Louise Erdrich Quotes

Parents are never forgiven for not giving just the right response at the appropriate moment. Or, rather, there are particular times in the adolescent's or young adult's life, when a certain response is needed, and this need is not met, and the failure to meet this need is forever remembered, and is never forgiven.

I think a lot of parents are afraid to express certain emotions about children who are different, because they think that it's wrong to feel chained sometimes, to feel anger, to say to yourself, "I never wanted this." I think it's natural.

One of the things about parents and children is that there is no way that you go through this without there being mutual anger.

Children are given us to discourage our better emotions.

We are the buffoons of our children.

We can glut ourselves with how-to-raise children information . . . strive to become more mature and aware but none of this will spare us from the . . . inevitability that some of the time we are going to fail our children. Because there is a big gap between knowing and doing. Because mature, aware people are imperfect too. Or because some current event in our life may so absorb or depress us that when our children need us we cannot come through.

If we never have headaches through rebuking our children, we shall have plenty of heartaches when they grow up.

I think part of being a parent is trying to kill your kids.

...one of the worst things about being a parent, for me, is the self-discovery, the being face to face with one's secret insanity and brokenness and rage.

Having children can smooth the relationship, too. Mother and daughter are now equals. That is hard to imagine, even harder to accept, for among other things, it means realizing that your own mother felt this way, too--unsure of herself, weak in the knees, terrified about what in the world to do with you. It means accepting that she was tired, inept, sometimes stupid; that she, too, sat in the dark at 2:00 A.M. with a child shrieking across the hall and no clue to the child's trouble.

The real questions for parents should be: "Are you engaged? Are you paying attention?" If so, plan to make lots of mistakes and bad decisions. Imperfect parenting moments turn into gifts as our children watch us try to figure out what went wrong and how we can do better next time. The mandate is not to be perfect and raise happy children. Perfection doesn't exist, and I've found what makes children happy doesn't always prepare them to be courageous, engaged adults.

If you're a parent, the five worst words you can say to your children are, "When I was your age ..." You were never their age. You were older in the womb.

You will not believe me, but I am proud of your strength. Sometimes. . . sometimes the only way I can care for my children is to keep my distance.

The good parent: someone who doesn't mind, for a time, being hated by their children.

We need to recognize the incredible challenges that so many parents face, especially working moms. We need to join the rest of the advanced world.

You don't know what it's like! Hyperactive twins! When they turned three, my doctor prescribed Ritalin -- I wouldn't dream of giving a drug to my children, but it does help when I take it myself.

Parents usually educate their children merely in such a manner than however bad the world may be, they may adapt themselves to its present conditions. But they ought to give them an education so much better than this, that a better condition of things may thereby be brought about by the future.

But parents, she supposed, were not the pinnacle of perfection their children thought or expected them to be. They were humans who usually did the best they could but often made the wrong choices.

My parents really raised me with the value that it's important to give back, and I've always gravitated towards non-profits and charities that work with children.

If you don't believe in the innate unreasonableness of human beings, just try raising children.

His distress and pleasure mixed and married, giving birth to several anxious children.

There are great advantages to seeing yourself as an accident created by amateur parents as they practiced. You then have been left in an imperfect state and the rest is up to you. Only the most pitifully inept child requires perfection from parents.

When the child sees the parent looking for something, it is as natural for it also to look for the object and to give it over when it finds it, as it was, under other circumstances, to receive it. Multiply such an instance by the thousand details of daily intercourse, and one has a picture of the most permanent and enduring method of giving direction to the activities of the young.

One can tell a child everything, anything. I have often been struck by the fact that parents know their children so little. They should not conceal so much from them. How well even little children understand that their parents conceal things from them, because they consider them too young to understand! Children are capable of giving advice in the most important matters.

My children grew up very resourceful and strong in spite of them having to live with different families and that I had to drag them all over the country with me.