- “Parents plant their unfulfilled desires deep into the subconscious mind of their children. It happens in such a subtle and indirect way that children start identifying those desires as their own.” ― Shunya
- To understand the baby’s mind, it is absolutely essential to take the path of observation and discovery. Maria Montessori
- “With a lump forming in his throat, he thoughtabout all the hopes and dreams that he had for his son. More thananything, he prayed his boy would not grow up to be a screw uplike his dad when it came to love and marriage.” ― Michelle Sutton, Decision to Love
- The young and the old don’t understand each other perfectly, but the old understand the young better than the young understand the old. The old have been young, but the young haven’t been old yet. Paul Graham
- “Admitting that their child is, or can be, more educated than them is the closest most parents are willing to get to admitting that their child is, or can be, smarter or wiser than them.” ― Mokokoma Mokhonoana
- “Children force parents to go out looking for a specific pulse, a gaze, a rhythm, the right way of telling the story, knowing that stories don’t fix anything or save anyone but maybe make the world both more complex and more tolerable. And sometimes, just sometimes, more beautiful. Stories are a way of subtracting the future from the past, the only way of finding clarity in hindsight.” ― Valeria Luiselli, Lost Children Archive
- The problem with teaching children to think for themselves is they might come to disagree with us. Alain de Botton
- “The only power that can effect transformations of the order (of Jesus) is love. It remained for the 20th century to discover that locked within the atom is the energy of the sun itself. For this energy to be released, the atom must be bombarded from without. So too, locked in every human being is a store of love that partakes of the divine- the imago dei, image of god…And it too can be activated only through bombardment, in its case, love’s bombardment. The process begins in infancy, where a mother’s initially unilateral loving smile awakens love in her baby and as coordination develops, elicits its answering smile… A loving human being is not produced by exhortations, rules and threats. Love can only take root in children when it comes to them- initially and most importantly from nurturing parents. Ontogenetically speaking, love is an answering phenomenon. It is literally a response.” ― Huston Smith, The World’s Religions
- Fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man. Frank Pittman
- A child, like your stomach, doesn’t need all you can afford to give it. Frank A. Clark
- “My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me.” ― Jim Valvano
- When parents are too hands-on, kids fail to learn self-reliance. Instead of hovering like a helicopter parent, try submarine parenting: give kids the freedom to explore and surface if there’s a distress signal. Adam Grant
- A lot of parents will do anything for their kids, except let them be themselves. Banksy
- The parenting style that is good for grit is also the parenting style good for most other things: Be really, really demanding, and be very, very supportive. Angela Duckworth
- “Time grants a unique perspective which allows us to see events through a filter of accumulated wisdom.” ― Christopher Earle
- “I don’t remember who said this, but there really are places in the heart you don’t even know exist until you love a child.” ― Anne Lamott, Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year
- “We live in a period where people spend more time trying to influence people they don’t know, neglecting the people who are next to them craving their attention.” ― Sope Agbelusi
- Children empty our pockets and fill our souls. Tim Fargo
- Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. James Baldwin
- My understanding of the way a child grows is that you create the garden, you don’t grow the flower. You can merely fertilize the earth and keep it soft and moist, and then the flower grows as best it can. Ram Dass
- The best way of killing a rose is to force it open when it is still only the promise of a bud. José Saramago (The Cave)
- You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance. Franklin P. Adams
- It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength. Maya Angelou
- The joy of mentoring isn’t in seeing your proteges follow in your footsteps. It’s in helping them discover and develop their own principles and passions. Adam Grant
- “Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel, when asked how to strike a better balance between family, work and self-realisation says: “You need the intention, good scheduling, and you have to be creative. If you don’t find time to practice, one of the three is missing.” ― Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel Dakini Power Twelve Extraordinary Women Shaping the Transmission of Tibetan
- “The sacred gift of parenthood is inscribe in the universal words ‘Papa’ and ‘Mama’.” ― Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
- 6-year-olds should play outside and ask questions, not sit on a chair and memorize answers. Johnny Uzan
- “The most precious gift that you can give to the child is unconditional love and acceptance, which allows the child to discover his own inner being, his authentic self, his freedom to be himself.” ― Swami Dhyan Giten
- Don’t worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you. Robert Fulghum
- These six words can save your child so much unnecessary pain: “I love you as you are”. Scott Barry Kaufman