2,497 Quotes About Parenting

Parents can modify themselves, and reduce the number of behaviors that are unacceptable to them, by coming to see that their children are not their children, not extensions of themselves, but separate, unique. A child has the right to become what he is capable of becoming, no matter how different from the parent or the parent’s blueprint for the child. This is his inalienable right.

You have created a life, now let the child have it. Let him decide what he wants to do with the life you gave him

An accepting parent is willing to let a child develop his own “program” for life; a less accepting parent feels a need to program the child’s life for him.

If a parent has no other source of self-worth and self-esteem, which is unhappily true of many parents whose lives are limited to raising “good” children, the stage is set for a dependency on children that makes the parent overanxious and severely needful that the children behave in particular ways.

Parents who satisfy their own needs through independent productive effort not only accept themselves but also needn’t seek gratification of their needs from the way their childrenbehave. They don’t need their children to turn out in a particular way. People with high self-esteem, resting on a firm foundation of their own independent achievement, are more accepting of their children and the way they behave.

The lesson for parents is that they can be helpful consultants to their children—they can share their ideas, experience, wisdom—if they remember to act like an effective consultant so they do not get fired by the clients whom they wish to help.

Parents who want children to value nonviolence in human relations will seem like hypocrites when they use physical punishment to “discipline.” I recall a poignant cartoon depicting a father spanking his son over his knee, shouting, “I hope this teaches you not to go around hitting your baby brother!

The moment you allow yourself to walk on eggshells there will be eggs at every turn.

Parents want the best for their children … for themselves.