Parental Growth Quotes

The parents exist to teach the child, but also they must learn what the child has to teach them; and the child has a very great deal to teach them

I think sometimes when children grow up, their parents grow up. Mine grew up with me. We coexist. I don't try to change them anymore, and I don't think they try to change me. We agree to disagree.

Like most parents, I think, my children have been the source of some of my most intense joys and despairs, my deepest moral dilemmas and greatest moral achievements.

You learn as much from your kids as they learn from you.

Not everyone's a perfect parent, but we do learn, and we grow from that. I'm not trying to be harsh on my family because it does make them sad to think back about how they used to be and some of their choices.

Having been a father for 19 years I realise fatherhood has changed me.

Being a parent can be overwhelming at times, but it's something we're figuring out as we go.

Parents who expect change in themselves as well as in their children, who accept it and find in it the joy as well as the pains ofgrowth, are likely to be the happiest and most confident parents.

Your children will smash your understanding, knowledge and reality. You will be better off. Then they will leave. You'll miss them forever.

People ask me, 'Is being a parent the be-all, end-all?' And I say, 'Oh, it definitely is up to the person, and it is difficult, it can be very difficult, and it can be extremely healing.' That's what I have found, that the children are mirrors. Everyone is a mirror, but children especially because they're day and night and all day long.

I don't consciously think of how parenthood has changed me but I'm sure it must have.

We grow because the clamorous, permanent presence of our children forces us to put their needs before ours. We grow because our love for our children urges us to change as nothing else in our lives has the power to do. We grow (if we're willing to grow, that is: not every parent is willing) because being a parent helps us stop being a child.

It's amazing. My kids have grown me in ways I never knew possible. The patience I've received and the love I get from them is just amazing.

Everyone who has kids that you talk to tells you, 'Wait until you have kids. It's going to change you.' You're like, 'Nah, come on. How can it change you that much?' But it changes you so much.

I feel simultaneously completely vulnerable and made wholly brave by becoming a parent. It has changed the way that I live my life. Because I want to be an example for my son.

Who of us is mature enough for offspring before the offspring themselves arrive? The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults.

What is done for the children is doubly beneficial, since their success, obvious to everyone, educates the parents as well.

parenting isn't a noun but a verb--an ongoing process instead of an accomplishment. And that no matter how many years you put into the job, the learning curve is, well, fairly flat.

I think there's definitely a way to tell a story, to also look at marriages that are working, but find drama from what's challenging them. That's what I think, certainly, 'Parenthood' is kind of about: the unexpected things that come up in your life that challenge you as a man, as a woman, as a husband and a wife, and as a parent.

I've seen beautiful and profound change and growth in men who are becoming fathers. Women get to carry the baby, so you might get a little head start on them, but watching a man get to know the little person, seeing that bond evolve and seeing the difference in the relationship between fathers and their sons and daughters, is fascinating.

One of the ways in which parenting is a learning experience and an opportunity for moral growth is that we learn as parents that we don't choose the kind of child that we have.

Talking with other parents really gave me some lessons that I try to hold on to now, as a parent of two boys.

It's not only children who grow. Parents do too.

True parents do not see to it that their children grow in a particular way, according to a preferred pattern or scripted stages, but they see to it that they grow with their children.

There's an identity thing that goes on where you spend so much time caring for your child that, after a year or so, you have to shake it off and go, 'Who am I?'