Chris Meledandri Quotes

Showing up in the lives of children is everything.

We're good at taking care of little kids, and spend a lot of energy teaching them things like how to read. But when kids get as tall as their parents and can look them in the eyes, we tend to drop the ball - at a time they most need a loving consistent community of adults, be it parents, aunts, uncles, or others.

Good mothers and good fathers and good families don't always have great children.

You can choose your family sometimes. You can choose people, it could be a teacher, it could be a professor, it could be someone you work with that actually genuinely cares about you and wants you to succeed.

Many people think that discipline is the essence of parenting. But that isn't parenting. Parenting is not telling your child what to do when he or she misbehaves. Parenting is providing the conditions in which a child can realize his or her full human potential.

Children need models rather than critics.

It is a truism that children need more of Mother than of money.

If it weren't for the mentorship and guidance from people like my mother, James Brown and others, I wouldn't have been able to make something of my life.

Teachers are unparalleled in the role they play in children's lives.

I believe that the first 8 years are most important and the time in a child's life when parents must be absolutely and completely present.

I'm very pleased how my children have turned out.

I think right now the way society's going, I think role models are important, and kids need direction. If I didn't have that direction growing up, who knows what I could be doing, because I've been lost many times in my life, and I've had to have someone guide me back on the right path.

The only thing an adult can give a child is time.

Perhaps the soundest advice for parents is: Lighten up. People have been raising children for approximately as long as there have been people.

Children have more need of models than of critics.

I went to my local Sure Start centre, and they put me on a parenting course. I learned things that might seem simple - that it was important to hug and love your child, and read to them. This might seem obvious, but it wasn't to me at the time.

Throughout my life, my mom, my dad, my grandmother - these were people who made sure that I had the right people around me uplifting me.

I understand how important it is for both parents to be in a child's life.

Everything you worry about as a parent can be improved by sitting down regularly with your kids.

I had a bunch of people who kinda looked out for me. You know, gave me the words of wisdom.

The best way to raise positive children in a negative world is to have positive parents who love them unconditionally and serve as excellent role models.

Years later, nothing makes me more grateful as a parent than my daughters' encounters with classroom wizards.

Any parent knows how to be the ideal parent.

To me, Slow parenting is about bringing balance into the home. Children need to strive and struggle and stretch themselves, but that does not mean childhood should be a race. Slow parents give their children plenty of time and space to explore the world on their own terms.

I'm pretty intentional about being highly invested in my kids' lives.