Parental Perspective Quotes

I was 14, when I wanted to be an actor. My parents were basically like, "This is a very hard life, and you have to be really serious about it, and show us that you're serious about it. You can't drop out of school." They strongly encouraged me not to act professionally until I finished college, which I didn't. And I think they should have been horrified! It's a really hard life. I'd be really scared if I had a child who wanted to be an actor.

I am the mother of a 6-year-old now, so that's changed my entire perspective.

I'm sorry, it's true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We're born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It's been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much - if at all.

Life Among the Savages is a disrespectful memoir of my children.

Once you're a parent, male or female, every single thing that happens in your life is seen through the prism of being a parent.

I realize then that we never have children, we receive them. And sometimes it’s not for quite as long as we would have expected or hoped. But it is still far better than never having had those children at all.

There were a lot of little triggers that made me realize that life is now; life is happening while we're preoccupied with stupidities. Of course, growing. Of course, becoming a mother and understanding life from another perspective.

Parents are not interested in justice, they're interested in peace and quiet.

It's important to see your parents as individuals. As a son or as a daughter you don't stop and think that your parents might have their own expectations, dreams or disappointments.

Having children just puts the whole world into perspective. Everything else just disappears.

It's harder for me, never having brought up a child, to enter the universe of the child.

Children make the best measurements of time. It is only when I see the son or daughter of a friend or relative over periods of time, do I realize how much time has passed based on how much they've grown.

Grown don't mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What's that supposed to mean? In my heart it don't mean a thing.

If it is to be done well, child-rearing requires, more than most activities of life, a good deal of decentering from one's own needs and perspectives. Such decentering is relatively easy when a society is stable and when there is an extended, supportive structure that the parent can depend upon.

The good enough parent, in addition to being convinced that whatever his child does, he does it because at that moment he is convinced this is the best he can do, will also ask himself: "What in the world would make me act as my child acts at this moment? And if I felt forced to act this way, what would make me feel better about it?

All mothers think their children are oaks, but the world never lacks for cabbages.

I think when you have children, it just changes your worldview.

He's only 4 years old, so I don't think he realized, you know, that I played so many years. Of course, we watch tapes here from the Stanley Cup years, but I don't think he realized how many years I played.

Parents, they're strict on you when you're little, and you don't understand why. But as you get older, you understand and you appreciate it.

What's changed? I'm a dad. That's fundamental. Watching your kids grow, you go back a bit. You can watch a bug crawling around for minutes at a time--just sit and marvel at its complexity, the utter bugness of it. I've learned to do that again.

I lived in the house with my mother so she had no choice but to hear what I was doing. I would ask her for her opinion. I used to like doing that because I would let my friends hear what I did, but they listened to it on another level. My mom listened to it with a different ear, because she's older.

My mother would like me to start all interviews by stating that she and my father are perfectly normal. They are proud of me, and as perplexed as anyone by my novels.

I limited myself to introduce a change in my way of thinking and the way I see things. When I look at my child, I do it in a different way then when I'm contemplating a chair. They are different... the child is a living being, and the chair is an object.

When you look into your baby’s eyes,” Lacy said softly, “you see everything you hope they can be…not everything you wish they won’t become.

You see much more of your children once they leave home.