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Parenthood is a wonderful gift

• You don’t really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go- round will wave at his parents every time around – and why his parents will always wave back. William D. Tammeus
• Childhood,  Raising children

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Parenting is one of the most important roles there is

• Parenting is an important job. Parents are providers, teachers, supervisors, friends, protectors, referees and entertainers. Remez Sasson
• There is no school equal to a decent home and no teacher equal to a virtuous parent. Mahatma Gandhi

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Parents have enormous influence on their children

• Whenever I held my newborn baby in my arms, I used to think that what I said and did to him could have an influence not only on him but on all whom he met, not only for a day or a month or a year, but for all eternity–a very challenging and exciting thought for a mother. Rose Kennedy
• Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment, and especially on their children, than the unlived life of the parents. Carl Jung
• Parents often talk about the younger generation as if they didn’t have anything to do with it. Haim Ginott
• What a child doesn’t receive he can seldom later give. D. James
• Children are made readers on the laps of their parents. Emilie Buchwald
• Influence

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Fathers must play an active parenting role too

• Being a parent is a gift, one which most men unselfishly allow women to keep all to themselves. Jarod Kintz

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Parenthood is a process of growth

• The guys who fear becoming fathers don’t understand that fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man. The end product of child raising is not the child but the parent.  Frank Pittman
• Growth

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There is no love like that of a parent

• Through the blur, I wondered if I was alone or if other parents felt the same way I did–that everything involving our children was painful in some way. The emotions, whether they were joy, sorrow, love or pride, were so deep and sharp that in the end they left you raw, exposed and yes, in pain. The human heart was not designed to beat outside the human body and yet, each child represented just that–a parent’s heart bared, beating forever outside its chest. Debra Ginsberg
• A parent’s love is whole no matter how many times divided. Robert Brault
• There is no friendship, no love, like that of the parent for the child. Henry Ward Beecher
• We never know the love of the parent till we become parents ourselves. Henry Ward Beecher
• What it’s like to be a parent: It’s one of the hardest things you’ll ever do but in exchange it teaches you the meaning of unconditional love. Nicholas Sparks
• Love,  Unconditional love

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Parenthood is one of the great challenges in life

• No one is ever quite ready; everyone is always caught off guard. Parenthood chooses you. And you open your eyes, look at what you’ve got, say “Oh, my gosh,” and recognize that of all the balls there ever were, this is the one you should not drop. It’s not a question of choice. Marisa de los Santos
• Raising children is a creative endeavor, an art, rather than a science. Bruno Bettelheim
• The art of mothering is to teach the art of living to children.  Elaine Heffner
• ..It’s about guiding the next generation, and forgiving the last. Peter Krause
• Most of us become parents long before we have stopped being children. Mignon McLaughlin
• Challenge

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Parenthood is about resolving conflict

• In every dispute between parent and child, both cannot be right, but they may be, and usually are, both wrong. It is this situation which gives family life its peculiar hysterical charm. Isaac Rosenfeld
• No matter how calmly you try to referee, parenting will eventually produce bizarre behavior, and I’m not talking about the kids. Bill Cosby
• Conflict management

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Parenthood is about putting your foot down when you need to

• Parents who are afraid to put their foot down usually have children who step on their toes. Chinese Proverb

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Parenthood is about teaching children to love challenges and learn from mistakes

• If parents want to give their children a gift, the best thing they can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning. Carol Dweck
• Don’t handicap your children by making their lives easy. Robert A. Heinlein
• Learning,  Mistakes,  Failure

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Parenthood is about encouraging children to explore

• If you are a parent, open doors to unknown directions to the child so he can explore. Don’t make him afraid of the unknown, give him support. Osho
• Exploration,  Discovery,  Wonder

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Parenthood is about love and respect

• Love and respect are the most important aspects of parenting, and of all relationships. Jodie Foster
• Conspicuously absent from the Ten Commandments is any obligation of parent to child. We must suppose that God felt it unnecessary to command by law what He had ensured by love. Robert Brault
• Love,  Respect

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Parenthood is about being there for your children

• Your children need your presence more than your presents. Jesse Jackson
• The world knows how to straighten out a spoiled child but never makes it up to a child deprived.  Robert Brault

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Parenthood is about helping children to discover what they love to do and encouraging that

• Carol Dweck, the psychologist who studies motivation, likes to say that all the world’s parenting advice can be distilled to two simple rules: pay attention to what your children are fascinated by, and praise them for their effort. Daniel Coyle
• Passion,  Doing what you love

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Parenthood is about helping children build self esteem

• Every word, facial expression, gesture, or action on the part of a parent gives the child some message about self- worth. It is sad that so many parents don’t realize what messages they are sending. Virginia Satir
• We all need a cheering committee and parents are a child’s most important fans! Vivian Kirkfield
• Parents need to listen as much to their kids as they do to them. The first duty of love is to listen. Paul Tillich
• A parent’s job is to encourage kids to develop a joy for life and a great urge to follow their own dreams. The best we can do is to help thm develop a personal set of tools for the task. Randy Pausch
• Self-esteem,  Self-worth

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Parenting is learning on the job

• We’re parents always bluffing, pretending we know best, when most of the time we’re just praying we won’t screw up too badly. Jodi Picoult
• The trouble with learning to parent on the job is that your child is the teacher. Robert Brault
• The trouble with being a parent is that by the time you are experienced, you are unemployed.
• 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.  Bill Cosby
• Learning

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Parenthood is accepting that you children won’t always appreciate you

• If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent. Bette Davis
• Of course, everyone’s parents are embarrassing. It goes with the territory. The nature of parents is to embarrass merely by existing, just as it is the nature of children of a certain age to cringe with embarrassment, shame, and mortification should their parents so much as speak to them on the street. Neil Gaiman
• Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them. Oscar Wilde
• What you must accept as a parent is that you cannot always be there for your child without sometimes ruining everything. Robert Brault
• It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place. Colette
• Acceptance,  Appreciation

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Parenthood is about setting the right example

• Parents can tell but never teach, unless they practice what they preach. Arnold H. Glasow
• Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners.
• It’s not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can’t tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself. Joyce Maynard
• As parents, we guide by our unspoken example. It is only when we’re talking to them that our kids aren’t listening. Robert Brault
• Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners.
• Children pay little attention to their parents’ teachings, but reproduce their characters faithfully. Mason Cooley

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Good parenting is based on caring and trust

• I doubt that we can ever successfully impose values or attitudes or behaviors on our children certainly not by threat, guilt, or punishment. But I do believe they can be induced through relationships where parents and children are growing together. Such relationships are, I believe, build on trust, example, talk, and caring. Fred Rogers
• To me parenting is all about trust. If you don’t live by your words or actions how do you expect your kids to listen to you? Kevin Heath
• Caring,  Trust

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Parenthood is about making your children independent

• The most important thing that parents can teach their children is how to get along without them. Frank Clark
• A wise parent humors the desire for independent action, so as to become the friend and advisor when his absolute rule shall cease. Elizabeth Gaskell
• The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence. Denis Waitley
• Independence,  Interdependence

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Parenthood is about nurturing spontaneity and humanity

• We cannot know the consequences of suppressing a child’s spontaneity when he is just beginning to be active. We may even suffocate life itself. That humanity which is revealed in all its intellectual splendor during the sweet and tender age of childhood should be respected with a kind of religious veneration. It is like the sun which appears at dawn or a flower just beginning to bloom. Education cannot be effective unless it helps a child to open up himself to life. Maria Montessori
• Spontaneity,  Kindness

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Parenthood is about giving your children the space to live their own life

• The function of a child is to live his/her own life, not the life that his/her anxious parents think he/she should live, nor a life according to the purpose of the educators who thinks they knows best. Alexander Sutherland Neill
• Live and let live

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Parenthood is about respect as well as love

• How can families harm us when they love us? Very easily, unfortunately. Most of us overlook one important fact when we think love is enough: Love and respect aren’t the same thing. Love is fusion. As a baby, you belong to your parents, you’re extension of them. Respect is differentiation: you belong to yourself, and you’re an extension of no one. Differentiation is essential for happiness of adults.  Barbara Sher
• Love,  Respect

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Don’t blame your parents for usually they do the best they can

• I get so sick and tired of hearing people gripe about what their parents did to them. You know what your parents did to you?  The best thing they could do.  The best thing they knew how, the only thing in many cases that they knew how. Nobody has set out maliciously to hurt their child, unless they were psychotic.  Leo Buscaglia

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All parents have flaws

• The job of every generation is to discover the flaws of the one that came before it. That’s part of growing up, figuring out all the ways your parents and their friends are broken. Justine Larbalestier
• A lot of mothers will do anything for their children, except let them be themselves. Banksy

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All parents damage their children a little – it’s just a matter of degree

• All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair. Mitch Albom
• What you must accept as a parent is that you cannot always be there for your child without sometimes ruining everything. Robert Brault

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Children help us appreciate our own parents

• We never know the love of our parents for us till we have become parents. Henry Ward Beecher
• When you have children yourself, you begin to understand what you owe your parents. Japanese saying
• Appreciation,  Gratitude

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Our parents are always in us

• No matter how far we come, our parents are always in us. Brad Meltzer
• Our parents can show us a lot of things: they can show us how we are to be and what things we ought to strive for, or they can show us how not to be and what things we ought to stray from, then you may have the kind of parents that show you all the things about you that you want to get rid of and you realize those traits aren’t yours at all but are merely your parents’ marks that have rubbed off onto you. JoyBell C

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• A successful parent is one who raises a child who grows up and is able to pay for his or her own psychoanalysis.  Nora Ephron
• Adolescence is a period of rapid changes. Between the ages of 12 and 17, for example, a parent ages as much as 20 years.
• Adolescence is that period in a kid’s life when parents become more difficult. Ryan O’Neal
• Adolescence: That period when children feel their parents should be told the facts of life.
• All any child needs is the protection of loving parents and an alternative source of information.  Robert Brault
• Adolescents: People who never seem to realize that one day they will be as dumb as their parents.
• Because of their size, parents may be difficult to discipline properly.  J. O’Rourke
• Between the ages of twelve and seventeen a child may see his parents age twenty years.
• Camp: Where parents spend $1,000 for eight weeks to teach their child to make a 25-cent ash tray.
• Children always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception. Alan Bennett
• College: A four-year period when parents are permitted access to the telephone.
• Family Planning: Having all your children while their grandparents are still young enough to be babysitters.
• You will always be your child’s favorite toy. Vicki Lansky
• Gifted Children: Unfortunate tykes who lack the good sense to hide their talents from overly ambitious parents.
• Having a child makes you a parent; having two you are a referee.  David Frost
• How many more times are my kids going to ask me if I know where something is before they realize they’re asking the wrong parent?
• I believe that we parents must encourage our children to become educated so they can get into a good college that we cannot afford.  Dave Barry
• I don’t think my parents liked me. They put a live teddy bear in my crib. Woody Allen
• I knew my parents hated me because my bath toys were a toaster and a radio. Rodney Dangerfield
• I know I want to have children while my parents are still young enough to take care of them.  Rita Rudner
• I owe a lot to my parents especially my mother and father.  Greg Norman
• I read somewhere that 26 is too old to still live with your parents; it was on a note in my room.  Graham Chittenden
• I’m adopted and I’m glad that my parents were honest enough with me to tell me that I’m adopted – but why every day?  Leo Allen
• I’ve noticed that one thing about parents is that no matter what stage your child is in, the parents who have older children always tell you the next stage is worse.  Dave Barry
• If you’ve never been hated by your child, you’ve never been a parent.  Bette Davis
• If your parents never had children chances are you won’t either.  Dick Cavett
• In order to influence a child one must be careful not to be that child’s parent or grandparent.  Don Marquis
• Infant prodigies: Young people with highly imaginative parents.
• Insomnia: contagious disease often transmitted from babies to parents.
• Intimacy: The first step toward parenthood.
• Learn from your parents’ mistakes: use birth control.
• Life: A span of time of which the first half is ruined by our parents and the second half by our children.
• Oh, what a tangled web do parents weave when they think that their children are naive. Ogden Nash
• The secret of dealing successfully with a child is not to be its parent.  Mell Lazarus
• Many children threaten at times to run away from home; this is the only thing that keeps many parents going.  Phyllis Diller
• Mother Nature, in her infinite wisdom, has instilled within each of us a powerful biological instinct to reproduce; this is her way of assuring that the human race, come what may, will never have any disposable income. Dave Barry
• My parents had to tie a pork chop around my neck so the dog would play with me.  Rodney Dangerfield
• My parents never understood me; they were Japanese.  Charles ‘Chic’ Murray
• My parents only had one argument in forty-five years; it lasted forty-three years.  Cathy Ladman
• My parents used to take me to the pet department and tell me it was a zoo.  Billy Connolly
• My parents were very protective; I couldn’t even cross the street without them getting all excited and placing bets.  Emo Phillips
• No matter how calmly you try to referee, parenting will sometimes produce bizarre behavior and I’m not talking about the kids.  Bill Cosby
• Only thing that’s worse than walking in on your parents making love is walking in on your grandparents making love. Zach Galifianakis
• Parenthood is a lot easier to get into than out of.  Bruce Lansky
• Parenthood is that state of being better chaperoned than you were before marriage.
• Parenthood is the passing of a baton, followed by a lifelong disagreement as to who dropped it. Robert Brault,
• Parenthood: Feeding the mouth that bites you.
• Parenting is a stage of life’s journey where the milestones come about every fifty feet. Robert Brault
• Parents – especially step-parents  – are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children; they don’t fulfil the promise of their early years.   Anthony Powell
• Parents: People who use the rhythm method of birth control.   May Flink
• Parents: The bones on which children sharpen their teeth.  Peter Ustinov
• Parents are embarrassed when their children tell lies and even more embarrassed when they tell the truth.
• Parents are not quite interested in justice; they are interested in quiet.  Bill Cosby
• Parents are people who spend half their time wondering how their children will turn out, and the rest of the time when they will turn in.
• Parents are the bones on which children sharpen their teeth. Peter Ustinov
• Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children. Samuel Butler
• Parents know best how to push our buttons because they installed them.
• Parents often talk about the younger generation as if they didn’t have anything to do with it. Haim Ginott
• Parents: One of the hardships of a minor’s life.
• Parents: People who bear infants, bore teenagers and board newlyweds.
• Parents: The one thing children wear out faster than shoes.
• Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing our parents’ shortcomings. Laurence J. Peter
• Saving is a very fine thing; especially when your parents have done it for you.  Winston Churchill
• School teachers are not fully appreciated by parents until it rains all day Saturday.
• Summer camp is where the parents spend a thousand dollars so their daughter can learn to make a fifty-cent potholder.
• Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents. L. Mencken
• The accent may be on youth, but the stress is still on parents.
• The child supplies the power but the parents have to do the steering. Benjamin Spock
• The first half of our life is ruined by our parents and the second half by our children.  Clarence Darrow
• The one thing children wear out faster than shoes is parents . John J. Plomp
• The quickest way for a parent to get a child’s attention is to sit down and look comfortable.  Lane Olinghouse
• The same parent who tells you it’s time to find yourself will also tell you to get lost.  Alfred E. Neuman
• The secret of dealing successfully with a child is not to be its parent.  Mel Lazarus
• The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children. Edward, Duke of Windsor
• The time I was kidnapped and the kidnappers sent my parents a note they said, “We want five thousand dollars or you’ll see your kid again.”  Rodney Dangerfield
• The young always have the same problem – how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another. Quentin Crisp
• There are times when parenthood seems nothing but feeding the mouth that bites you.  Peter De Vries
• They were the type of children who would kill both parents and make you feel sorry for them because they were orphans.  Erma Bombeck
• To an adolescent there is nothing in the world more embarrassing than a parent.  Dave Barry
• To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both seems like carelessness.  Oscar Wilde
• Today’s parenting tip: Treat a difficult child the way you would your boss at work. Praise his achievements, ignore his tantrums and resist the urge to sit him down and explain to him how his brain is not yet fully developed. Robert Brault
• Whatever happened to the good old days when kids were scared to death of their parents?  Archie Bunker
• When I was 16 years old the morning of my birthday, my parents tried to surprise me with a car but they missed.  Tom Cotter
• When I was a kid my parents moved a lot but I always found them. Rodney Dangerfield
• When I was kidnapped my parents snapped into action – they rented out my room.  Woody Allen
• Wrinkes are hereditary. Parents get them from their children.  Doris Day
• You don’t know what love is ’til you become a parent and fish a turd out of the bathtub for someone, then have to act positive about it.  Margaret Smith

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