Parent Quotes To Live By

Parent Quotes:  A   

Abraham-Hicks
Parents often think that they are here to guide the little ones. When, in reality, the little ones come forth with clarity to guide you.

The best that a parent can be: A demonstrator… A consistent, constant demonstrator of being in your own Vortex.

What your children will benefit most from you is if they can begin to see the same freedom seeking being in you that they feel in themselves.

When you are loving your children and expecting good things for them, you are tapped into the Energy of your Source and you’re flooding that all over them.

Adele  1988
When I became a parent, I felt like I was truly living. I had a purpose, where before I didn’t.

Eberhard Arnold  1883 – 1935
Raising children should mean helping them to become what they already are in God’s eyes.

Parent Quotes:  B   

Richard Bach  1936
Children are not our property, and they are not ours to control, any more than we were our parents property, or theirs to control.

Richard Baker
Don’t try to make children grow up to be like you or they may do it.

James Baldwin
Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

Bruce Barton  1886 – 1967
If you can give your son or daughter only one gift, let it be enthusiasm.

Henry Ward Beecher  1813 – 1887
There is no friendship, no love, like that of a parent for the child.

We never know the love of our parents for us, till we have become parents.

Polly Berrien Berends
The gain is not having the children, it is the discovery of love and how to be loving.

The baby is as much an instrument of nourishment to us as we are for him.

Bible
Honour thy father and thy mother.

W. E. B. Du Bois  1868 – 1963
Children learn more from what you are, than what you teach.

Erma Bombeck  1927 – 1996
Children make your life important.

Robert Brault
Anything we tell our kids about life is a place-marker until they figure it out for themselves.

Do not ask that your kids live up to your expectations. Let your kids be who they are, and your expectations will be in breathless pursuit.

Robert Brault
If you haven’t time to respond to a tug at your pant leg, your schedule is too crowded.

In the happiest of our childhood memories, our parents were happy too.

The trouble with learning to parent on the job is that your child is the teacher.

Why explain miracles to your kids, when you can just have them plant a garden.

Betsy Brown Braun
You need to be the person you want your child to become. That takes awareness and focus.

Thomas Bray  1658 – 1730
Never fear spoiling children by making them too happy. Happiness is the atmosphere in which all good affections grow.

Teresa Graham Brett
Parenting as the practice of freedom allows us to re-write our story and create the space for the children in our lives to write their own story.

H. Jackson Brown Jr.  1940
Always kiss your children goodnight.. even if they’re asleep.

Emilie Buchward  1935
Children are made readers in the laps of their parents.

Lorna Byrne  1953
As long as they are still alive, it’s never too late to reach out and get to know your parents as people.

The bonding with a new baby can help people to release love unconsciously.

The helplessness, vulnerability and perfection of a new baby frequently helps parents and grandparents to learn to love themselves and others.

The sadness and pain surrounding the death of a parent, brother or sister can bring with it an unexpected gift, and help families to become closer. It can help bring shared memories to light, and be a reminder of love that was shared in the past.

You chose your parents before you were conceived. You chose them knowing their strengths and their weaknesses. As a baby you loved them unconditionally.

Parent Quotes:  C   

George Carlin  1937 – 2008
Don’t just teach your children to read. Teach them to question what they read. Teach then to question everything.

Thomas Carlyle  1795 – 1881
Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment.

Andrew Carnegie  1835 – 1919
Give me the life of the boy whose mother is nurse, seamstress, washer-woman, cook, teacher, Angel and Saint, all in one. And whose father is guide, exemplar and friend. No servants to come between them. These are the boys who are born to the best fortune.

Hodding Carter  1907 – 1972
There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children… one of those is roots, the other, wings.

Doc Childre
An Aware parent loves all children he or she meets and interacts with.. for you are a caretaker for those moments in time.

Mary Cholmondeley  1859 – 1925
A happy childhood is one of the best gifts that parents have it in their powers to bestow.

Helen Claes
What I wanted most for my daughter was that she be able to soar confidently in her own sky, whatever that may be.

Crystal DeLarm Clymer
When your child is talking, turn the world off.

Monta Crane
There are three ways to get something done: do it yourself, employ someone to do it for you, or, forbid your children from doing it.

Parent Quotes:  D   

Wayne Dyer  1940 – 2015
Your children will see what you’re all about by what you live rather than what you say.

Parent Quotes:  E   

Marion Wright Edelman  1939
Parents have become so convinced that educators know what is best for their children, that they forget that they themselves are really the experts.

Richard Evans  1906 – 1971
Children will not remember you for the material things you provided,  but for the feeling that you cherished them.

Parent Quotes:  F   

Betty Ford  1918 – 2011
Holding these babies in my arms makes me realize the miracle my husband and I began.

Anne Frank  1929 – 1945
Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths,  but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.

Robert Fulghum  1937
Don’t worry that children never listen to you.. worry that they are always watching you.

Margaret Fuller  1810 – 1850
The character and history of each child, may be a new and poetic experience to the parent, if he will let it.

Parent Quotes:  G   

Haim Ginott  1922 – 1973
If you want your children to improve, let them overhear the nice things you say about them to others.

Philip Glass  1937
When you become a parent, you begin to become sympathetic to your own parents. We begin to understand how much we owe to them, how much we’re shaped by their vision of the world.

Samuel Goodrich  1793 – 1860
How many hopes and fears, how many ardent wishes and anxious apprehensions are twisted together, in the threads that connect the parent with the child?

Trina Graves  1961

The Joys Of Parenthood
The greatest gift in life, you’ve received today
The birth of your precious little one, safely here to stay.
Entrusted to your gentle, loving care
God knows you are a wonderfully, devoted pair.

Your lives will never again be the same
Now that you are parents, you have a new aim
To love and protect her, to nurture and to care
The joys of parenthood are beyond compare.

The happiness, joy and love you now feel
Will stay with you forever, this love is so real.
There is nothing in life that can compare to this
The birth of your cherished baby, brings you pure bliss.

Parent Quotes:  H   

HA-Tony Neate
You choose your parents, not primarily for what they are or were, but for the challenges YOU needs to help you forward in your evolution.

Alex Haley  1921 – 1992
My parents were teachers and they went out of their way to see to it that I had books. We grew up in a home that was full of books. And so I learned to read, I loved to read.

Brooke Hampton
As mamas, papas, grandparents, teachers and caregivers we have a responsibility to protect these little Earth warriors. It’s our job to protect and nurture their love, their innocence, their spirits, their imagination, their gifts, their health, and wellbeing, their spirituality, their confidence, their character, their freedom of thought, their instincts, their wildness, and their magic! There is nothing we can do in this lifetime that will compare to the importance of this work. These little ones are our future. Guard them well!

Brooke Hampton
Speak to them [children] as if you were on stage in front of thousands of people. Respond to them with the respect they deserve. They are our future. Guard your tongue. Be brave enough to try harder. Let’s create a childhood that our children won’t have to recover from.

Speak to your children as if they are the wisest, kindest, most beautiful and magical humans on Earth, for what they believe is what they will become.

Neil Patrick Harris  1973
Parents need to be more accepting of who their kids are and less concerned about what society thinks they need to be.

Sydney J. Harris  1903 – 1986  
The best thing you can give children, next to good habits, are good memories.

Louise Hart
The best thing to spend on your children is time.

Jim Henson  1936 – 1990
The attitude that you have as a parent is what your kids will learn from, more than what you tell them. They don’t remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are.

Theodore Hesburgh  1917
The most important thing a father can do for his children is… to love their mother.

Whitney Houston  1963 – 2012
(Also sung by George Benson
written by Michael Masser & Linda Creed)

I believe the children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
Let the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be

Elbert Hubbard  1856 – 1915
Where parents do too much for their children, the children will not do much for themselves.

Kate Hudson  1979
Your children teach you so much. It’s a real mirror of yourself.

Parent Quotes:  J   

Jesse Jackson  1941
Your children need your presence more than your presents.

Susan Jeffers  1938 – 2012
All the dangers in our world are like a blessed wake up call. They tell us to live life NOW – not tomorrow, not when the children grow up, not when we retire…  but NOW.

Dear God, I trust that no matter what happens in my life, it is for my highest good. And no matter what happens in the lives of those I love, it is for their highest good. From all things that are put before us all, we shall become stronger and more loving people. I am grateful for all the beauty and opportunity you put into my life. And in all that I do, I shall seek to be a channel for your love.

Lady Bird Johnson  1912 – 2007
Children are likely to live up to what you believe in them.

Angelina Jolie  1975
Sometimes, when I want to take on the world, I try to remember that it’s just as important to sit down and ask my son how he’s feeling or talk to him about life.

Franklin P. Jones
You can learn many things from children.. how much patience you have, for instance.

Juvenal  55 – 127
Be gentle with the young.

 Parent Quotes:  K   

Amit Kalantri  1988
No matter how knowledgeable you are, respect your parents for their experience and your children for their curiosity.

Nicole Kidman  1967
My parents thought it was nice to develop my imagination.

L. R. Knost
It’s not out job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world, it’s our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless.

Parenting has nothing to do with perfection. Perfection isn’t even the goal, not for us, not for our children. Learning together to live well in an imperfect world, loving each other despite or even because of our imperfections, and growing  as humans while we grow our little humans, those are the goals of gentle parenting. So don’t ask yourself at the end of the day if you did everything right. Ask yourself, what you learned and how well you loved, then grow from your answer. That is perfect parenting.

Charles Everet Koop  1916
Life affords no greater responsibility, no greater privilege, than the raising of the next generation.

Charles Kuralt  1934 – 1997
My parents encouraged me in everything I ever wanted to do.

Parent Quotes:  L   

Adrienne LaFrance
The act of simply caring for one’s baby forges new neural pathways – undiscovered rooms in the parental brain.

Dalai Lama  1935
Give the ones you love.. wings to fly, roots to come back and reasons to stay.

Ann Landers
It is not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves, that will make them successful human beings.

Sam Levenson  1911 – 1980
Any kid who has two parents who are interested in him and has a houseful of books isn’t poor.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh  1906 – 2001
In the sheltered simplicity of the first days after a baby is born, one sees again the magical closed circle, the miraculous sense of two people existing only for each other.

Bruce Lipton  1944
The most important thing that we need to understand as parents is that everything you say, everything you do, for the first seven years of that child’s life is being recorded and becoming their behaviour.

Diane Loomans

If I had my child to raise all over again,
I’d finger paint more and point the finger less.
I’d do less correcting and more connecting.
I’d take my eyes off my watch and watch with my eyes.
I would care to know less and know to care more.
I’d take more hikes and fly more kites.
I’d stop playing serious and seriously play.
I’d run through more fields and gaze at more stars.
I’d do more hugging and less tugging.
I would be firm less often and affirm much more.
I’d build self-esteem first and the house later.
I’d teach less about the love of power and more about the power of love.

Parent Quotes:   M   

Mae Maloo
Children seldom misquote you. They more often repeat, word for word, what you shouldn’t have said.

William Martin
How do children learn to correct their mistakes?..
By watching you correct yours.
How do children learn to overcome failures?..
By watching how you overcome yours.
How do children learn to treat themselves with forgiveness?..
By watching you forgive yourself.
Therefore, your mistakes and failures are blessings, opportunities for the best parenting. And those who point out your mistakes are not your enemies, but the most valuable of friends.

You do not have to make your children into wonderful people. You only have to remind them that they are wonderful people. If you do this consistently from the day they are born, they will believe it easily.

Joyce Maynard  1953   
For a parent, it’s hard to recognize the significance of your work when you’re immersed in the mundane details. Few of us, as we run the bathwater or spread the peanut butter on the bread, proclaim loudly – I’m making my contribution to the future of the planet – but, with the exception of global hunger, few jobs in the world of pay checks and promotions compare in significance to the job of parent.

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.

Mignon McLaughlin  1913 – 1983
Most of us become parents long before we have stopped being children.

Barbara F. Meltz
Whether your child is three or thirteen, don’t rush in to rescue him, until you know he’s done all he can to rescue himself.

A. A. Milne  1882 – 1956
If ever there is a tomorrow when we’re not together there is something you must always remember… You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think.  Even if we’re apart, I’ll always be with you.

Robert Muller  1923 – 2010
Adults are the first and foremost teachers of love, peace, truth, tolerance, happiness and spirituality to their children. No school on Earth can ever replace them.

Dear children and youth, please remember always that: you are your parents’ main contribution to evolution and further human ascent; you are their immorality; you are their greatest work of art and joy; you will be their last thought and pride at their moment of death. You must think of the chain of life from which you come and will continue on this miraculous planet in the vast solar system. Your parents are sacred and so are you.

Don’t you think God would smile and feel good, if your spouse, your children, your parents, your teachers, your colleagues, your spiritual guides would smile and feel good, if you said to them these simple words: ‘I am happy. Thank you for giving me happiness.’

Each mother and father should devote quite some time to the family’s history. An entire new science and art of family and individual history should be developed and taught: ancestry, genealogy, name etymology, oral history, written history, pictorial history, family heirlooms and souvenirs, scrapbooks, photo collections etc.. What deep joys can be derived from family history! It increases the love and role of the family, the fundamental, basic social unit.

It is the natural and perennial role of parents to teach, to warn, to protect, to guide, to help, to prepare, to ‘raise’ their children. Children, for their part, have their own predispositions, nature, dreams and likings. The result will be blending of the two, of the past, the present and the future. And thus humanity proceeds on its evolutionary path, epitomised and moulded in each of the Earth’s hundreds of millions of families. The family is the first and greatest school of love, peace and happiness on Earth. As for all other human groups, there should be no confrontation, no conflict, no breakage of the family, only give and take, understanding, love and cooperation. For these are the ways of ascent of humanity.

Observe your children closely: they often have fundamental approaches and answers to the mysteries of life which we have lost as adults.

Robert Muller  1923 – 2010
The example of parents is the greatest teacher. Parents must stand out as models of happiness to their children.

Parent Quotes:  N   

Native American – Lakota
A man or woman with many children has many homes.

Thandie Newton  1972
I’ve learned the value of absorbing the moment. I remember the first time Ripley (daughter) saw her shadow. My God, it was like shadows had just been invented. It was the most exquisite moment.

Parent Quotes:  O   

Peggy O’Mara
The way we talk to children, becomes their inner voice.

 Parent Quotes:  P   

Rita Pierson  ? – 2013
Every child needs a champion – an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection, and insists that they become the best that they can possibly be.

Frank Pittman  1953 – 2012
The guys who fear becoming fathers don’t understand that fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects men. The end product of child-raising is not the child, but the parent.

Plato  429BC – 347BC
Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence.

Linda Poindexter
We are like lighthouses to our children.. Beacons showing them the way. And when our light goes out, theirs will be at its brightest, ready to take over for us.

Alvin Price  1908 – 1951
Parents need to fill a child’s bucket of self-esteem so high that the rest of the world can’t poke enough holes to drain it dry.

J.B. Priestley  1894 – 1984
To show a child what has once delighted you, to find the child’s delight added to your own, so that there is now a double delight seen in the glow of trust and affection, this is happiness.

Parent Quotes:  R   

Rob Reiner  1947  
I know how sobering and exhausting parenthood is. But the reality is that our children’s future depends on us as parents. Because we know that the first years truly last forever.

Kate Roberts
When parents say “I’m sorry,” they are saying so much more.

Parent Quotes:  S   

Laura Schlessinger  1947
Children are our second chance to have a great parent-child relationship.

Charles Schultz  1922 – 2000
If I were given the opportunity to present a gift to the next generation, it would be the ability for each individual to learn to laugh at himself.

Sitting Bull (Chief)  1831 – 1890
Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children.

Muriel Spark  1918 – 2006
Parents learn a lot from their children about coping with life.

Nicolas Sparks  1965
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.

Benjamin Spock  1903 – 1998 
The child supplies the power, but the parents have to do the steering.

The more people have studied different methods of bringing up children, the more they have come to the conclusion that what good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies, is best after all.

Shinichi Suzuki  1898 – 1998
Children learn to smile from their parents.

Charles R. Swindoll  1934
Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children.

Parent Quotes:  T   

The Talmud
When you teach your son,  you teach your son’s son.

William D. Tammeus
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 wave back.

Brian Tracy  1944
If you raise your children to feel that they can accomplish any goal or task they decide upon, you will have succeeded as a parent and you will have given your children the greatest blessing of all.

Harry Truman  1884 – 1972
I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.

 Parent Quotes:  V   

Peter De Vries  1910
The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults.

Parent Quotes:  W   

Catherine M. Wallace
Listen earnestly to anything your children want to tell you, no matter what. If you don’t listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won’t tell you the big stuff when they are big, because to them all of it has always been big stuff.

Evelyn Waugh  1903 – 1966
Don’t hold your parents up to contempt, after all, you are their son, and it is just possible that you may take after them.

Anthony Douglas Williams
Every parent is a teacher…  But not all parents teach.

John Wooden  1910 – 2010
Being a role model is the most powerful form of educating. Youngsters need good role models more than they need critics. It’s one of parents greatest responsibilities and opportunities.

Lois Wyse  1926 – 2007
Didn’t we, like our grandchildren, begin with a childhood we thought would never end? Now, all of a sudden, I’m older than my parents were when I thought they were old.

Parent Sayings

Father:  Quotes  &  Sayings

Mother:  Quotes  &  Sayings

Family:  Quotes  &  Sayings

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