parenting insights Quotes

Woman understands children better than man does, but man is more childlike than woman.

They [Mark and Jay Duplass] both have young kids and talk about parenting all the time. So they get it. So they knew that it was a very delicate time and they knew that it was a lot. All it did was make me want to protect them from - and protect production from - any kind of burden.

There is a natural rhythm to parent-child interactions, including the fact that some parental insights prove poignant and veridical decades after they were first shared with us.

I learn from my own daughter that you don’t have to be awake to cry.

One of the things I've discovered in general about raising kids is that they really don't give a damn if you walked five miles to school.

Just because a baby cries, I discovered, doesn't mean there's always something wrong. Sometimes babies wake up for no real reason. They just want to check if they're doing it right. "This is Sleeping, right?" "Exactly." "I just lie here?" "That's right." "Okay." Then back to sleep they go.

You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.

Talking with other parents really gave me some lessons that I try to hold on to now, as a parent of two boys.

Talking to the parents of older kids was helpful for me, since parents of kids the same age as yours won't admit how horrible their children are.

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.

Being a father can 'unreason' your worldview, or at least make it very flexible, and that can create all sorts of fun and insights. It's sad that children's open-eyed wonder and sense of play begin to fade as they approach adolescence. One grand function of fathering is to keep the fading to a minimum.

You learn stuff from your kids, every day.