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

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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...

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

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.

But I think parents aren’t teachers anymore. Parents — or a whole lot of us, at least — lead by mouth instead of by example. It seems to me that if a child’s hero is their mother or father — or even better, both of them in tandem — then the rough road of learning...

As his children, we were treated as some species of migrant workers who happened to be passing through. My father was the only person I ever knew who looked upon childhood as a dishonorable vocation one grew out of as quickly as possible.

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.

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.

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.

Treat a man as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he could be and he will become what he should be.

The word on the street was that I had two options when it came to caring for my future baby: I could either eat, sleep, drink, bathe, walk, and work with my baby permanently affixed to my body until the two of us meld into one, or I could leave my baby out naked on...

We tend to take whatever’s worked in our particular set of circumstances (big family, small family, AP, Ezzo, home school, public school) and project that upon everyone else in the world as the ideal.

The French believe that kids feel confident when they’re able to do things for themselves, and do those things well. After children have learned to talk, adults don’t praise them for saying just anything. They praise them for saying interesting things, and for speaking well.

Thank you very much,” Scottie said, and for some reason, the fact that I didn’t get this made me feel completely besieged. It’s crazy how much fathers are supposed to know these days. I come from the school of thought where a dad’s absence is something to be counted on. Now I see all the...

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.

You are almost never cool to your children.

Exactly what are you wanting to teach your children? -How to love and care for themselves, or how to neglect and abandon themselves? Self-sarifice is NOT setting a good example.

My life has been shaped by the decision two people made over 24 years ago. They decided to adopt a child. They got me, and I got a chance at the kind of life all children deserve.

If you do not have a close friendship with your children, I will.” Child Molester warning all parents from the book Type 1 Sociopath

Well, we spent enough on gymnastics.”Christ, did we,’ said Maureen. ‘So many lessons.’So many lessons, it was true: art and music and ice-skating; Lily’s every fleeting interest enthusiastically, abundantly indulged. Not to mention the many more practical investments–chemistry tutoring when she struggled, English enrichment when she excelled, SAT courses to propel her to the school...

One must make allowances for a parental instinct that has been starving for twenty-five or thirty years. It is famished, it is crazed with hunger by that time, and will be entirely satisfied with anything that comes handy; its taste is atrophied, it can’t tell mud cat from shad. A devil born to a young...

Autism is just the surface. What is inside each of us is what matters, autistic or not.

Teachable moments are any time that you use situations to dialogue with your child about what’s going on- what he or she has seen, heard, or done. As this passage from Deuteronomy (Deut. 6:6-7) describes, teachable moments can be any time you and your child are together.

Everything I had to give went to my children, and though I loved them and my husband utterly, the drudgery of the day-to-day made it seem as if not love but coffee, my Toyota and sheer logistics were what propelled me through life.