Leave part of the yard rough. Don't manicure everything. Small children in particular love to turn over rocks and find bugs, and give them some space to do that. Take your child fishing. Take your child on hikes.
As a housewife, I feel that if the kids are still alive when my husband gets home from work, then hey, I've done my job.
Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted.
Hugs can do great amounts of good - especially for children.
Parents were invented to make children happy by giving them something to ignore.
The challenging part of parenting for me is to make sure that an individual person is an individual and not some sort of cookie-cutter version of me. At the same time, I want to make sure that I impart my sense of the world as an adult.
Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.
Having a baby changes the way you view your in-laws. I love it when they come to visit now. They can hold the baby and I can go out.
What lingers from the parent's individual past, unresolved or incomplete, often becomes part of her or his irrational parenting.
Parenting is the hardest thing I have ever done. I tried to find the balance between the strict, traditional Chinese way I was raised, which I think can be too harsh, and what I see as a tendency in the West to be too permissive and indulgent. If I could do it all again, I would, with some adjustments.
I don't think children's inner feelings have changed. They still want a mother and father in the very same house; they want places to play.
No one knows his true character until he has run out of gas, purchased something on the installment plan and raised an adolescent.
Being a chef isn't the ideal career to intersect with parenting, but I try to be in my kids' lives as much as possible.
Ironically, parenting is a shame and judgment minefield precisely because most of us are wading through uncertainty and self-doubt when it comes to raising our children.
The government cannot overcome bad parenting. What our leaders can do is publicly condemn irresponsible parental behavior in vivid terms.
Indeed - judicious, consistent parenting is a dream of mine. No judgements, learning space and listening carefully are my goals.
What parent has it easy? I just never make the difficulty of it an obstacle. I just do it.
The interesting thing about being a mother is that everyone wants pets, but no one but me cleans the kitty litter.
Children live in the only successful Marxist state ever created: the family. 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his need' is the family's practice as well as its theory. Even with today's scattershot patterns of marriage and parenting, a family is collectivist to a more than North Korean degree.
There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.
