Helen Hayes Quotes

No adult can bear a child’s burden or grow up in his stead.

Children need to trust and depend upon those who are responsible for them.

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.

I've always felt this, from when I was growing up to now with my son Riley. We don't let them be little. I was not a normal kid, but I had a sense of innocence far longer than we let kids.

There is no job more important than parenting. This I believe.

Having children makes you see the world in a completely different way. When you're responsible for those little lives, you can't slough it off or forget about it until later.

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.

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.

Children grow out of childhood, but parents never grow out of parenthood.

The adult ought never to mold the child after himself, but should leave him alone and work always from the deepest comprehension of the child himself.

Youth need guidance, direction, and proper restraint...Parents, too, have a responsibility in this training not to provoke children to wrath. They should be considerate not to irritate by vexatious commands or place unreasonable blame. Whenever possible they should give encouragement rather than remonstrance or reproof.

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".

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.

Every parent has the responsibility to cultivate his child's heart. If we leave our children's heart alone, they tend to become like a garden, overgrown with evil and with sin.

If we can keep ourselves from interfering with the natural laws of life, mistakes can be our child's finest teachers.

The greatest responsibility is your children. If my children turned out badly, I'd feel that nothing I had done was worthwhile.

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.

How can those of us who are parents help our children recognize their bliss?

Children have a lot more to worry about from the parents who raised them than from the books they read.

The question isn't so much "Are you parenting the right way?" as it is: "Are you the adult that you want your child to grow up to be?"

We have to get children to understand that not only do they have this incredible uniqueness, but they also have something that sometimes we forget about. They are also potentiality. They are much more undiscovered than they are discovered. And there's the wonder of it. It doesn't matter where they are, they're only just beginning and the big magical trip of life is digging it all out and discovering the wonderful you.

Children are very overprotected now, in lots of ways. We're very nervous about them. You know, people go, "Don't go outside! Or inside! Get into the cupboard with some spinach!" When I was a child they'd kick you out and you weren't expected to come back until there were bats!

Children can scarcely be fashioned to meet with our likes and our purpose. Just as God did us give them, so must we hold them and love them, nurture and teach them to fullness and leave them to be what they are.

It's not the child's responsibility to teach the parent who they are. It's the parent's responsibility to learn who the child is.