Every parent is an artist, for the bared canvas of a newborn’s soul begs for the artist’s touch. And because this is so, a parent must prepare the palette with the utmost care, choose the brushes with poised caution, and mindfully attend to every brushstroke regardless of how slight. And such caution is utterly imperative for the emerging rendering will be both a legacy borne of the parent, and a life lived by the child.

If as an adult I have scolded and then silenced the child within me, I contend that I am neither an adult nor a child. Rather, I am just plain ignorant.

The clash is born of the fact that the child within me sees with undiluted clarity what the adult within me is incessantly working to deny. And in these most vexing moments, to be the adult is to defer to the child.

I might ask if I am a good Dad to the child within me, for all effective parenting begins there.

At the point that I can look into my children’s faces and say that my life is about their lives, I have finally come to the point that I can now start becoming a parent. And if I’ve not reached this point, I might be a parent by birth but it all ends there.

Each and every day take the time to tell your children the great people that they are so that they don’t grow up living each and every day thinking they’re the bad people that they’re not.

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.

To my children I say, “Fall on me.” For what greater privilege has a parent than to be that place to fall in a world that is itself fallen?

While your children are only born once, the process of birthing something into them happens every day thereafter.