PARENTING Copy

! QUOTES ON PARENTS AND PARENTING ! It’s not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world. It’s our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless. ! —L. R. Knost Deciding to have a child is to decide forever to have your heart walking around out- side your body. ! --Elizabeth Stone If I wanted a special doll, and I begged my mother for it, she would give me a speech about how I had three dolls at home and I didn’t need another one, and remind me of how fortunate I was compared to all the poor little girls all over the world who didn’t have dolls. And when she finished telling me why I shouldn’t want what I wanted, I still wanted it just as badly—only I felt ashamed of myself for wanting it. ! --Nancy Samalin My hands were busy through the day, I didn’t have much time to play The little games you asked me to, I didn’t have much time for you. I’d wash your clothes, I’d sew and cook But when you’d bring your picture book And ask me please to share your fun, I’d say, ‘A little later, Son.’ But life is short, the years rush past, !A little boy grows up so fast! Now the picture books are put away, There aren’t any games to play No good night kiss, no prayers to hear; That all belongs to yesteryear. My hands once busy, now lie still, The days are long and hard to fill, I wish I might go back and do The little things you asked me to! --Alice Chase ! - !1 - ! A baby born today stands roughly a 50-50 chance of keeping his father. This is the first generation of American kids who must face not the sad loss of fathers to death, but the far more brutal knowledge that, to their fathers, many other things are more important than they are. ! --Maggie Gallagher Certain it is that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as the love of a father to a daughter. He beholds her both with and without regard to her sex. In love to our wives, there is desire; to our sons, there is ambition; but in that to our daugh- ters there is something which there are no words to express. ! --Joseph Addison To cease to be loved is for the child practically synonymous with ceasing to live. ! --Dr. Karl Menninger No man can possibly know what life means, what the world means, what anything means, until he has a child and loves it. And then the whole universe changes and nothing will ever again seem exactly as it seemed before. ! --Lafcadio Hearn The night you were born, I ceased being my father’s boy and became my son’s father. That night I began a new life. ! --Henry Gregor Felsen There are many kinds of success in life worth having. It is exceedingly interesting and attractive to be a successful business man, a railroad man, a farmer, or a successful lawyer or doctor; or a writer, or a President, or a ranchman, or the colonel of a fighting regiment, or to kill grizzly bears and lions. But for unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by compari- son. ! --Theodore Roosevelt There are no illegitimate children—only illegitimate parents. --Judge Leon R. ! Yankwich In considering the ledger equal, understand the greatest gift you have given your parents is the opportunity to raise you. The things a child gets from parents can’t ! - !2 - compare to the things a parent gets from raising a child. Only by experiencing this can you understand the degree to which children give meaning to parents’ lives. ! --Frank Pittman There are no raises, promotions or awards for good parents. In fact, if you earn the title, most people won’t even notice. The only evaluations that matter will come from your children, and the jury could be out for years. But if you’re a bad parent, the effects will be obvious and felt long after you’re gone. As your children go through life, they’ll be like a human billboard that announces your parenting ‘score’ to the world. ! --Ruben Navarrette Joy is the secret code of all parents, including adoptive. Mysteriously, the inevitable pain, suffering and sacrifice of parenthood are also part of that joy. What is a rose without thorns? Indeed, what makes parenthood so relentlessly amazing—both the beauty and the beast of it—is the possibility of losing the thing you love more than your own heartbeat. Putting someone else’s interests above one’s own is the alpha and omega of parenthood. ! --Kathleen Parker I’m not a naughty brat. I’m little and I’m still learning. I get overwhelmed and frus- trated just like you do. Because nobody is perfect. Help me. Guide me. Love me. ! —The Learning Station When the milk is splattered all over the floor, and those little eyes are looking a you for your reaction, remember what really matters. It takes 5 minutes to clean up spilled milk. It takes much longer to clean up a broken spirit. ! —Rebecca Eanes Before you were conceived I wanted you. Before you were born I loved you. Before you were here an hour I would die for you. This is the miracle of life. ! —Maureen Hawkins The child-rearing years are relatively short in our increased life span. It is hard for young women caught between diapers and formulas to believe, but there are years and years of freedom ahead. I regret my impatience to get on with my career. I wish I’d relaxed, allowed myself the luxury of watching the world through my little girl’s eyes. --Eda Le Shan ! - !3 - !My Dad If I could write a story, It would be the greatest ever told. I’d write about my daddy, For he had a heart of gold. My dad, he was no hero Known around this world. He was everything to me, For I was his baby girl. I’d write about the lessons. He taught me right from wrong. He instilled in me the values That one day I’d be strong. He taught me to face my fears, Take each day as it comes, For there are things that we can’t change. He would say what’s done is done. He would say hold your head up high, Carry yourself with pride. Thanks to him, I am somebody, I will never run and hide. If I could write a story, It would be the greatest ever told. I’d write about my daddy, For he had a heart of gold. ! —Vicky Frye !The Perfect Parent Do everything right, all the time, and the child will prosper. It’s as simple as that, except for fate, luck, heredity, chance, the astrological sign under which the child was born, his order of birth, his first encounter with evil, the girl who jilts him in spite of his excellent qualities, the war that is being fought when he is a young man, the drugs he may try once or too many times, the friends he makes, how he scores on tests, how well he endures kidding about his shortcomings, how ambitious he be- comes, how far he falls behind, circumstantial evidence, ironic perspective, danger when it is least expected, difficulty in triumphing over circumstance, people with hidden agendas, and animals with rabies. ! —Ann Beattie ! - !4 - I thought I never wanted to be a father. A child seemed to be a series of limitations and responsibilities that offered no reward. But when I experienced the perfection of fatherhood, the rest of the world remade itself before my eyes. ! —Kent Nerburn Every one of my friends had a bad day somewhere in her history she wished she could forget but couldn’t. A every bad mother day changes you forever. Those were the hardest stories to tell….‘I could still see the red imprint on his little bum when I changed his diaper that night. I stared at my hand, as if they were alien parts of myself…as if they had betrayed me. From that day on, I never hit him again.’ ! —Mary Kay Blakely A mother sets the tone for her daughter’s life, provides a roadmap and role model, and continues through the daughter’s middle and old age to be her example. ! —Victoria Secunda Children thrive in a variety of family forms; they develop normally with single parents, with unmarried parents, with multiple caretakers in a communal setting, and with traditional two-parent families. What children require is loving and attentive adults, not a particular family type. ! —Sandra Scarr This is what no one warns you about, when you decide to have children. There is so much written about the cost and the changes in your way of life, but no one ever tells you that what they are going to hand you in the hospital is power, whether you want it or not…I should have known, but somehow overlooked for a time, that parents become, effortlessly, just by showing up, the most influential totems in the lives of their children. ! —Anna Quindlen Mothers are likely to have more bad days on the job than most other professionals, considering the hours: round-the-clock, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year....You go to work when you’re sick, maybe even clinically depressed, because motherhood is perhaps the only unpaid position where failure to show up can result in arrest.

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