Augustus Y. Napier Quotes

My parents were just searching for an alternative way of raising their children.

I try to listen to my children. I try to change with my children.

'm just going to be a good friend to my kid. One thing I definitely want to change is that whole 'I don't want you to make the same mistakes' mentality. My dad didn't have much money growing up; he didn't have much of an education. He forced that on me, and I didn't want it.

Whatever I have not yet learned to tolerate in myself inevitably will appear in my children. In this way, they, like Julia, guide me to a new level of self-awareness and everyone benefits.

The biggest lesson I've learned from my children is to look in the mirror at myself, not at them. I've realized that everything I've done has had an impact on them. We have to understand that they are like little paparazzi. They take our picture when we don't want them to and then they show it to us in their behavior.

Every woman has a mother, and every woman will have an issue with that mother and things that mother did or didn't do. It just depends on how you choose to process the lessons that you learned from your own mother.

I never thought about having a daughter, and then I had a daughter, and it was a remarkable thing. It was very different from having a son and your response to it. With a son, it's much more complex. And it's probably because of my stuff in the past. With a daughter, I was surprised at how simple it is.

I realize that I was being the kind of parent that I thought my daughter needed. I was a good role model for her on what a working mom can do.

You need to be emotionally ready for a baby, and the best way to do that is to clean skeletons from your own closest. Deal with the baggage of your childhood, or you'll just pass it on to your kid.

I had to learn to not be so hard. And I had a wife and, at that time, a partner when Samori was born, and for most of Samori's life, a partner, who, for whatever reason, did not have to learn that and was very tender and very, very soft with him.

This goes across all racial lines, ethnicities, religious backgrounds. People believe in disciplining their children... It's the 21st century. My mom was wrong. She did the best she could, but she was wrong about some of that stuff she taught me. And I promised my kids, I won't teach that mess to them.

I think our jobs as parents is to raise our children with empathy - to figure out who this little character is, almost from birth, and then guide them to fulfill their best potential.

My dad being not the greatest dad in the world has made me a better parent.

We are here to love, not to judge. I'd been blaming and raging. I certainly wasn't loving my daughter that afternoon as God loves me. God's love doesn't insist on perfection or even good common sense. Why then should I demand more of those I love? With this tiny change in perspective I began to see the need for correction wasn't in my daughter, but in me.

Some have said that 'Frankenstein' is a story of a bad parenting giving rise to a troubled child.

When you have kids, you can choose to make them like you, or become like them, and if you've got something that's going to change every six days or six minutes, you can decide to be as awake and alive and learning as they are.

I was so determined not to pass on to my children what I perceived to be the faults of my upbringing.

When it comes right down to it, developing a critical sensibility about parenting isn't really about disapproval; it's about honing your own sensibilities, figuring out how you want to parent.

My father was often angry when I was most like him.

I'm a really fun aunt, so I hope I'm going to be a fun mom! I like to have fun and be silly and not take myself too seriously with the kids, so I hope that will translate when I actually have my own.

My mom had very low expectations for me, and she really had a point. I was a big problem at seventeen. If I had a kid like me, I would have those same expectations.

I married an excellent parent, but I'm not sure that I've made a great parent.

My mom was a terrible parent of young children. And thank God - I thank God every time I think of it - I was sent to my paternal grandmother. Ah, but my mother was a great parent of a young adult.

If your mother did not know how to love herself, or your father did not know how to love himself, then it would be impossible for them to teach you to love yourself. They were doing the best they could with what they had been taught as children.

Something like a divorce does change you, but children change you more, and now I've had three.