673 Quotes About Parenthood

It's not so much that I mind listening to her stories. Everybody likes to have an audience - that's why most people have kids, isn't it?

Defne zou geenszins door dezelfde drek als ik gaan, dat stond ik niet toe, ik nam haar lot in eigen handen. Voor zover ik kon, want ik kon haar nu niet van haar wetenschapbestrijdende extatische basisschool en Koranschool af tiefen, ze was immers niet uit mijn kut gerold, en dus had men ooit bepaald dat ik dan geen zeggenschap had en dat de kut die baart, de kut die waakt is. En ik was de kut die mitst en maart. En voor nu was ik de kut die hierover bedaart.

I remembered my father coaching me before I took my GCE exam and how he said, as I stalled in solving a long equation, 'Yes, you're getting there. Don't doubt yourself. Don't stop.' Is that why I believe now in always trying? It is, of course, too easy to draw simple causative lines. It was the wholeness of him that formed me, but it was also these incidents, slice by slice.

Never attempt to cover true feelings. Don't expect it from your children and don't expect it from other adults. There are no right feelings and no wrong feelings. To be human, one must feel the full range of emotions, not just preferred ones, not just tolerated ones. Do not raise your children feeling like they need to fight for the freedom to feel.

But perhaps it's a delusion for each generation to think that they know better than their parents. If this were true, than parental wisdom would increase with time like the processing power of computer chips, refining over generations, and we'd how be living in some utopia of openness and understanding. (pag.288)

As a father now myself, it's sobering to think about how the smallest comments will ripple through your children's lives, with some leaving permanent warps. I must console myself in the certainty that I am helping them and damaging them in other ways I cannot see.

Great parents don’t suffocate, they demonstrate.

Spend less time speaking the words you want your kids to hear and more time demonstrating the life you want your kids to live.

I still did not want to take it, but Mother said, "It is so when I die you can pick persimmons and think about me".