Quotes About Parents

Harry's status as orphan gives him a freedom other children can only dream about (guiltily, of course). No child wants to lose their parents, yet the idea of being removed from the expectations of parents is alluring. The orphan in literature is freed from the obligation to satisfy his/her parents, and from the inevitable realization that his/her parents are flawed human beings. There is something liberating, too, about being transported into the kind of surrogate family which boarding school represents, where the relationships are less intense and the boundaries perhaps more clearly defined.

Children see in their parents the past, their parents see in them the future; and if we find more love in the parents for their children than in children for their parents, this is sad but natural. Who does not entertain his hopes more than his recollections.

Parents who are stressed or disturbed will have more difficulty in meeting their children's needs. Parents who have little support--from friends, relatives, neighbors, or the community--are more likely to be overburdened by the demands of their babies and to be unable to respond to them adequately. Parents who experience severe poverty or economic insecurity, who cannot satisfy their own basic needs, are likely to have difficulty in responding to their children's needs.

My parents both left school at 14, but my parents are incredibly smart, successful, thoughtful people. So one of the lessons I learned from my parents is that the fancy degree is just a foot in the door, and there are a lot of very smart people out there who don't necessarily have the fancy degrees. And given the opportunity, they can do amazing things.

There is no greater reason for children to honour parents than for parents to honour children except, that while the children are young, the parents are stronger than children.

When we mourn our parents, we mourn the parents we had as well as the ones we never had. With death, all bets are off: the last chance at reconciliation or change or hope is gone. Whatever relationship we had with our parents, that's it. No more chances for something else.

Of course, everyone's parents are embarrassing. It goes with the territory. The nature of parents is to embarrass merely by existing, just as it is the nature of children of a certain age to cringe with embarrassment, shame, and mortification should their parents so much as speak to them on the street.

I am reminded that no matter how hard you try, you can never be more than twelve years old with your parents. Parents earnestly try not to inflame, but their comments contain no scale and a strange focus. Discussing your private life with parents is like misguidedly looking at a zit in a car's rearview mirror and being convinced, in the absence of contrast or context, that you have developed combined heat rash and skin cancer.

I've always assumed that my parents and my in-laws would live with me when I get older and have children. I just assume it will happen and that it's the right way to do things. It's a deeply Indian custom - that you kind of inherit your parents and your spouse's parents and you take care of them eventually.

Because parents have power over children. They feel they have to do what their parents say. But the love of money is the root of all evil. And this is a sweet child. And to see him turn like this, this isn't him. This is not him.

My mythic version of America is very much about parents and children, and in my experience, the suburban setting is where that particular drama plays out. Which isn't to say that there aren't parents and children in cities or on farms. I just don't know them.

Living in a place like Pakistan, very often you meet people who are migrating abroad. And sometimes you'll ask their parents, you know - you didn't try to stop them? Like, why didn't you say, don't go - I'll miss you? Stay with me. And, you know, people say, well, it's best for them. They have to go. And parents, you know, take on that sadness because they know it's better for their children if they leave.

My parents didn't believe in luck. They believed in hard work and in preparing me to take advantage of opportunity. Like many parents, they taught me to be generous but never to depend on the generosity of others.

I've spent the majority of my life estranged from either one or both of my parents, and I've really had a lot of time to break down all the reasons why. There was something buried inside of me that said, I've got to kind of unravel the reasons why I don't talk to them; why not just one, but both of my parents and I have these really messed up relationships. And why I've been so fractured all these years. I got to the point where I thought, I was not the best kid. I openly admit that. But then I realized it doesn't matter. I was a kid!

I see parents who want their kid to be better than the kid wants to be. I tell parents to encourage kids to find their passion. You can give them the opportunity to do many things.

No one has found a gene for IQ. "Heritability" means that identicial twins are more similar than fraternal twins, right? Fraternal twins more similar than non-siblings. The heritability is 50 percent if your parents went to college. But if your parents never graduated high school the heritability is zero. Zero.

My parents both were doing the Civil Rights Movement, were very involved with the civil rights to Congress. And my friends' parents were as well.

In the '60s, parents were told to let their teens rebel, explore their boundaries. Increasingly the same message is being given to the parents of tweens.

You know, my parents have always been incredibly supportive. I'm an only child, so we're very close. There's just the three of us. They're exceptional parents but also great friends. My father was able to take his hobby, photography, and turn it into a beautiful career. So when they saw how much I loved acting, they were 100 percent behind me.

I think a lot of parents hand people over a blueprint and say, This is how youre supposed to do it. And my parents, I think, kind of drew a picture and said, Heres the good stuff in life. How do you get there?

Of course, we carry inside of ourselves our parents. Even when they are dead, we carry them inside ourselves. And they are carrying inside themselves their dead parents and so on and so forth. There is a legacy of language and culture and religion.

Most definitely always been a passion, and always been one of my goals in life as a young person, to have my own business. My dad gave us his entrepreneurial mindset, so that was also ingrained, as well as the tennis. So in a lot of ways it's a part of making my parents proud. I think we all want to make our parents proud, you know?

I don't look back, I just go forward. I'm just proud of the fact that my parents were immigrants and we had nearly nothing, and all of the sudden, with the help of a lot of people and my parents as a model, I amounted to something.

When I was a boy, we were the only Jewish family in a terribly anti-Semitic neighborhood. Those streets weren't any fun for us but our parents never found that out. In a way, you avoid telling your parents what happened to you during those days.

My parents died a long time ago. And you know the sad thing? I still miss them every day. I spent my entire youth fighting with my dad over every little thing and damned if I wouldn’t sell my soul to see him one more time and tell him I was sorry for the last words I said to him. Words I can never take back that should have never been said. So call your mom. No matter what kind of relationship you have with your parents, I swear to you, you’ll miss them when they’re gone. (Kyrian)

When you are sixteen you do not know what your parents know, or much of what they understand, and less of what's in their hearts. This can save you from becoming an adult too early, save your life from becoming only theirs lived over again--which is a loss. But to shield yourself--as I didn't do--seems to be an even greater error, since what's lost is the truth of your parents' life and what you should think about it, and beyond that, how you should estimate the world you are about to live in.

... parents embarrass their children probably more than the other way around. I don't know why we should blush so hard for our parents -- we didn't rear them -- and yet we do.

A parent does not do everything for their kid. A parent that does everything for their kid produces a kid with no self-confidence. If our parents fixed everything for us and did not allow us to do anything on our own, or intervened every single time, we would all grow up to be completely dependent. The reason we grow up to be healthy adults is because our parents played this game of giving us responsibility, disciplining us when necessary, letting us try, letting us fail.

We hear a great deal about the rudeness of the rising generation. I am an oldster myself and might be expected to take the oldsters' side, but in fact I have been far more impressed by the bad manners of parents to children than by those of children to parents.

Almost 40% of all young adults are living with their parents. This is a 75-year high in America. Forty percent of young adults are living with their parents. I see stuff like this, and I think it's a good thing I didn't become a parent, because if that were happening to me, you wouldn't want to be my kid.

Many people suffer all their lives from this oppressive feeling of guilt, the sense of not having lived up to their parents' expectations. This feeling is stronger than any intellectual insight they might have, that it is not a child's task or duty to satisfy his parents needs. No argument can overcome these guilt feelings, for they have their beginnings in life's earliest periods, and from that they derive their intensity and obduracy.

Nevertheless, no school can work well for children if parents and teachers do not act in partnership on behalf of the children's best interests. Parents have every right to understand what is happening to their children at school, and teachers have the responsibility to share that information without prejudicial judgment.... Such communication, which can only be in a child's interest, is not possible without mutual trust between parent and teacher.

'Our parents' generation had it a lot tougher than we did. They had to live through the Depression, World War II, and then they had to, you know, try to pick up the pieces of their lives and bring up their children. And, it was a great example for us. I guess we grew up with a certain amount of the ethics our parents had, which is, you know: work hard, make your own way, be independent.

It is misleading to discuss recent changes in family life without emphasizing the fact that for generations some Americans have had to raise children under particularly appalling pressures. Although much of what is worrying American parents is shared by them all, the most grievous problems are those that especially afflict a large minority--the poor, the nonwhite and, in various ways, the parents of handicapped children.

Children need parents who model self-discipline rather than preach it. They learn from what their parents are actually willing to do; not from what they say they do.

It's important for parents to watch for trouble and convey to their daughters that, if it comes, they are strong enough to deal with it. Parents who send their [adolescent] daughters the message that they'll be overwhelmed by problems aren't likely to hear what's really happening.

My parents weren't involved in show business but my parents would show me. We'd watch old films in the house.

Again, I was influenced by my father, who was very much an atheist and took pride in combating the traditional or orthodox forms of Judaism, which his parents and which my mother's parents were very steeped in.

My parents got divorced and military school gave me a structure. A lot of kids my age were children of divorced parents. They didn't know what to do with the kids.

Contrary to what we've been told, children can detect deceit in parents much easier than parents can detect deceit in children.

When you have a godly husband, a godly wife, children who respect their parents and who are loved by their parents, who provide for those children their physical and spiritual and material needs, lovingly, you have the ideal unit.

Because we believe ourselves to be better parents than our parents, we expect to produce better children than they produced.

The child should be taught to consider his instructor...superior to the parent in point of authority.... The vulgar impression that parents have a legal right to dictate to teachers is entirely erroneous.... Parents have no remedy as against the teacher.

Your parents are the parents you know best. Your brother and sister, if you have them, are the brother and sister you know best. They may not be the ones you like the best. They may not be the most interesting, but they are the closest and probably the clearest to you.

She looked at me, confused. “He hardly knew me. My parents dated and got married before we knew what happened. Let’s just say we were not brought into the loop on that decision.” “That’s weird. I wasn’t brought into the loop with my parents’ marriage either.” “Really? How old were you?” “Twelve months.” She giggled. “I can’t imagine why they didn’t ask your opinion.

It's not the fledgling birds that are thrown out of the nest by their parents and made to fly; it's the parents who are made to get the hell out of cozy family nest by their teenage offspring. It's we who are made to be independent of them, crash-landing if we don't manage it.

I grew up in a town where there were no adults over forty who weren't somebody's parents. It was, unfortunately, the kind of town that's a "great places to raise kids" - that's basically code for "there are no adults here who are not parents." I had a few teachers who were kind of weirdo drama teachers and were hugely influential.

When parents see their children's problems as opportunities to build the relationship instead of as negative, burdensome irritations, it totally changes the nature of parent-child interaction. Parents become more willing, even excited, about deeply understanding and helping their children. . . . This paradigm is powerful in business as well.