Rafael Cruz Quotes

My parents were pretty liberal, but they were still parents. I definitely had my teenage rebellion.

It's very important that we instill some respect for the parents. In America especially, the kids are unruly, screaming at Mommy and Daddy, running the show.

You have to give kids something to rebel against. You can't like their music - you have to call it noise. It's incumbent on a parent.

I think the biggest problem is parents are so concerned with being friends with their kids. You're not their friend. You're their parent.

It's a long haul bringing up our children to be good; you have to keep doing that — bring them up — and that means bringing things up with them: Asking, telling, sounding them out, sounding off yourself — finding, through experience, your own words, your own way of putting them together. You have to learn where you stand, and make sure your kids learn [where you stand], understand why, and soon, you hope, they'll be standing there beside you, with you.

The best school of discipline is home. Family life is God's own method of training the young, and homes are very much as women make them.

My mom always used to say, "You'll be a better kid if you just listen."

Parents don't need government to raise their kids. That's their job. But government can help them protect their children from influences they may not want their kids exposed to.

Our parents were very strict. Not in a brutal or awful way, but there were definite rules, such as after six on a school night you didn't go out, and at weekends you had to be home by a certain time. It wasn't particularly sheltered, but we were well brought-up.

You have to discipline your children, or they won't respect you, law enforcement or God or anyone else.

The first Law of Heaven is obedience, and it should be the first law of every home. It is the foundation of an orderly home, a successful family, and the successful lives of the children. The wife is the key.

A child who is allowed to be disrespectful to his parents will not have true respect for anyone.

The child supplies the power but the parents have to do the steering.

I have sons, and they have never said the word hell in front of me or my wife. That's the truth.

When a child does bad things, the parents are always going to love their child even if they do something bad.

To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while.

The only group in America that deserves to scrutinize what we are doing... are parents.

I was a good kid. My parents laid rules out for me, and I followed them.

One father is enough to govern one hundred sons, but not a hundred sons one father.

A wise parent humors the desire for independent action, so as to become the friend and advisor when his absolute rule shall cease.

I think all kids think their parents are strict. My parents aren't superstrict, but they seem to be stricter than most. But even though it's like, 'Oh, gosh, I've gotta be in at this time,' they know what they're doing. I have great parents.

Parents learn the uses of power and its limits. They can insist on certain outward behavior but cannot change inner attitudes. They can require obedience but not goodness - and certainly not love.

My children didn't when they were little because I thought that they had to be of a certain age. I hoped they liked me well enough not to want to see me in that sort of a spot.

Having kids certainly gets me to ask the question, 'Who is the adult here, and who is the kid?'

Parenting is difficult under any circumstances, and in my father's view, to raise a morally upright and honest child, you sometimes have to lie to him.