""Children are apt to live up to what you believe of them."

~ Lady Bird Johnson

 

"Your children will become what you are; so be what you want them to be."

~David Bly

 

"Presence is more than just being there."

~ Malcolm Forbes

 

"When your children fall short, it doesn't mean you've failed, it is just means you're not yet finished."

~ Jaci Mun-Gavin

 

"The first duty of love is to listen."

~ Paul Tillich

 

"Children are the proof we've been here... they are the best thing and the most impossible thing."

~ Allison Pearson

 

"If you want children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders."

 

~ Abigail Van Buren

 

"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

 

"Life affords no greater responsibility, no greater privilege, than the raising of the next generation."

~ C. Everet Koop, M.D.

 

"Lucky parents who have fine children usually have lucky children who have fine parents."

~ James A. Brewer

 

"Many have forgotten this truth, but you must not forget it. You remain responsible, forever, for what you have tamed."

~ Antoine De Saint-Exupery

 

"No one knows how children will turn out; a great tree often springs from a tender plant."

~ Norwegian proverb

 

"Parents who are afraid to put their foot down usually have children who tread on their toes."

~ Chinese Proverb

 

"Presence is more than just being there."

~ Malcolm Forbes

 

"Parents can tell but never teach, unless they practice what they preach."

~ Arnold Glasow

 

"The hardest part of raising a child is teaching them to ride bicycles. A shaky child on a bicycle for the first time needs both support and freedom. The realization that this is what the child will always need can hit hard."

~ Sloan Wilson

 

"The Hebrew word for parents is horim, and it comes from the same root as moreh, teacher. The parent is, and remains, the first and most important teacher that the child will have."

~ Rabbi Kassel Abelson

 

"The voice of parents is the voice of gods, for to their children they are heaven's lieutenants."

~ Shakespeare

 

"There are two lasting bequests we can give our children. One is roots. The other is wings."

~ Hodding Carter, Jr.

 

"The most important thing that parents can teach their children is how to get along without them."

~ Frank A. Clark

 

"To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while."

~ Josh Billings

 

"To nourish children and raise them against the odds is, in any time, any place, more valuable than to fix bolts in cars or design nuclear weapons."

~ Marilyn French

 

"When we choose to be parents, we accept another human being as part of ourselves, and a large part of our emotional selves will stay with that person as long as we live. From that time on, there will be another person on this earth whose orbit around us will affect us as surely as the moon affects the tides, and affect us in some ways more deeply than anyone else can. Our children are extensions of ourselves."

~ Fred Rogers

 

"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

 

"You have a lifetime to work, but children are only young once."

~ Polish Proverb

 

"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."

~ Anne Frank

 

“Your children are the greatest gift God will give to you, and their souls the heaviest responsibility He will place in your hands. Take time with them, teach them to have faith in God. Be a person in whom they can have faith. When you are old, nothing else you've done will have mattered as much.”

~ Lisa Wingate

 

“Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.”

~ Emilie Buchwald

 

“Your kids require you most of all to love them for who they are, not to spend your whole time trying to correct them.”

~ Bill Ayers

 

“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

 

"If your kids need a role model, and you're not it, you're both in trouble!"

~ Jaci Mun-Gavin

 

“Sometimes, kids want you to hurt the way they hurt.”

~ Mitch Albom

 

“Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and crimes from society.”

~ Benjamin Franklin

 

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

~ James Baldwin

 

“To you who are parents, I say, show love to your children. You know you love them, but make certain they know it as well. They are so precious. Let them know. Call upon our Heavenly Father for help as you care for their needs each day and as you deal with the challenges which inevitably come with parenthood. You need more than your own wisdom in rearing them.”

~ Thomas S. Monson

 

“If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent.”

~ Bette Davis

 

“I would have given anything to keep her little. They outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow them."

~ Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

 

“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, Pigs In Heaven

 

“Before I got married I had six theories about raising children; now, I have six children and no theories.”

~ John Wilmot

 

“When you take the time to actually listen, with humility, to what people have to say, it's amazing what you can learn. Especially if the people who are doing the talking also happen to be children.”

~ Greg Mortenson