Bill Cosby Quotes

My children are grown now, they are more independent.

The better you are as a parent, the richer the nest you've built, the more difficult it is for your kids to leave. So they have to invent things to dislike about you. And they're brilliant at it.

Part of the thrill of guiding children into adulthood is the release. But it's also a parent's greatest act of surrender. Still, you have to let them go. Start now.

'After 17' is a song I wrote when my first daughter went to college, so that's kind of where I'm at in that part of my life. If you listen to that song and knew anything about me, you'd say, 'Oh yeah, he wrote that about his daughter,' but I try not to write them that they are so specific that they wouldn't apply to anybody that has a child.

Most parents' goal is to launch their children into the world with all the tools they need to make it on their own.

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.

This is the pain-pleasure of having newly adult children; they're innocent and ruthless in forgetting their sweet old dependence.

Children, I suppose, are always unfinished business: they begin as part of your own body, and continue as separate as another continent.

Your children will smash your understanding, knowledge and reality. You will be better off. Then they will leave. You'll miss them forever.

. . . I would have let him go one finger at a time, until, without his realizing, he'd be floating without me. And then I thought, perhaps that is what it means to be a [parent] - to teach your child to live without you.

Perhaps that is what it means to be a father - to teach your child to live without you.

There comes a moment as a parent when you realize you will no longer be the center of your child's universe.

I spend a lot of time thinking about this business of letting go - letting go of the children God gives to us for such a brief time before they go off on their own; letting go of old homes, old friends, old places and old dreams.

Father of four. I like the sound of that.

My kids are growing up and it's hard to accept they are their own person and they're independent.

I definitely do want a family. The idea of being a father and providing the type of love, guidance and support that my parents have given me is definitely down the road.

However painful the process of leaving home, for parents and for children, the really frightening thing for both would be the prospect of the child never leaving home.

I'm the father of four daughters.

All our children are grown up and have their own lives.

I want to see my child grow.

I know parents have a hard time letting their kids spread their wings and fly.

I can see why people keep having babies. We were looking at a school for my youngest this morning, and there were all these little boys and girls. So sweet. And then the teenagers walk past, and, my God, they're enormous, and I bet they don't kiss their mummies. I'm just going to force my children to remain lovely.

My son is 14, and I only have this time with him. True, it's not like before when I couldn't explain to a little boy why I can't read him his bedtime story six nights a week. And he's even said to me, 'Mom, if you want to do a show somewhere, you should go.'

It means everything to be a father. I had a father growing up, so I wanted my kids to have a father as well.

I think about the milestones from my childhood and what it will be like to watch our kids go through them. Taking Riley to her first day of school was a whirlwind. I can't imagine what middle school is going to be like, and high school, and graduation.