#ren

One reason we have children I think is to learn that parts of ourselves we had given up for dead are merely dormant and that the old joys can re emerge fresh and new and in a completely different form. ↗

— Anne Fadiman

#kids #parenting #family

I’m teleporting to Atlanta. I’m picking you up, and we’ll go someplace where our families can’t find us. We’ll take Seany. And we’ll let him run laps until he tires, and then you and I will take a long walk. Like Thanksgiving. Remember? And we’ll talk about everything BUT our parents … or perhaps we won’t talk at all. We’ll just walk. And we’ll keep walking until the rest of the world ceases to exist. ↗

— Stephanie Perkins

#stephanie-perkins #family

You stayed around your children as long as you could, inhaling the ambient gold shavings of their childhood, and at the last minute you tried to see them off into life and hoped that the little piece of time you’d given them was enough to prevent them from one day feeling lonely and afraid and hopeless. You wouldn’t know the outcome for a long time. ↗

— Meg Wolitzer

#family #family

You remember all those phrases about how "these people" - Asians - don't value human life like we do. Well if you spend any time around them, you discover that they love their children just as much as we love ours. That is certainly true of the Vietnamese. ↗

— Neil Sheehan

#any #around #asians #certainly #children

Oh, brothers and sisters, families can be forever! Do not let the lures [or the irritants] of the moment draw you away from them! Divinity, eternity, and family--they go together, hand in hand, and so must we! ↗

— Spencer W. Kimball

#parenthood #family

She wants you to be a god," I told him. "I know." His face twisted with embarrassment, and in spite of itself my heart lightened. It was such a boyish response. And so human. Parents, everywhere. ↗

— Madeline Miller

#parents-and-children #family

How shall I ever learn who I am when there is so much of me that belongs to someone else? ↗

— Madeline Claire Franklin

#family #introspection #life #self-awareness #the-poppet-and-the-lune

He thought about the story his daughter was living and the role she was playing inside that story. He realized he hadn't provided a better role for his daughter. He hadn't mapped out a story for his family. And so his daughter had chosen another story, a story in which she was wanted, even if she was only being used. In the absence of a family story, she'd chosen a story in which there was risk and adventure, rebellion and independence. ↗

— Donald Miller

#family

A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold. ↗

— Ogden Nash

#children #cold #common #composed #family

They may already know too much about their mother and father--nothing being more factual than divorce, where so much has to be explained and worked through intelligently (though they have tried to stay equable). I've noticed this is often the time when children begin calling their parents by their first names, becoming little ironists after their parents' faults. What could be lonelier for a parent than to be criticized by his child on a first-name basis? ↗

— Richard Ford

#divorce #family #parents #family