Nia Vardalos Quotes

I always feel like the odd mom out, because trust me when I tell you I'm on my girls. And every time I am, I know from the outside it looks like I'm an overbearing, controlling parent. But I don't think we have any responsibility to anybody else but our kids and ourselves.

It might suprise you to know I think I raised them too much, too

I haven't been really guilty of being an uber helicopter parent; I took the baby monitors out when they were three months old because I thought that was an invasion of their privacy.

I may be the only mother in America who knows exactly what their child is up to all the time.

When I travel with my kids abroad, I am not myself, but I'm more a father who wants to protect them. Sometimes, I am even aggressive about certain things and get surprised seeing myself like that: for instance, when people want to take pictures of them. I am fine if they want to take my pictures, but they are not public property.

We all, as parents, are laughing at ourselves and helicopter parenting and saying, 'This isn't the way we were parented; we were allowed to run free.' When I talk to my friends, we are all fascinated by what we are doing, but we can't seem to stop ourselves.

The problem with children is that you have to put up with their parents.

I'm worried about parents who aren't parenting.

It's difficult to keep that perspective, I think, as a parent: to know your boundaries as to what's good parenting or just projecting your own expectations on your kids. That's the hardest.

We're living in a time when parenting is not at all mirroring the way I was parented. For me, I just followed my parents around on their errands; when they were busy on the phone, I was quiet. It's a different kettle of fish these days: They run the house, and you listen to their music, and you go to their appointments.

There is a lot of parenting that's completely out of your control, but I think we live in an era right now where we think if, God forbid, you couldn't talk to someone, you would flip out - you know what I mean?

You learn that there's no right way to do it, no wrong way to do it. It's just what you feel comfortable with, to trust that, and don't let anybody box you in to a certain style of parenting or make you feel a certain way about what your kids do.

Nick's mother and I were attentive, probably overly attentive - part of the first wave of parents obsessed with our children in a self-conscious way.

I think it's always natural for children to rebel against their parents and establish their own identity. And also, I think parents get invested in, you know, doing the right thing? And so their anxiety about being good parents might, in a way, affect a relationship negatively.

The line between being a nurturing parent and an over-bearing, damaging parent is one that's very delicate.

While having two biological parents at home is, the statistics tell us, best for children, a single-parent household is almost as good.

I think parenting is very different now. We're totally governed by our children!

Different parents have different standards for their children.

My father wasn't really involved and my mom is the light in my life.

One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.

My own parents were very un-neurotic, so I never thought that I had to change enormously in order to become a parent.

Mothers are not supposed to give guidance.

When I wrote 'Runaways,' I was a naive kid who thought that all parents were evil. Now that I'm a wise old man with children of my own, I am certain that all parents are evil.

I do feel a lot of times like I'm out of my league with my kids in terms of what my responsibility is.

I think that being a parent has expanded my writing, expanded my understanding of my characters, and has added a depth and richness to my work. Having kids deepened my idea of parenting and all the anxieties that come along with it.