Anna Quindlen Quotes

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

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.

The relation between parents and children is essentially based on teaching.

We need to stop the erosion of parental authority.

When my children were young, I was very cocky. I thought I could maintain total control.

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.

Let the child's first lesson be obedience, and the second will be what thou wilt.

All the time a person is a child he is both a child and learning to be a parent. After he becomes a parent he becomes predominantly a parent reliving childhood.

I was raised by free-spirited people, though my father gave me a very strong work ethic.

They are amazing kids so we let them make decisions but also have discipline.

And part of that is, what is the point of having children if you don't have the privilege of bringing them up?

If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do matters very much.

While they are kids, my children must do as I say.

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

My parents never really lecture me.

As much as you don't like disciplining your kids, you have to sometimes. Kids want that structure, that leadership, that guidance. I think that's what I try to give my children.

If a child goes the wrong way, it is not the child who is to be blamed; it is the parents who are responsible.

I'm not a goody-two-shoes. I'm just a father with four children.

Parents should have perfect control over their own spirits, and with mildness and yet firmness bend the will of the child until it shall expect nothing else but to yield to their wishes.

If you bungle raising your children, nothing else matters in life.

When a child is out of control, he or she needs you, the parent, to make them feel safe.

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

I was raised mostly by my mom.

It is not possible for any institutions to interfere in the way parents raise their children.

When one is a child, one has little say in the matter: one's parents decide. Mine chose Cotchford, and they chose the various schools I was sent to as I grew up.