#parent

Child development does not mean developing your child into the person you think they should be, but helping them develop into the best person they are meant to be. ↗

— Toni Sorenson

#life

There is only room in the lifeboat of your life for one, and you always choose yourself, and turn your parents into whatever it takes to keep you afloat. ↗

— Anna Quindlen

#always #choose #into #keep #life

What doesn't kill you will make you stronger ↗

— Jeannette Walls

#life #parenting #life

Do not make your child your only hobby or you will end up waiting by the telephone in a cheery room covered in brittle, yellowed crayon drawings, regaling those few friends that are left with stale anecdotes about your youngster's accomplishments. Your little baby will be off in college, or backpacking in the Amazon, or on the other side of the country trying to get as far away from home as possible, and you will begin collecting porcelain frogs and feeding stray cats. So now is the time to start getting that life to fall back on. You know what you must do. Do it for your child. Do it for me, and for everyone out there who has to deal with your child for the rest of your child's life. And do it for yourself. ↗

— Christie Mellor

#life

The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous. But neither, in my experience, do we ever reach a plane of detachment regarding our parents, however wise and old we may become. To pretend otherwise is to cheat. ↗

— John le Carre

#become #cheat #childhood #detachment #ever

Because the truth was, and we both knew it, he'd gone long, long ago. I'd just made him stick around when he really wanted to be somewhere else. In his own weird way, he was another victim of the shooting, One of the ones who couldn't get away. "Are you mad?" he asked, which I thought was a really strange question. "Yes," I said. And I was. It's just that I wasn't so sure I was mad at him. But I don't think he needed to hear that part. I don't think he wanted to hear that part. I think it was important to him to hear that I cared enough to be angry. "Will you ever forgive me?" he asked. "Will you ever forgive me?" I shot back, leveling my gaze directly into his eyes. He stared into them for a few moments then got up silently and headed for the door. He didn't turn around when he reached it. Just grabbed the doorknob and held it. "No," he said without facing me. "Maybe that makes me a bad parent, but I don't know if I can. No matter what the police found, you were involved in that shooting, Valerie. You wrote those names on that list. You wrote my name on that list. You had a good life here. You might not have pulled the trigger, but you helped cause the tragedy." He opened the door."I'm sorry. I really am." He stepped out into the hallway. "I'll leave my new address and phone number with your mother," he said before walking slowly out of my sight. ↗

— Jennifer Brown

#divorce #father #forgiveness #parents #school-shooting

I don't have any babies or ambition. I have it all! ↗

— Nan Little

#humor #parenthood #work-life-balance #life

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

#unconditional-love #love

Parenting is really just a matter of tracking, of hoping your kids do not get so far ahead you can no longer see their next moves. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#parenting #love

I think the way I feel when I look at Evan comes from her. In pictures taken the day she married my dad, she was reckless, laughing, spinning around in circles. She looked like her whole world was him. She looked a kind of happy I can't even imagine. I don't want that. I don't want to be like that. I don' want to feel the way she did because I know what happens when you do. You love with your whole heart, with everything, and you wake up one morning and kiss someone good-bye the way you always do except you mean it as good-bye forever. ↗

— Elizabeth Scott

#lauren #lauren-s-parents #imagination