#parent

Ask your child for information in a gentle, nonjudgmental way, with specific, clear questions. Instead of “How was your day?” try “What did you do in math class today?” Instead of “Do you like your teacher?” ask “What do you like about your teacher?” Or “What do you not like so much?” Let her take her time to answer. Try to avoid asking, in the overly bright voice of parents everywhere, “Did you have fun in school today?!” She’ll sense how important it is that the answer be yes. ↗

— Susan Cain

#parenting #communication

All of us have moments in out lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them. ↗

— Erma Bombeck

#carpeting #children #courage #housekeeping #parenthood

I looked at Lucas with the pang that a parent feels when he knows his child will be hurt and that it's no one's fault and that to try to preempt the rites of passage is an act of contempt for the child's courage. ↗

— James Lee Burke

#heartbreak #parenthood #courage

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

#courage

One of the ridiculously difficult things about raising children is that they are constantly developing and changing so that just when you think you have them figured out, they throw you a curve, a new twist you never saw coming. They are like mutating viruses - as soon as you have become immune to their latest shenanigans, they develop a new strain to which you have yet to be exposed. While this constant shape-shifting is one of the greatest challenges of parenting, it is also one of the things which makes them so fascinating and wonderful. ↗

— Amy E. Spiegel

#change

What the world really needs is courageous parenting from mothers and fathers who are not afraid to speak up and take a stand. ↗

— Larry R. Lawrence

#courage

So when I got to be about 13 or 14, I started listening - even though my parents music was way cool - to contemporary hard rock at that time, which was Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Ted Nugent and all that, and that's just where I came from. ↗

— Slash

#aerosmith #black #black sabbath #came #cheap

When I first met Cara, she was twelve and angry at the world. Her parents had split up, her brother was gone, and her mom was infatuated with some guy who was missing vowels in his unpronounceable last name. So I did what any other man in that situation would do: I came armed with gifts. I bought her things that I thought a twelve-year-old would love: a poster of Taylor Lautner, a Miley Cyrus CD, nail polish that glowed in the dark. "I can't wait for the next Twilight movie," I babbled, when I presented her with the gifts in front of Georgie. "My favorite song on the CD is 'If We Were a Movie.' And I almost went with glitter nail polish, but the salesperson said this is much cooler, especially with Halloween coming up." Cara looked at her mother and said, without any judgment, "I think your boyfriend is gay. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#impression #kids #parents-dating #dating

Good fathers, and by that I mean real fathers who are there, have the ability to change almost every social problem we now find ourselves facing. I’d be assumptive enough to say that there isn’t a single type of crime or a single problem so big that it couldn’t be fixed or wiped out if fathers would just step up. ↗

— Dan Pearce

#dads #fathers #parents #change

Where did the bonds of maternity end? All children grew up, changed, became somebody else. Parents who trembled that they might lose a gap-toothed toddler to some terrible accident ended up losing him anyway, always, to time. The toddlers died, after all, and what was left was a bond with another adult, who had once been the beloved child. ↗

— Nancy Kress

#change