Fred Rogers Quotes

My goal as a parent is to prepare you for the future, not to make you like me.

No matter what parents do, kids retain their uniqueness.

I think with motherhood and child-rearing in general, everyone's going to tell you how to do it and why. I've always said to other mothers and women when they've asked me, that you have to find your own way and find out what works for your family, at all costs.

I think that parents grow up with an idea of what they want their kids to be like - and then their kids grow up to be people of themselves, of their own.

Every child has to disobey the father. Unless a child disobeys the father he never becomes mature. It is nothing, original, it is very simple and natural. It is very psychological. There comes an age when every child has to say NO to the parents. If he does not say no to the parents he will not have a spine; he will be spineless. If he cannot say no to the parents, he will be a slave his whole life. He will never attain to individuality.

There is one thing you and I as parents cannot do, not do we want to do if we really think about it, and that's control our children's will--that spirit that lets them be themselves apart from you and me. They are not ours to possess, control, manipulate, or even to make mind.

Healthy parenting is nothing if not a process of empowerment. As we help to raise our children's self-esteem, we also increase their personal power. When we encourage them to be confident, self-reliant, self-directed, and responsible individuals, we are giving them power.

Children need parents who will let them grow up to be themselves, but parents often have personal agendas they try to impose on their children.

In order for me to parent well I have to empathize and stay open with my son.

I have a two year old. Just turned two a couple weeks ago, and he is my main man, he is my shadow. Every spare second, I am hanging with him.

Your children are not your children. They are lives longing for itself. They come here with their own destiny. Give them your love. They will find their own way.

Parents need to be more accepting of who their kids are and less concerned about what society thinks they need to be.

~I've never met a 2-year-old who is terrible. I'm so cool with every stage my daughter goes through. I just think she's amazing. I hope she's not looking at me thinking, Mom, are the terrible 30s coming on with you?~

Part of the thrill of guiding children into adulthood is the release. But it's also a parent's greatest act of surrender. Still, you have to let them go. Start now.

Every act of motherhood contains a dual intent, as the mother holds the child close and prepares it to move way from her, as she supports the child and stands it firmly on its own feet, and as she guards it against danger and sends it out across the yard, down by the stream, and across the traffic-crowded highway. Unless a mother can do both - gather her child close and turn her child out toward the world - she will fail in her purpose.

Children aren't coloring books. You don't get to fill them with your favorite colors.

I can be as contrary as I choose.

~[My son] is at that age now where he's so loving and says the sweetest things to me. Of course, I still get karate chops and all those other sort of things, too.~

My child's first word was "more," but and it's all about, "I want." "I'm going to tell you what I want and what I don't want." It's about my desire to express my preferences. And that is really innate.

When you're a parent you find yourself looking at the unknown that is your child, trying to find a piece of yourself inside her, because sometimes that is what it takes to claim.

The better you are as a parent, the richer the nest you've built, the more difficult it is for your kids to leave. So they have to invent things to dislike about you. And they're brilliant at it.

We don't yet know, above all, what the world might be like if children were to grow up without being subjected to humiliation, if parents would respect them and take them seriously as people.

Don't just parent your kids, develop them.

It takes a long time for women to feel it's alright to be chingona. To aspire to be a chingona!...You are saying, 'This is my camino, this is my path and I'm gonna follow it, regardless of what culture says.' I don't think the church likes chingonas. I don't think the state likes chingonas.! And fathers definitely do not like chingonas. And boyfriends don't like chingonas. But, you know, I remain optimistic. I will meet a man who likes a chingona, one day. One day, my chingon will come.

. . . I would have let him go one finger at a time, until, without his realizing, he'd be floating without me. And then I thought, perhaps that is what it means to be a [parent] - to teach your child to live without you.