Monica Potter Quotes

I'm not great at bedtime stories. Bedtime stories are supposed to put the kid to sleep. My kid gets riled up and then my wife has to come in and go, 'All right! Get out of the room.'

Children must be rendered reasonable, but not reasoners. The first thing to teach them is that it is reasonable for them to obey, and unreasonable for them to dispute.

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

When the kid goes to bed, you get a little bit of time for yourself and maybe your partner, so being delayed in that departure can be particularly frustrating.

I don't know any other job that the off-the-field issues - especially something personal like that - affects your job. But as far as the parenting lesson, no [I understood that]. To me it was so simple, it was a situation where I disciplined my child and it didn't turn out the way I wanted.

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

Parents teach children discipline for two different, indeed diametrically opposed, reasons: to render the child submissive to them and to make him independent of them. Only a self-disciplined person can be obedient; and only such a person can be autonomous.

Single parents in particular may have trouble maintaining themselves as authority figures because of underlying guilt; they feel acontinuing sense that they have deprived their kids of the second parent, and so they tend to give in to the children's requests, even when unreasonable.

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

Training moments occur when both parents and children do their jobs. The parent's job is to make the rule. The child's job is to break the rule. The parent then corrects and disciplines. The child breaks the rule again, and the parent manages the consequences and empathy that then turn the rule into reality and internal structure for the child.

Fussing over children who cry only encourages them. That's positive reinforcement for negative behavior.

When your little child tells a lie, do not rush at him as though the world were about to go into bankruptcy. Be honest with him. A tyrant father will have liars for his children; do you know that? A lie is born of tyranny upon the one hand and weakness upon the other, and when you rush at a poor little boy with a club in your hand, of course he lies.

That was a judicious mother who said, "I obey my children for the first year of their lives, but ever after I expect them to obey me.

Teach the Scriptures to your children daily, discipline your children consistently, and love your children unconditionally. If you do these things, you will have acted biblically.

Since civilizing children takes the better part of two decades--some twenty years of nonstop thinking, nurturing, teaching, coaxing, rewarding, forgiving, warning, punishing, sympathizing, apologizing, reminding, and repeating, not to mention deciding what to do when--I now understand that one wrong move is invariably followed by hundreds of opportunities to be wrong again.

Obedience is the gateway through which knowledge, yes, and love, too, enter the mind of the child.

When the father is going on in his journey, if the child will not goe on, but stands gaping upon vanity, and when the father calls, he comes not, the onely way is this: the father steps aside behind a bush, and then the child runs and cries, and if he gets his father againe, he forsakes all his trifles, and walkes on more faster and more cheerefully with his father than ever.

I was very strict on that point. No devouring classmates." Jeremy rolled his eyes. "Other parents warn their kids not to talk to strangers. I had to warn mine not to eat them.

If we never have headaches through rebuking our children, we shall have plenty of heartaches when they grow up.

I would rather be the good aunt who never says anything bad and lets the parents discipline the child.

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

When a child hits a child, we call it aggression. When a child hits an adult, we call it hostility. When an adult hits an adult, we call it assault. When an adult hits a child, we call it discipline.

In spite of what youngsters think, parents do not get a sneaky thrill out of punishing their children.

Be ever gentle with the children God has given you; watch over them constantly; reprove them earnestly, but not in anger. In the forcible language of Scripture, "Be not bitter against them." "Yes, they are good boys," I once heard a kind father say. "I talk to them very much, but do not like to beat my, children--the world will beat them." It was a beautiful thought not elegantly expressed.

Some strong-willed children absolutely demand to be spanked, and their wishes should be granted. Two or three stinging strokes on the legs or buttocks with a switch are usually sufficient to emphasize the point, 'You must obey me.'