like puzzle pieces joined together to make sense of the world.” - L.R. Knost

119. “The real questions for parents should be: "Are you engaged? Are you paying attention?" If so, plan to make lots of mistakes and bad decisions. Imperfect parenting moments turn into gifts as our children watch us try to figure out what went wrong and how we can do better next time. The mandate is not to be perfect and raise happy children. Perfection doesn't exist, and I've found what makes children happy doesn't always prepare them to be courageous, engaged adults.” - Brené Brown

120. “(Da) "Sorry, Son, what was that? I was too busy ignoring you."(Later) "Sorry, Son, I missed that," Ma said. "Ignoring you can be a full-time job.” - Brian Farrey

121. “As we embrace the mystery of love, we see that it contains not an absence of error, but the presence of grace. It contains not the absence of anger or pain, but the presence of forgiveness and healing. Not the absence of disharmony or confusion, but the presence of peace and clarity.To make a home into a sanctuary, we must be willing to make room in our hearts for one another's limitations, as well as our gifts. For it is here in this sacred space of the home and family, so brimming with life, so full of every emotion available to our hearts, that we learn what it means to love within all the nuances of an intimate relationship.” - Shea Darian

122. “We must imbue our children with principles of the higher-self, principles which see all people as true equals, and above all, which are sensitive to the delicate and fragile balance of life.” - Bryant McGill