Parenting Philosophy Quotes

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love, but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward, nor tarries with yesterday.

I love my kids. But I don't give them the burden of being the source of my love.

I can't wait until I have my children. I love the idea that they don't have to do something that they have no interest in, that they can do something completely opposite if they want to.

Don't worry about trying to do a perfect job. There is no perfect job. There is no one way of raising your children.

The Chinese model calls for giving your kids very little choice - and I've come to see that you can go too far with that. On the other hand, I also believe that Western parents sometimes give their young kids too much choice.

A perfect parent is a person with excellent child-rearing theories and no actual children.

I studied Judaism a lot. I studied religion in general, and I have never imposed my Judaism on my kids. They are what they want to be. I think... you must care for others. That's the correct religion, I think.

I don't live my life through my kids, nor do I expect them to live theirs through mine. But of course, they're everything.

I have two children. I have a daughter 29, and a daughter four. They are 25 years apart, so you speak about generations and I must tell you, I have a philosophy and that is every 25 years I'm going to sire another child.

Children don't have to be raised. They'll grow.

The fear of hell, the punishment of sin, how the modern parent revolts from such teaching. Yet I will assert that far from doing us children harm, it was a sure foundation to the world of our confidence, a master girder in our palace of delight.

My children - in many dimensions they're as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Google, and you don't use an iPod.

No, we don't own our children. Our parental privilege is to love them, to lead them, and to let them go.

I'm not raising the children, I'm raising the grown ups that they're going to be.

I always quoted to my parents from Kahlil Gibran, "The Prophet." Your children are not your children. They come through you, but not from you. You can give them your love, but not your thoughts, for they come from a land that you cannot enter, not even in your wildest dreams.

I had the blood and fire rule when my boys were young. You know, unless it's blood or fire, don't bother me.

. . . 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.

The question isn't so much "Are you parenting the right way?" as it is: "Are you the adult that you want your child to grow up to be?"

There's no right time to have kids and no perfect formula. The good news is there isn't a wrong way, either.

All children are my children.

I'm pretty earthy; I nursed forever because I liked it and my kids liked it, but at the same time I'm very laissez-faire about stuff like bedtimes and food.

Slow parents understand that childrearing should not be a cross between a competitive sport and product-development. It is not a project; it's a journey. Slow parenting is about giving kids lots of love and attention with no conditions attached.

'Dare to Discipline' was published in 1970 in the midst of the Vietnam War and a culture of rebellion. The book was written in that context, but the principles of child rearing have not changed.

My husband has the philosophy that if you can work a Nintendo control, you can chop an onion. So, we have our children in the kitchen. We sit down every night for dinner. We're trying to give our kids a sense of what's going into their bodies, and it's also good for family time.

That was a judicious mother who said, "I obey my children for the first year of their lives, but ever after I expect them to obey me.