Solitude is different from loneliness, and it doesn't have to be a lonely kind of thing.

We want to raise our children so that they can take a sense of pleasure in both their own heritage and the diversity of others.

I don't believe that children can develop in a healthy way unless they feel that they have value apart from anything they own or any skill that they learn. They need to feel they enhance the life of someone else, that they are needed. Who, better than parents, can let them know that?

The gifts we treasure most over the years are often small and simple. In easy times and tough times, what seems to matter most is the way we show those nearest us that we've been listening to their needs, to their joys, and to their challenges.

Parenting forces us to get to know ourselves better than we ever might have imagined we could--and in many new ways. . . . We'll discover talents we never dreamed we had and fervently wish for others at moments we feel we desperately need them. As time goes on, we'll probably discover that we have more to give and can give more than we ever imagined. But we'll also find that there are limits to our giving, and that may be hard for us to accept.

I think of discipline as the continual everyday process of helping a child learn self-discipline.

Whatever we choose to imagine can be as private as we want it to be. Nobody knows what you're thinking or feeling unless you share it.