No child ever became ‘good’ by being told that she or he was bad or by beating her/him.

Expect to change yourself in order to change your life experience.

For parents, the days are long but the years are short.

But a mountain of recent evidence suggests that teacher skill has less influence on a student’s performance than a completely different set of factors: namely, how much kids have learned from their parents, how hard they work at home, and whether the parents have instilled an appetite for education.

Would a minute have mattered? No, probably not, although his young son appeared to have a very accurate internal clock. Possibly even 2 minutes would be okay. Three minutes, even. You could go to five minutes, perhaps. But that was just it. If you could go for five minutes, then you’d go to ten, then...

Often people ask, “How can you say you’re blessed to have a son with Down syndrome?” My outlook on life has forever changed. I see my own challenges differently. He’s always showing me that life is so much bigger than self.

It is not what you leave to your children that matters, but what you leave in them.

Fifteen-year-old girls produce children with sixteen-year-old boys in the backseat of cars and in the stairwells of apartment buildings. Why can’t two loving adults who have contemplated parenthood and are prepared to offer love, patience, and devotion come up with enough chromosomal matter to stick together and create a child?

Rocco was gripped with the panic he often experienced around her, around himself. He seemed to be both here now and simultaneously five years in the future looking back at this moment, at the loss of this moment. He was always sliding past the nowness of being with her, throwing himself at her like a...

A challenging career suddenly seemed more productive to me because I could measure the results of my work. These precious little ones had endless needs. They were busy little sinful creatures who demanded all of my body, time, life, emotions, and attention! As much as I loved my children, I often felt like a failure....

I want my children to have all the things I couldn’t afford. Then I want to move in with them.

We spend the first 12 months of our children’s lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next 12 months teaching them to sit down and shut up.

There can be no fooling ourselves into thinking this is something other than what it is—the willful ejection of Molly from our nest. It’s too late for second thoughts, anyway. She has to be moved into her dorm in time for freshman orientation. It’s been marked on the kitchen calendar for weeks—the expiration date on...

We all need a cheering committee and parents are a child’s most important fans!

Health is the ability to be fully and consciously aware of all that contributes to your life experience and to effectively exist in that environment. It then means you see yourself as you really are.

What we sometimes see as annoying, incessant questions from a child may be a plea for recognition. Maybe they do not need an answer as much as attention.

Your children will stop paying attention to you when they have reached your age of emotional maturity. If your child is starting to tune you out, you need to go through a growth spurt of emotional and spiritual maturity. You can never chase a child to a higher awareness; you can only lead them.

Your son is heir to an enormous fortune and name. Someone would be bound to bid for you him and take him as his ward.

More of anything only makes us more of what we already are. If we are happy, it can bring more happiness. If we are depressed, it will make us more depressed.

Readers who have owned animals will appreciate how difficult it would be to train a dog to play exclusively in his own yard, to fetch his sweater whenever he sees it is raining outside, or to be generous in sharing his dog biscuits with other dogs. Yet these same people would not even question the...

I hated the flashcards and I hated the multiplication tables, but I did enjoy the fact that my dad took time out of his schedule to help me in the areas in which I needed it.

So often, children are punished for being human. Children are not allowed to have grumpy moods, bad days, disrespectful tones, or bad attitudes, yet we adults have them all the time! We think if we don’t nip it in the bud, it will escalate and we will lose control. Let go of that unfounded fear...

The recent spate of magazines for “parents” (i.e., mothers) bombard the anxiety-induced mothers of America with reassurances that they can (after a $100,000 raise and a personality transplant) produce bright, motivated, focused, fun-loving, sensitive, cooperative, confident, contented kids just like the clean, obedient ones on the cover.

How often does a man know, without question, that he has done well? I do not think it happens often in anyone’s life, and it becomes even rarer once one has a child.

When woman work outside the home and share breadwinning duties, couples are more likely to stay together. In fact, the risk of divorce reduces by about half when a wife earns half the income and a husband does half the housework.

Keeping secrets from your father will only lead to trouble.

Two weeks ago, Aaron and Isaac, I learned your mother Laura has breast cancer. My heart feels impaled. These words, so useless and feeble. Laura is only thirty-five years old. Her next birthday will be in only three days. I write this letter to you, my sons, with the hope that one day in the...

I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.

Don’t stand unmoving outside the door of a crying baby whose only desire is to touch you. Go to your baby. Go to your baby a million times. Demonstrate that people can be trusted, that the environment can be trusted, that we live in a benign universe.

Leadership is giving out far more than one expects in direct return. The rewards are intangible, yet priceless.

I’ve always believed phone calls from kids must be allowed if mothers are to feel welcome in the workplace, as anyone who has worked in my chambers can attest.

In that day, we didn’t have no remote controls and vacuum cleaners. If you wanted all that stuff you had children!

Don’t leave your elders as Fallen Leaves.

Praise your children openly, reprove them secretly.

The most insidious of the premature responsibilities that may be foisted onto some children is the expectation that the child is somehow supposed to take care of his parents, rather than the other way around. Parents who were themselves raised with too little attention given to their own early feelings, if they have not worked...

Let me say for now that we knew once the Creation was broken, true fathering would be much more lacking than mothering. Don’t misunderstand me, both are needed- but an emphasis on fathering is necessary because of the enormity of its absence

I began to see that creating a healthy family, in which members develop the ability for mutual respect and caring, is a prerequisite for a more peaceful world. For, it is the family that creates the social fabric of our culture, as Mahatma Gandhi so poignantly illustrated, when he said:If we are to teach real...

A Christian understanding of the world sees a child’s character not as genetically determined but as shaped to a significant degree by parental discipleship and discipline.

Always remember, wherever you are, whether near or far, you had a mother who really, really loved you. The original mother. Once you’ve found your true inner guru you can never again be divided. Perfect union with the divine, through the grace of your real teacher, transcends time, space, death and all worldly limitations. Your...

The health of your future kids does not start with their birth—it starts with you, right now, well before you plan to impregnate your wife.

Imagine a man who doesn’t believe in anything, hope for anything, doesn’t love anyone. This is a description of a dead or paralyzed soul. This happens from great grief, or from an unhappy upbringing when parents make from their children’s souls paralytics.

Kids will remember less what we did for them and more how we spoke and reacted to them.

Being a parent is like being a catcher. You gotta handle whatever is thrown your way.

They did the best they could with the knowledge they had.” How the fuck did people know that? They didn’t have no way of knowing that. Even if they did the best they could with the knowledge they had, why the hell didn’t they have better knowledge? I mean, then nobody should ever fail an...

A successful father is not more successful than his children.

To quote the exceptional teacher Marva Collins, “I will is more important than IQ.” It is wonderful to have a terrific mind, but it’s been my experience that having outstanding intelligence is a very small part of the total package that leads to success and happiness. Discipline, hard work, perserverance, and generosity of spirit are,...

Too many times I’d left him reaching for me, from a babysitter’s arms. “Am I still a mother?” I asked myself… What parts of the day could I cut out and still give him enough? Paul never asked himself that. He thought he was a great dad.

During childhood, it’s about trying to help develop who your kid’s going to be. During adolescence, it’s about responding to who your kid wants to be.

80There is no greater influence in the lives of your children than the words you speak over them. The blessing of the father is incredibly potent and powerful. Your words give your children potential. As their father, you are prophesying their future!

Most of the time, it felt like my father and I were completely different species. Possibly literally, depending on the day and whether or not I actually qualified as human at the time.