parenting

Becoming a father isn’t hard, but being one is.

 -- German saying

Don’t worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.

We don't raise kids - we raise people.

When a child is punished for their honesty, they begin to lie.

If you’re still holding your parents liable for your problems at the age of forty, then one can argue that you’re so immature you practically deserve them.

When a flower doesn't bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.

There is no more important period of our lives than childhood; a good childhood is the bedrock of a happy life and a bad one just about dooms us to enduring misery.

The proper time to influence the character of a child is  about 100 years before he is born.

A few factors emerged as strongly protective [agains teen substance abuse]: participation in organised activities – especially sport – three or four times a week, total time spent with parents during the week, feeling cared about at school, and not being outdoors in the late evenings.

The ordinary pleasures of raising children are not often talked about, because they are unspectacular and leave no lasting trace, but they sustained me for years as our boys grew and flourished, and they continue to sustain me now. I can’t help but take pleasure in the fact that my children are thriving as I decline. It seems only fitting, a sure sign that my job in the world is done. It’s like the day Dan, then in the fourth grade, turned to me twenty yards from the school gate and said, “You can go now, Mum.” I knew then that the days of our companionable walks were over, and that as time went by there would be further signs of my superfluity, just as poignant and necessary as this one.