Kelly Ripa Quotes

Our need for certainty in an endeavor as uncertain as raising children makes explicit 'how-to-parent' strategies both seductive and dangerous.

I love to read books that focus on parenting topics because there are so many different ways to do things. I find these books offer a lot of great opinions on many different subjects.

There are many things I wish I could redo as a parent.

As I started parenting, I realised there is no formula to it.

To give a child liberty is not to abandon him to himself.

Raising children is like making biscuits: it is as easy to raise a big batch as one, while you have your hands in the dough.

My children are now adults and just kind of guide them while they allow you to have input in their lives without controlling them the way you did when they were toddlers. These are good steps to use for fathers at each step of their children's lives.

To you who are parents, I say, show love to your children. You know you love them, but make certain they know it as well. They are so precious. Let them know. Call upon our Heavenly Father for help as you care for their needs each day and as you deal with the challenges which inevitably come with parenthood. You need more than your own wisdom in rearing them.

Don't throw away your friendship with your teenager over behavior that has no great moral significance. There will be plenty of real issues that require you to stand like a rock. Save your big guns for those crucial confrontations.

I would never recommend my novel as a parenting guide. But we happen to live at a very hectic and hurried time, and I believe that many parents are too wrapped up in themselves.

Raising a child is like taking care of someone who's on way too many shrooms, while you yourself are on a moderate amount of shrooms. I am not confident in my decisions, but I know you should not be eating a mousepad.

The trouble with most problem-solving books for parents is that they start with the idea that the child has a problem. Then they try to tell us how to fix the child, or else, after blaming the parent, they suggest how we can fix ourselves.

Maybe I had three children in the first place so I wouldn't ever have to play board games. In my religion, martyrs die.

I was suppose to write a book about being a mom, to organize my thoughts into chapters and figure out a structure to hang them on, to make a lasting point, but somehow I decided to go ahead and become a mother instead.

Many years from now when your children ask what New York City was like just after 9/11, this will be the book you give them in response. It's an exquisite novel full of heart, soul, passion and intelligence, and it's the one this great New York author was born to write.

As a young boy you gave me whoopings to save my life.

I told my son, who's 11, "Look, I don't care if you curse - it's other people that care." So we tried that experiment, and he just cursed all the time. And I was like, "All right, now I care that you curse." You try to have this idealized view, and it's like, "I don't care." But it's just going to cause chaos.

You learn a lot though when you have kids, I'll tell you what. Did you know when a baby poops its diapers, you're not supposed to hit him with a rolled-up newspaper?

Parents teach in the toughest school in the word: The School for Making People. You are the board of education, the principal, theclassroom teacher, and the janitor, all rolled into two. . . . There are few schools to train you for your job, and there is no general agreement on the curriculum. . . . You are on duty, or at least on call, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, for at least 18 years for each child you have. Besides that, you have to contend with an administration that has two leaders or bosses, whichever the case may be.

There's a marketing scheme that tells you that pregnancy and child rearing will make you into a moron, that your kids are only happy when you're buying them stuff. It's hard being a parent, but I laugh a lot and smile a lot and really enjoy it. The ratio of laughter to sadness is higher. There's part of me that wants to broadcast that. Parenting only affirmed what I already cared about, and that's good.

MOTHER: Why, just lying there, Jim, you run so fast. I never saw anyone move so much, just sleeping. Promise me, Jim. Wherever you go and come back, bring lots of kids. Let them run wild. Let me spoil them, some day. JIM: I'm never going to own anything that can hurt me.

One of the things I've discovered in general about raising kids is that they really don't give a damn if you walked five miles to school.

I always remind myself that [ Jean-Paul] Sartre and [Simone] de Beauvoir didn't have children. And when you don't have children, it might be easier to believe that the child doesn't come with something.

There's no encyclopedia or book about parenthood. You learn on the fly.

Spare the rod and spoil the child - that is true. But, beside the rod, keep an apple to give him when he has done well.