Nia Long Quotes

When a father, absent during the day, returns home at six, his children receive only his temperament, not his teaching.

I am a step mother, so how children deal with divorce is something I've witnessed first hand and thought about a lot.

The idea of feminine authority is so deeply embedded in the human subconscious that even after all these centuries of father-right the young child instinctively regards the mother as the supreme authority. He looks upon the father as equal with himself, equally subject to the woman's rule. Children have to be taught to love, honor, and respect the father, a task usually assumed by the mother.

The mother's and father's attitudes toward the child correspond to the child's own needs.... Mother has the function of making himsecure in life, father has the function of teaching him, guiding him to cope with those problems with which the particular society the child has been born into confronts him.

What usually has the strongest psychic effect on the child is the life which the parents have not lived

Children can find other children to be pals. Children need fathers to be fathers.

Since no one is always right, always being right is really a role model for his children feeling inadequate.

My children's favorite, and it's funny because they've seen it but they have a difficult time watching it because it's their dad and they make that connection, but Edward Scissorhands is by far my kids' favorite. They just connect with the character, and they see their dad feeling that isolation, that loneliness. He's a tragic character, so I think it's hard for them. They bawl.

I think too often in our society parents, who may have good impulses, overreach and try to mold and shape and direct their child.

One day my dad said, "If you guys ever stop singing, I'll drop you like a hot potato." That's what he said. It hurt me. You don't say that to children and I never forgot it.

I have long believed that what most affects a child is not the divorce, per se, but how it is handled

You don't know the things in your childhood that influence you. You can't possibly know them. People today try to analyze the early environment and the reasons for something that happened, but if you look at children of the same family -- children who have identical parents, go to identical schools, have an almost identical upbringing, and yet who have totally different experiences and neuroses -- you realize that what influences the children is not so much the obvious externals as their emotional experiences. Of course any psychiatrist knows that.

Children are sensitive and receptive to the thoughts of others about them, and often outpicture the fears of their parents.

In terms of you happiness, in terms of the matters that make you proud or sad, nothing-I repeat, nothing-will have so profound an effect on you as the way your children turn out. You will either rejoice and boast of their accomplishments or you will weep, head in hands, bereft and forlorn, if they become a disappointment or an embarrassment to you.

Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners.

Once you learn the idea of what a good guy is, you want your dad to be a good guy, and when your dad lets you down and doesn't act like a good guy, it's disappointing and can make you angry as you see it happen, which is beautiful and very believable.

Children pay little attention to their parents' teachings, but reproduce their characters faithfully

Insults from an adolescent daughter are more painful, because they are seen as coming not from a child who lashes out impulsively,who has moments of intense anger and of negative feelings which are not integrated into that large body of responses, impressions and emotions we call 'our feelings for someone,' but instead they are coming from someone who is seen to know what she does.

The most serious point in the case is the disposition of the child." What on earth has that to do with it?" I ejaculated. My dear Watson, you as a medical man are continually gaining insight as to the tendencies of a child by the study of the parents. Don't you see that the converse is equally valid. I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.

This mother needs happy, reputable children, and that one needs unhappy ones: otherwise she cannot show her kindness as a mother.

People say children from broken homes have it hard, but the children of charmed marriages have their own particular challenges.

What assurance do I have that your parenting isn't screwing me up?

In intimate family life, there comes a moment when children, willingly or no, become the judges of their parents.

All of my children are the same way I am. They're little artists too, in their own ways.

My mom was more into the yelling. She was the enforcer. She was the one that laid down the law. My dad made up the rules, but my mom laid down the law. It's not her words, it's her tone that sticks with me.