parenting approach Quotes

The Chinese model calls for giving your kids very little choice - and I've come to see that you can go too far with that. On the other hand, I also believe that Western parents sometimes give their young kids too much choice.

Permissiveness is the principle of treating children as if they were adults; and the tactic of making sure they never reach that stage.

Those children who have been most chastised seldom make the best men.

Like anything, you don't force kids to cook. It just becomes part of life - have them be around it, keep them informed - talk about it. I try to relay my passion for it in these ways. The second you try to force anything on your own kid, they rebel.

But I think that parents who criticise their children too much are in fact better than parents who praise their children too much.

I believed in raising my children as I had been raised.

My mum did encourage me, perhaps most of all by never discouraging me from anything I wanted to do. If you tell kids not to, they're going to do it in the end anyway. I'd finished all that staying-out-all-night-drinking bit when everybody else came to it. Probably why I don't like alcohol today. I had it all by the age of 10.

Children don't have to be raised. They'll grow.

My son was five months old, and I built a makeshift studio in my living room so that I could do the attachment parenting approach and write the record at the same time. That was fortuitous, that we could build that in the house.

When Courtney's mother and I first separated I tried to be Disney Dad, showering her with gifts, trips and then I snapped out of it. You don't have to try to impress your kids. If they're not getting what they need from you, they will let you know.

It is better to give children a rule to break than to give them no rules at all.

I always remind my kids, "I'm your parent, but I'm a human being, too, so I may not be perfect."

Then the carousel started, and I watched her go round and round...All the kids tried to grap for the gold ring, and so was old Phoebe, and I was sort of afraid she's fall off the goddam horse, but I didn't say or do anything. The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off, but it is bad to say anything to them.

I'm not raising the children, I'm raising the grown ups that they're going to be.

Never negotiate with kids. They don't have life experience, and they don't have repercussions for bad decisions; they still get fed and housed.

I don't know if I'm a strict parent or a pushover.

Preparing food is one of life's great joys, but a lot of times, parents ask their kids if they want to cook with them and then tell them to go peel a bag of potatoes. That's not cooking - that's working!

It's not good to assume what your kid wants. It's not good to push them in their own way. It's not good to make them do something you wanted to do but didn't have the chance to. You should listen to what your kids are saying, and let them live, and let them be themselves.

You can't make your kids what you want them to be. They are who they are and you have to help them to succeed in the world as best you can.

I am always suspicious of those who impose 'rules' on child rearing. Every child is different in terms of temperament and learning, and every parent responds to a particular child, not some generalized infant or youngster.

My mother was so stylish, but she never pushed that on me. She always thought I looked cool.

Certainly my parents were Dr. [Benjamin] Spock-driven parents. So they were tolerant.

To this day George Sr. is the soft touch and I'm the enforcer. I'm the one who writes them a letter and says 'Shape up!' He writes, 'You're marvelous.'

I'm pretty earthy; I nursed forever because I liked it and my kids liked it, but at the same time I'm very laissez-faire about stuff like bedtimes and food.

Don't worry about trying to do a perfect job. There is no perfect job. There is no one way of raising your children.