Parental Restraint Quotes

Then the carousel started, and I watched her go round and round...All the kids tried to grap for the gold ring, and so was old Phoebe, and I was sort of afraid she's fall off the goddam horse, but I didn't say or do anything. The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off, but it is bad to say anything to them.

I think the best thing a parent can do, when raising a child, is simply get out of their way.

The best way to raise a child is to LAY OFF!

The kids are old enough now - I just want to let them be kids. I don't want to comment on them too much. They're at an age where I just want to let them be kids.

My mom has never been a big meddler and isn't, like, extremely opinionated or at least just doesn't voice it to me. She's sort of let me come into my own by myself, and I think that's just a testament to what my parents did in terms of raising us.

I love my mother for all the times she said absolutely nothing.... Thinking back on it all, it must have been the most difficult part of mothering she ever had to do: knowing the outcome, yet feeling she had no right to keep me from charting my own path. I thank her for all her virtues, but mostly for never once having said, "I told you so.

The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off, but it's bad if you say anything.

Our parents provided us with the essentials, then got on with their own lives. Which makes me realise that my parents were brilliant, not for what they did, but more for what they didn't do.

I used to take pride if my kids were playing basketball, and I'd be there, and I wouldn't say anything. People were obviously expecting me to yell and scream at the ref and at them and everything. I wouldn't say anything.

We should pay as much reverence to youth as we should to age; there are points in which you young folks are altogether our superiors: and I can't help constantly crying out to persons of my own years, when busied about their young people--leave them alone; don't be always meddling with their affairs, which they can manage for themselves; don't be always insisting upon managing their boats, and putting your oars in the water with theirs.

I have to keep myself in check when I go to the kids' sports events. I sit waaay in the back. I make sure I don't do too much cheering, you know what I mean? I'm still not quite adjusted to this modern school of thought: Oh, it doesn't matter who wins. I'm not all the way there yet, but I accept it from the back row.

Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.

I've never in my life hit my daughter.

When you're a father you censor yourself. You get just as angry with a child but you don't want to say, "What the filth and foul and I'll filth and foul, filth and foul and, yeah, ya filth and foul face, and I'll filth and foul, foul, filth!" You don't want to say that to a child so you censor yourself and you sound like an idiot: "What the... Get your... I'll put a... Get out of my face!"

One can feel calm and at ease. Just leave kids alone, please.

Respect the child. Wait and see the new product of Nature. Nature loves analogies, but not repetitions. Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.

She believed in letting children have a certain amount of rope, and only intervened at the last moment, in order to prevent their hanging themselves by it.

I get really bad road rage, and if my daughter is in the car I have to bite my lip and try not to swear.