Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

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

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

A child identifies his parents with God, whether or not the adults want that role. Most children 'see' God the way they perceive their earthly fathers.

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

Bringing up children is not a real occupation, because children come up just the same, brought or not.

Whatever the parents are doing, the kids will follow suit.

I'm very interested in people, so if a character happens to be real, there's that much more to look at.

The footsteps a child follows are most likely to be the ones his parents thought they covered up.

Children internalize their parents' unhappiness. Fortunately, they absorb our contentment just as readily.

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

All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped.

A mother's example sketches the outline of her child's character.

A low self-love in the parent desires that his child should repeat his character and fortune.

The mother is the early care giver and primary source of identification for all children.... A daughter continues to identify with the mother

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

One has very little influence upon one's children. Their characters are what they are and one can do nothing to change them.

Some children do what they’re told to do; some children do what they’re told not to do; all children do what they’re parents have done.

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.

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

As important as the father is in the life of a child, even he must take second place to mother during the first three years of life.... Consequently, mothers actually have more to do with producing a predisposition toward homosexuality than fathers. Two kinds of mothers are particularly harmful - smother mothers and dominating mothers.

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

Parents can ruin children, and sometimes that's a learned behavior. Sometimes you can't blame your parents for it, sometimes you can. I think to me, that's what the whole paradox is, is people that have children that don't even know how to raise them.

I think it's up to the parents to determine whether what they're doing is consigning their child to difficulty. It's not as though they were crippling their children after they were born.

I've inherited the worst of each parent. I have my father's hypochondria and lack of concentration. I have his amorality. I have everything bad that he had. Then I have my mother's surly, pill-like, complaining, whining attitude.

There is no single effort more radical in its potential for saving the world than a transformation of the way we raise our children.