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The Role of a Parent
“Perhaps we have been misguided into taking too much responsibility from
our children, leaving them too little room for discovery.”
-Helen Hayes
"Parents who
are afraid to put their foot down usually have children who step on their
toes." – Chinese Proverb
"I have found the
best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then
advise them to do it." -Harry S. Truman
"If
you talk to your children, you can help them to keep their lives together. If
you talk to them skillfully, you can help them to build future dreams." -Jim
Rohn
"Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's
longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are
with you, yet they belong not to you." -Kahlil Gibran
"Parents can tell but never teach, unless they practice what they preach."
-Arnold Glasow
"Our children are watching us live,
and what we ARE shouts louder than anything we can say." - Wilferd A. Peterson
"If you bungle raising your children, I don't think
whatever else you do well matters very much." – Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
"If
you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up
as a warning and not as an example." - George Bernard Shaw
"You have a lifetime to work, but children are only young once." - Polish
Proverb
"The trouble with being a parent is that by the time you are experienced, you
are unemployed." - Author Unknown
"If your children spend most of their time in other people's houses, you're
lucky; if they all congregate at your house, you're blessed." - Mignon
McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
"If you want your children to improve, let them overhear the nice things you say
about them to others." - Haim Ginott
"The guys who fear becoming fathers don't understand that fathering is not
something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man. The end product
of child raising is not the child but the parent." - Frank Pittman, Man
Enough
"The
hardest part of raising a child is teaching them to ride bicycles. A shaky
child on a bicycle for the first time needs both support and freedom. The
realization that this is what the child will always need can hit hard."
- Sloan Wilson
"If I
had my child to raise all over again,
I'd build self-esteem first, and the house later.
I'd finger-paint more, and point the finger less.
I would do less correcting and more connecting.
I'd take my eyes off my watch, and watch with my eyes.
I'd take more hikes and fly more kites.
I'd stop playing serious, and seriously play.
I would run through more fields and gaze at more stars.
I'd do more hugging and less tugging."
- Diane Loomans, from "If I Had My Child To Raise Over Again"
"Whenever I held my newborn baby in my arms, I used to think that what I said
and did to him could have an influence not only on him but on all whom he met,
not only for a day or a month or a year, but for all eternity - a very
challenging and exciting thought for a mother." - Rose Kennedy
"Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort to
teach them good manners." - Author Unknown
"No matter how calmly you try to referee, parenting will eventually produce
bizarre behavior, and I'm not talking about the kids." - Bill Cosby,
Fatherhood, 1986
"When you teach your son, you teach your son's son." - The Talmud
"In spite of the six thousand manuals on child raising in the bookstores, child
raising is still a dark continent and no one really knows anything. You just
need a lot of love and luck - and, of course, courage." - Bill Cosby,
Fatherhood, 1986
"You will always be your child's favorite toy." - Vicki Lansky, Trouble-Free
Travel with Children, 1991
"It is better to bind your children to you by a feeling of respect and by
gentleness, than by fear." - Terence (181-159BC)
"To
bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a
while." - Josh Billings
"It's not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see
what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do
with ours. I can't tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is
reach for it, myself." - Joyce Maynard
"Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always
watching you." - Robert Fulghum
"If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first
examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in
ourselves." - C.G. Jung, Integration of the Personality, 1939
"As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are
watching to see what we do with ours." -Joyce Maynard
"Your children will become what you are, so be what you want them to
be."
- David Bly
"We cannot protect our children from life. Therefore, it is essential that we
prepare them for it." - Rudolf Dreikurs
"Don't point your finger to the heights your children should go.
Start climbing and they will follow." - Wilfred A. Peterson
"If you want your child to be the kind of person who's going to stand up for
what she believes in, and not be pushed around by other people, you're going to
have to expect that a little bit of that is going to be exercised at home!"
- Dr. Laurence Steinberg
"We cannot always build the future of our youth, but we can build our youth for
the future." - Franklin D. Roosevelt
"Lectures often confuse our kids, but the example we set is crystal clear."
- Zig Ziglar, Raising Positive Kids in a Negative World
"Adults teach children in three important ways: The first is by example, the
second is by example, the third is by example." - Albert Schweitzer
"Just talking to your child is only half the job. You can keep the lines of
communication open by knowing how to listen and when to talk."
- National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign
"My father didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it."
-Clarence Budinton Kelland
"Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time."
– Rabbinical Saying
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