#parent

But kids don't stay with you if you do it right. It's the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won't be needed in the long run. ↗

— Barbara Kingsolver

#motherhood #parenting #parenting

We can surely no longer pretend that our children are growing up into a peaceful, secure, and civilized world. We've come to the point where it's irresponsible to try to protect them from the irrational world they will have to live in when they grow up. The children themselves haven't yet isolated themselves by selfishness and indifference; they do not fall easily into the error of despair; they are considerably braver than most grownups. Our responsibility to them is not to pretend that if we don't look, evil will go away, but to give them weapons against it. ↗

— Madeleine L'Engle

#security

If we can keep ourselves from interfering with the natural laws of life, mistakes can be our child's finest teachers. ↗

— Randy Alcorn

#learning #life #mistakes #nature #parenting

I am most anxious to give my own children enough love and understanding so that they won't grow up with an aching void in them--like you and I and Harold and Martha. That can never be filled, and one goes around all one's life trying, trying to make up for what one didn't get that was one's birthright, asking the wrong people for it. ↗

— Anne Morrow Lindbergh

#love #parents #void #life

It's really not that hard to put food on the table if that's what you decide to do. ↗

— Jeannette Walls

#life #parents #providing #food

The married man and the mother of a Christian family, if they are faithful to their obligations, will fulfill a mission that is as great as it is consoling: that of bringing into the world and forming young souls capable of happiness and love, souls capable of sanctification and transformation in Christ. ↗

— Thomas Merton

#marriage #parenthood #faith

Our greatest duty to our children is to love them first.  Secondly, it is to teach them.  Not to frighten, force, or intimidate our children into submission, but to effectively teach them so that they have the knowledge and tools to govern themselves. ↗

— Richelle E. Goodrich

#love #parenting #richelle #richelle-goodrich #self-government

I tried to go to sleep with my headphones still on, but then after a while my mom and dad came in, and my mom grabbed Bluie from the shelf and hugged him to her stomach, and my dad sat down in my desk chair, and without crying he said, 'You are not a grenade, not to us. Thinking about you dying makes us sad, Hazel, but you are not a grenade. You are amazing. You can't know, sweetie, because you've never had a baby become a brilliant young reader with a side interest in horrible television shows, but the joy you bring us is so much greater than the sadness we feel about your illness.' 'Okay,' I said. 'Really,' my dad said. 'I wouldn't bullshit you about this. If you were more trouble than you're worth, we'd just toss you out on the streets.' 'We're not sentimental people,' Mom added, deadpan. 'We'd leave you at an orphanage with a note pinned to your pajamas. ↗

— John Green

#love #parents-and-children #sickness #humor

Your job as a parent is not to make your child's way smooth, but rather to help her develop inner resources so she can cope. ↗

— Ellyn Satter

#love

Ha! Kids! You have no idea what you put your parents through, either. Wait till you have your own, you'll see. That's when you'll know what it really feels like." .. "What what feels like?"..."Love," said Angela. ↗

— Tess Gerritsen

#love #parenting #rizzoli-and-isles #tess-gerritsen #love