2,497 Quotes About Parenting

fantasy and imagination, which are so natural for the young child, form a better foundation for later creative thinking than early learning. Creative thinking is more needed in our highly technological world than four-year-olds who can push the buttons on the computer.

Sometimes we need to go back to the grief, to that moment, and really dig into what happened, how we suffered, how we broke, before we can start putting the pieces back together and move forward.

If I had to sum up motherhood in one philosophical statement it would be this: They come out of the womb as narcissists, and you have eighteen years to try to change that. If, by the time they move out of your house, they are able to consider others with some level of empathy, attend to the feelings of others, and see the world outside themselves and the people who inhabit it as valid and important, you've done your job.

People without children thought that having a newborn was the hardest part of parenthood, that upside down, the day is night twilight zone feedings and toothless wails. But parents knew better. Parents knew that the hardest part of parenthood was figuring out how to do the right thing in 24 hours a day, forever, and surviving all the times you failed.

Speak to your children as if they are the wisest, kindest, most beautiful and magical humans on earth, for what they believe is what they will become.

We used to think that schools built brains. Now we know that it is play that builds the brains that school can then use.

There was no excuse, except for the excuse that perfection was impossible, and failure inevitable.

And yes, it makes me crazy to think that my kids can go days -- or maybe weeks-- without me. If I'm not needed, if I'm not busy, if I'm not an overstretched, overwhelmed, under-slept, underpaid single mother... What exactly am I?

Whenever something bothered me, I never had to tell her. She’d tell me. And when I’d try to convince her otherwise, she’d look at me and say, ‘Brett, you’re forgetting, I made you. I’m the one person you can’t fool.