Mignon McLaughlin Quotes

The more boring a child is, the more the parents, when showing off the child, receive adulation for being good parents — because they have a tame child-creature in their house.

It's difficult to keep that perspective, I think, as a parent: to know your boundaries as to what's good parenting or just projecting your own expectations on your kids. That's the hardest.

That's what children are for—that their parents may not be bored.

If the sound of happy children is grating on your ears, I don't think it's the children who need to be adjusted.

If I raised my hand to wipe the hair out of my children's eyes, they'd flinch and call their attorney.

Parents appreciate the child who agrees; they condemn the child who disagrees.

At times our children may not be in possession of a good spirit; but if the parent continues to possess the good Spirit, the children will have the bad spirit but a short time.

Children almost always hang onto things tighter than their parents think they will.

A parent who has never apologized to his children is a monster. If he's always apologizing, his children are monsters.

Parents who indulge themselves 'in moderation' may have children who indulge themselves to excess.

And a great misunderstanding is that children think their parents are grown-up, and parents feel obliged to act as if they were.

Here is the beginning of understanding: most parents are doing their best, and most children are doing their best, and they're doing pretty well, all things considered.

We hear a great deal about the rudeness of the rising generation. I am an oldster myself and might be expected to take the oldsters' side, but in fact I have been far more impressed by the bad manners of parents to children than by those of children to parents.

Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners.

I am only as good as my children are.

Parents need to be more accepting of who their kids are and less concerned about what society thinks they need to be.

In terms of you happiness, in terms of the matters that make you proud or sad, nothing-I repeat, nothing-will have so profound an effect on you as the way your children turn out. You will either rejoice and boast of their accomplishments or you will weep, head in hands, bereft and forlorn, if they become a disappointment or an embarrassment to you.

My kids used to do things to aggravate me, too. I'd take them to a game, and they'd want to come home with a different player.

At some point as adults we cease to be our parents' children and we become our children's parents instead.

When people talk about wanting to have children someday, what they really mean is that they want babies. Nobody wants an angry adolescent. Nobody wants an obnoxious seven-year-old trying to wear out dirty words they just learned in school that day. What they really want is cute, adorable babies who love you and need you. The bad stuff is just the price you agree to pay for having the good stuff.

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.

At that moment, she cannot think of a more reckless, irrational thing than choosing to become a parent.

Men aren't asked about their children.

Anyone who has brought up children knows that consistency has absolutely nothing to do with discipline.

Nothing is crueller than children who come from good homes.