Parental Limitations Quotes

But parents, she supposed, were not the pinnacle of perfection their children thought or expected them to be. They were humans who usually did the best they could but often made the wrong choices.

Parents cannot be in the same physical space as their children at all times.

Parents are flawed human beings who are given a role that more approximates that of God than of mere mortals.

My dad had limitations. That's what my good-hearted mom always told us. He had limitations, but he meant no harm. It was kind of her to say, but he did do harm.

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.

We will have to give up the hope that, if we try hard, we somehow will always do right by our children. The connection is imperfect. We will sometimes do wrong.

Parents aren't sex education experts just because they are parents.

There is one thing you and I as parents cannot do, not do we want to do if we really think about it, and that's control our children's will--that spirit that lets them be themselves apart from you and me. They are not ours to possess, control, manipulate, or even to make mind.

My parents did their best - that earns a lot of forgiveness. But they say children grow up in spite of their parents, and I think I did.

I think that in order to parent effectively, we are going to have to admit two things: We can't keep our children safe. We can't accept the fact that we can't keep our children safe.

But who knows their own child? You know bits - certain predictable reactions, a handful of familiar qualities. The rest is impenetrable. And quite right too. You give birth to them. You do not design them.

I was a single parent, and I was prohibited from working.

Nobody's gonna be a perfect parent, you know? We're all doing the best we can.

Parents can only do what they think is best, with the experience they have. The learning curve for every parent is that there's a limit to how much they can shield children from.

I enjoyed playing with my mother. This was something she was good at. There were plenty of things she couldn't do, had never been taught to do, didn't need to do because there was someone to do them for her, and she certainly couldn't have coped alone with a tiny child.

I will never understand children. I never pretended to. I meet mothers all the time who make resolutions to themselves. 'I'm going to ... go out of my way to show them I am interested in them and what they do. I am going to understand my children.' These women end up making rag rugs, using blunt scissors.

Time has taught me that parents do the best they can with the light they are seeing with. That is what we all do.

Why can't parents dance? Is it some universal law of physics or something?

That's universal - we all want to bring every good thing to our children. But what's not universal is our ability to provide every good thing.

I wish I could prevent my kids from making all the mistakes I've made. But I can't do that. No parent can.

At some point, you realize your parents are human. They make the best decisions they can with the options available to them.

Growing up, dad coached my footy and cricket teams, but that's all he could do for me.

I grew up asking for everything under the sun for Christmas, but I knew I wasn't going to get it all.

There are moments in your life when the big pieces slide and shift. Sometimes the big changes dong happen gradually but all at once. That's how it was for us. That was the day we discovered that friends can do things for you that your parents can't.

In some sense every parent does love their children. But some parents are too broken to love them well& others are barely able to love them at all.