Russell Baker Quotes

No matter what parents do, kids retain their uniqueness.

I think that parents grow up with an idea of what they want their kids to be like - and then their kids grow up to be people of themselves, of their own.

I am who I am today because of my mother.

Don't live vicariously through your kids or try to shape them into who you wanted to be, like the popular kid or an athlete. Children should be given the opportunity to be themselves.

I started my career in parent education with the idea that we needed to let our kids go. I believed that parents were suffocating for their children. There was no room for individuality and personhood.

I certainly wouldn't want to be a Mini Me of any of the people whose footsteps I've followed in.

There is one thing you and I as parents cannot do, not do we want to do if we really think about it, and that's control our children's will--that spirit that lets them be themselves apart from you and me. They are not ours to possess, control, manipulate, or even to make mind.

Children need parents who will let them grow up to be themselves, but parents often have personal agendas they try to impose on their children.

I discovered very early that it wasn't quite enough for me to imitate people.

I'd like to thank my parents for always stressing, be an individual.

Lot of things depend on the up bringing of a child.

Where you raise your children isn't as important as how you raise your children.

There are many teachers who could ruin you. Before you know it you could be a pale copy of this teacher or that teacher. You have to evolve on your own.

My own eight children all march to the beat of their inner music, and in some cases, it is definitely far away from what I hear. I've had to honor their instincts and their choices, and merely guided them out of harm's way until they could be their own guides.

I think with motherhood and child-rearing in general, everyone's going to tell you how to do it and why. I've always said to other mothers and women when they've asked me, that you have to find your own way and find out what works for your family, at all costs.

There was no one in particular I really tried to copy.

If you have children, you know you're responsible for somebody. You realize you are being imitated; your belief systems and priorities have a direct influence on these children, who are like flowers in a garden.

The challenging part of parenting for me is to make sure that an individual person is an individual and not some sort of cookie-cutter version of me. At the same time, I want to make sure that I impart my sense of the world as an adult.

I think it's really important for every mother to find their own way.

My mother had a very open-minded philosophy about having children: that they should be free to develop in their own way.

It's important to let kids be themselves and to let them make mistakes. Self-discovery goes a long way.

Everyone is different, and each has to create his or her own path, irrespective of who their parents are.

The more we try to control our kids and create who they are and where they're going, the more that will fall apart. That's a dangerous thing. So you need to actually manage the fear and figure out who your kids are. Who do they want to be and how can you help shape that, but not control it.

Kids will tell me 'oh I want to be like you when I grow up,' you know. I just thought 'nah, don't be like me, be like you,' because first of all they don't really know me but second of all I understand what they're trying to say but I just let them know - be like you.

Children always tend to imitate everything that we are doing in front of them.