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Parents Quotes

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Parents Quotes

“How strange was the relation between parents and children! When they were small the parents doted on them, passed through agonies of apprehension at each childish ailment, and the children clung to their parents with love and adoration; a few years passed, the children grew up, and persons not of their kin were more important to their happiness than father or mother. Indifference displaced the blind and instinctive love of the past. Their meetings were a source of boredom and irritation. Distracted once at the thought of a month's separation they were able now to look forward with equanimity to being parted for years.”

“New Rule: Don't name your kid after a ballpark. Cubs fans Paul and Teri Fields have named their newborn son Wrigley. Wrigley Fields. A child is supposed to be an independent individual, not a means of touting your own personal hobbies. At least that's what I've always taught my kids, Panama Red and Jacuzzi.”

“We came around the corner and stood in the doorway of what looked like a paint-testing ground. This was where we proved once and for all that we were good loving parents. We decided to let him live. "What is painting doing in my best Tupperware bowl?" I yelled. "Well, I needed something lightweight I could carry around with me," he began. "You've been carrying around a brain for year," the boy's father said.”

“The social justice facade converts the underlying theme of transgressive sex into a heroic tale of dismantling oppression. Somehow it's worked. Relatively few parents and teachers have revolted, considering what's being promoted. A startling number seem to believe they are heroes for actively participating.”

“Anyway, because of Beezy’s patrician vibe and the fact that our parents grew up in a very horses-and-beeswax part of an already pretty aristocratic area of the state, you would have thought they were marked for success. You would have thought they couldn’t have avoided it! But well into their youth each of the five really did their utmost to scupper their own chances in life in utterly idiosyncratic ways, which is the usual province of the middle-to-upper-middle class. We didn’t realize this at the time, of course. To us, our parents were doing just fine.”

“At various points in our lives we had considered joining the circus, a daydream handed to us, in fact, by our parents. If we got mad and were casting around for something to do about it, our parents would suggest with great mirth that we run away to join the circus and eventually it became a concrete possibility in our minds, a genuine emergency hatch through which we could slip if things became too unbearable. Although we hadn’t been to a circus, we had ideas of what it might entail: days of trundling along in painted wagons and stringing cooking pots over rosy fires and sitting in front of mirrors lit up by light bulbs as large as conference pears, broken up by spurts of action in which we tested our fantastic discipline against the messy and somewhat arbitrary nature of death. I don’t think it’s something kids think about anymore and anyway we never did it. We stayed right where we were, which our parents always knew would be the case and also why they’d offered it up like a dare in the first place. It was unkind but also their way of reaffirming the cords that bound us.”

“What could be said of holding her child for the first time? She felt like the sun has slammed into her. In one instant, she became skinless and new and known. Yesterday and tomorrow broke into separate pieces and shot out apart from one another. What could ever be said of a moment that happened in no language, but in every language?”

“History is continuous. It flows through us, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. In a society with little history, in the sense of movements, events, inventions struggles and newnesses, when movement seems to be slow, the elderly are respected and useful, the keepers of custom: their children want to be like them. This is a conservative society, often a happy one because it is not fragmented, but it is no fun for the innovators, those with new ideas, In a society where historical events crowd in so fast that people cannot keep up with them - which is what most societies are like at present - the old are comparatively useless and only likely to be respected for certain kinds of success, not for qualities of wisdom. Family continuity is no longer sought after. The one thing children don't want is to be like their parents.”

“...often he did not have the energy to think, but when he did, he thought of what made a death a good death, and his sense was that a good death would be one that did not scare his boy, that a father's duty was not to avoid dying in front of his son, this a father could not control, but rather that if a father did have to die in front of his son, he ought to die as well as he was able, to do it in a way that left his son with something, that left his son with the strength to live, and the strength to know that one day he could die well himself, as his father had....”

“A friend said to me – we were talking about our stage in life, when we suddenly discover that we are the grown-ups, with children and parents, and even grandparents to tend to, not to mention our pupils, patients or clients or employers – that we spend so much time dealing with it all, there is scarcely time to feel. I walked up the silent road, wondering if I couldn’t reconcile myself again to the idea of the Sabbath, to the day of dreary silence and mutton broth I’d known as a child, if we couldn’t close the shops and still the traffic and institute a modern, churchless day of contemplation and rest; and if it would help at all.”

“Skenazy sees [cognitive distortion] discounting positives when parents overmonitor. "Any upside to free, unsupervised time (joy, independence, problem-solving, resilience) is seen as trivial, compared to the infinite harm the child could suffer without you there"...”

“You know, Dad. Mom has always done everything for me since I was a baby." Jaret's assessment is accurate. Nancy has helped him with everything from daily living activities to his studies. She has been his chauffeur since Jaret doesn't have a driver's license. Most importantly, she has been his emotional bedrock. She has continuously showered him with the unconditional love necessary to build his self-esteem. But today, he showed the fruits of her years as a Super Mom. " It's my turn, Dad. I need to learn how to take care of Mom. Tell me what to do.”