Children seldom turn out the way we expect. Then again, neither did we.

***

Difficult children, like difficult laundry, can turn out great if given special attention before the stains set.

***

Share your strength with your children when they are young, and they will share their youth with you when your strength runs out.

***

Of all the things we give a child, our words must be the most carefully wrapped.

***

Children are like water: Bottle them up and they stagnate; let them run wild and they make a mess; guide them and they bring life to all they touch.

***

Love does to children what sun does to flowers.

***

If parents do only two things—love their children and pray for them—God will more than make up for everything else.

***

If we try to spare our children every disappointment and difficulty when they are young, we rob them of the opportunity to learn and mature and grow strong enough to face and overcome disappointments and difficulties that will come when they’re older.

***

Show your children love, tenderness, gentleness, patience, and respect, and they will treat others likewise.

***

Train your child as if you were preparing a prince for his future reign, for he will grow up to be one of the forces that shapes the future of mankind.

***

Look for five things on which you can compliment your children today.

  ***

You can’t take it for granted that because you know you love, appreciate, and value your children, that they know that. Tell them so!

***

Love has creative power. In the home, love does its magic by engendering unselfish acts and helping each family member to see the others in a positive light.

***

It’s easy to inadvertently make children feel unloved or unappreciated, but a little forethought and courtesy can have just the opposite effect.

***

You will never regret spending time with your children, but you will regret it if you don’t.

***

Maintaining an open line of communication with children when all is going well will make it easier for them to accept constructive criticism or even reproof when it’s needed.

***

A few minutes of quality time with your children at the start and end of each day—a hug, a story, a prayer—will go a long way toward helping them feel loved and secure.

***

Parenting has never been easy, but all loving parents have one great thing going for them from day one: their children love and look up to them more than anyone else in the world.

***

While your children are a gift from Heaven, they are also a work in progress. It’s your job to help them grow into loving, responsible adults.

Motherhood is the most important job there is. If you don’t believe that, try asking a few people who had the greatest influence on them while they were growing up. It doesn’t matter who you ask, from the humblest to the greatest, the most frequent answer by far will be, “My mother.”

Today’s mothers-and that includes you-are shaping the people who will shape tomorrow’s world. Your children will grow up to be world changers. They may not have an impact on the whole world, but they will have an effect on the world of those around them, for better or for worse. It’s your responsibility to set your children on the right path.

                                    *

Children are not born with knowledge of the virtues. They must learn what they are.

                                                                                       *

Attaining virtue is like so much else in life: It takes lots of practice. By putting virtues into action over and over again, we help them take root. Eventually they become second nature—they become part of one’s character.

                                                                                      *

Your family is the first and most important school of morality. Home is where your child comes to know right and wrong through the nurturing and protective care of those who love him/her more than anyone else. Teachers should be allies in this endeavor, but they cannot be substitutes. Schools cannot replace parents in the crucial task of molding character in the young.

                                                                                      *

Teach your children to care deeply about the good.

                                                                                      *

“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” -  Proverbs 22:6

                                                                                      *

You may feel insignificant in the grand scheme of life, but you are daily creating the world that tomorrow’s children will live in. Each decision you make helps to shape the legacy that will be left to them.

                                                                                     *

Today’s children are tomorrow’s leaders. How today’s parents train their children determines the future of the world.

                                                                                     *

Invest in your children. Give them your time, your attention, your love. They are the future.

                                                                                     *

Whatever you teach a child, whether it’s through your words or through your actions, lives on forever in his or her heart.

                                                                                     *


Put a premium on giving your children and young people the well-rounded upbringing they need and deserve.

                                                                                    *

If you set the right example for your children during their formative years, those bonds of love and respect will be unbreakable. And your children will grow into adults whom you can be proud of.

It's not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can't tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it myself.—Joyce Maynard

I don't know what planet I was on when I thought that when I became a parent, all the skills I'd need would simply come to me. It wasn't long before I realized that parenting, for the countless incomparable joys it has brought into my life, is hard work. Being a parent has meant adjusting my aspirations and priorities to match my new reality. Every day is a learning process as I adapt to the evolving needs of my children.--Katiuscia Giusti

Children keep us in check. Their laughter prevents our hearts from hardening. Their dreams ensure we never lose our drive to make ours a better world. They are the greatest disciplinarians known to mankind.--Queen Rania of Jordan, Hello Magazine

If I had my child to raise all over again,
I'd build self-esteem first, and the house later.
I'd finger-paint more, and point the finger less.
I would do less correcting and more connecting.
I'd take my eyes off my watch, and watch with my eyes.
I'd take more hikes and fly more kites.
I'd stop playing serious, and seriously play.
I would run through more fields and gaze at more stars.
I'd do more hugging and less tugging.
—Diane Loomans

No one ever promised me it would be easy, and it's not. But I also get many rewards from seeing my children grow, make strong decisions for themselves, and set out on their own as independent, strong, likable human beings. And I like who I am becoming, too. Having [children] has made me more human, more flexible, more humble, more questioning.—Anonymous father

When seen only as presiding over a child's growth, parenting can be frustrating and burdensome. However, when seen as an opportunity for personal growth for adults, parenting is one of the most creative and affirming experiences that life offers. It gives us chances to improve ourselves and broaden our own personal horizons as we model for our children the qualities we would like to see in them. For some of us, our own children give us a chance to become the parents we wish that we had.—Jack C. Westman, M.D.

Originally published in Activated Magazine. Used with permission.

My father didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.—Clarence Budington Kelland

* * *

My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, "You're tearing up the grass." "We're not raising grass," Dad would reply. "We're raising boys."—Harmon Killebrew

* * *

A father carries pictures where his money used to be.—Author unknown
* * *

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.—Mark Twain, "Old Times on the Mississippi," Atlantic Monthly, 1874

* * *

The greatest gift I ever had
Came from God; I call him Dad!
—Author unknown

* * *

Any man can be a father. It takes someone special to be a dad.—Author unknown

* * *

Character is largely caught, and the father and the home should be the great sources of character infection.—Frank H. Cheley

* * *

You have a lifetime to work, but children are only young once.—Polish proverb

* * *

A man's children and his garden both reflect the amount of weeding done during the growing season.—Author unknown

* * *

Father of fathers, make me one,
A fit example for a son.
—Douglas Malloch

* * *

Directly after God in heaven comes a Papa.— Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as a boy

* * *

Noble fathers have noble children.—Euripides

* * *

I watched a small man with thick calluses on both hands work fifteen and sixteen hours a day. I saw him once literally bleed from the bottoms of his feet, a man who came here [to the U.S., from Italy] uneducated, alone, unable to speak the language, who taught me all I needed to know about faith and hard work by the simple eloquence of his example.—Mario Cuomo

* * *

A good father is worth a hundred teachers.--Jean Jacques Rousseau

* * *

Until you have a son of your own, you will never know the joy, the love beyond feeling that resonates in the heart of a father as he looks upon his son. You will never know the sense of honor that makes a man want to be more than he is and to pass something good and hopeful into the hands of his son.--Kent Nerburn, Letters to My Son

* * *

Originally published in the Activated magazine. Used with permission. 

A mother is a person who, seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie.--Tenneva Jordan

The best medicine in the world is a mother’s kiss.--Anonymous

Mama was my greatest teacher—a teacher of compassion, love, and fearlessness. If love is sweet as a flower, then my mother is that sweet flower of love.--Stevie Wonder

To a child’s ear, “mother” is magic in any language.--Arlene Benedict

Youth fades, love droops, the leaves of friendship fall; a mother’s secret hope outlives them all.--Oliver Wendell Holmes

A mother is the truest friend we have when trials, heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine, desert us when troubles thicken around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.--Washington Irving

God sees us through our mothers’ eyes and rewards us for our virtues.--Ganeshan Venkatarman

Mother is the bank where we deposit all our hurts and worries.--Unknown

My mother’s love for me was so great I have worked hard to justify it.--Marc Chagall

No influence is so powerful as that of the mother.--Sarah Josepha Hale

The strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.--Barbara Kingsolver

Mothers are instinctive philosophers.--Harriet Beecher Stowe

A good mother is worth hundreds of schoolmasters.--George Herbert

The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom.--Henry Ward Beecher

Mother-love is the fuel that enables a normal human being to do the impossible.--Unknown

A mother loves her children even when they least deserve to be loved.--Kate Samperi

Mother is the one we count on for the things that matter most of all.--Katharine Butler Hathaway

A mother understands what a child does not say.--Jewish proverb

All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual, and physical education I received from her.--George Washington

The noblest calling in the world is that of a mother. True motherhood is the most beautiful of all arts, the greatest of all professions. She who can paint a masterpiece or write a book that will influence millions deserves the plaudits and admiration of mankind, but she who rears successfully a family of healthy, beautiful sons and daughters whose immortal souls will be exerting an influence throughout the ages, long after paintings shall have faded and books and statues shall have been destroyed, deserves the highest honor that man can give.--David O. McKay

Taken from Activated magazine. Used with permission.

We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today.—Stacia Tauscher

*

You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.—Franklin P. Jones

*

Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.—Rabindranath Tagore

*

There’s nothing that can help you understand your beliefs more than trying to explain them to an inquisitive child.—Frank A. Clark

*

There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million.—Walt Streightiff

*

Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.—Elizabeth Stone

*

Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children, and no theories.—John Wilmot

*

To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself.—Josh Billings

*

It’s not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can’t tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it myself.—Joyce Maynard

*

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

*

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.—C.G. Jung

*

Children have more need of models than of critics.—Carolyn Coats

*

Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children.—Charles R. Swindoll

*

What a child doesn’t receive he can seldom later give.—P.D. James

*

If you want your children to improve, let them overhear the nice things you say about them to others.—Haim Ginott

*

In bringing up children, spend on them half as much money and twice as much time.—Author unknown

*

What’s done to children, they will do to society.—Karl Menninger

*

You have a lifetime to work, but children are only young once.—Polish proverb

*

Kids spell love T-I-M-E.—John Crudele

*

The guys who fear becoming fathers don’t understand that fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man. The end product of child raising is not the child but the parent.—Frank Pittman


Excerpted from the Activated Magazine.