Bruno Bettelheim Quotes

But I think that parents who criticise their children too much are in fact better than parents who praise their children too much.

Certainly my parents were Dr. [Benjamin] Spock-driven parents. So they were tolerant.

There is never much trouble in any family where the children hope someday to resemble their parents.

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

The most important influence on a child is the character of its parents, rather than this or that single event.

Different parents have different standards for their children.

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.

If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do matters very much.

I'm not a goody-two-shoes. I'm just a father with four children.

Children learn a lot from what their parents say. But they learn a lot more from what their parents do.

One of the things that I learned at a very young age is the power of a parent's words to their children.

It's interesting as a mom to reflect on your own parenting skills. The core of our beliefs may stay the same, but our perspective changes over the years and evolves with each child that comes through us.

As a child, you are influenced by your parents' actions.

So much does the moral health depend upon the moral atmosphere that is breathed, and so great is the influence daily exercised by parents over their children by living a life before their eyes, that perhaps the best system of parental instruction might be summed up in these two words: 'Improve thyself.'

If you see in your children most of your own faults, you have failed as a parent, but succeeded as a neurotic.

There is nothing more important than parents passing on a generational legacy of faith and values to their children.

Parents cannot expect advice to have the same force upon their children as experience has upon themselves.

A lot of things I try to instill in my children comes off of what I've learned from my parents. First of all, you have to lead by example. You can't say one thing and behave another way. Kids learn more from watching you in life than what you say to them. So I try to be the best example I can be to them.

Was it Gorky who had said, "If your children are no better than you are, you have fathered them in vain, indeed you have lived in vain".

The average parent may, for example, plant an artist or fertilize a ballet dancer and end up with a certified public accountant. We cannot train children along chicken wire to make them grow in the right direction. Tying them to stakes is frowned upon, even in Massachusetts.

There is a tension between our desire to get our kids to turn out a particular way versus letting them develop to be their own person. If there were a pill that would make my child turn out the way I wanted, I'm not sure I'd take it.

Everyone of us plays 'tapes' from our parents until we die. That's why it's so important to talk good values to your child

My message to little kids who aspire to be anything they want to be is to listen to their parents.

Infants manners are moulded more by the example of Parents, then by stars at their nativities.

Every word, movement and action has an effect. No other person or outside force has a greater influence on a child than the parent.