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Parenting Quotes and Proverbs Your children need your presence more than your presents. Roy L. Smith We are apt to forget that children watch examples better than they listen to preaching. Clarence Budinton Kelland My father didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it. When You Thought I Wasn't Looking When you thought I wasn't looking, I saw you hang up my first painting on the refrigerator, and I wanted to paint another one. When you thought I wasn't looking, I saw you feed a stray cat, and I thought it was good to be kind to animals. When you thought I wasn't looking, I saw you make my favorite cake for me, and I knew that little things are special things. When you thought I wasn't looking, I heard you say a prayer, and I believed there is a God I could always talk to. When you thought I wasn't looking, I felt you kiss me goodnight, and I felt loved. When you thought I wasn't looking, I saw that you cared, and I wanted to be everything that I could be. When you thought I wasn't looking, I LOOKED....and wanted to say thanks for all the things I saw when you thought I wasn't looking. Thanks to Connie Back Doug Larson Few things are more satisfying than seeing your own children have teenagers of their own. Dennis Fakes Any child can tell you that the sole purpose of a middle name is so he can tell when he's really in trouble. Bill Cosby Human beings are the only creatures on earth that allow their children to come back home. MAD Magazine Teenagers are people who act like babies if they're not treated like adults. Ed Asner Raising kids is part joy and part guerilla warfare. Anonymous Children are natural mimics: they act like their parents in spite of every attempt to teach them good manners. Graham Green There is always a moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in. Martin Mull Having a family is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain. Peter Ustinov Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth. John Plomp You know children are growing up when they start asking questions that have answers. Bill Vaughan A three year old child is a being who gets almost as much fun out of a fifty-six dollar set of swings as it does out of finding a small green worm. Laurence J. Peter Television has changed the American child from an irresistable force to an immovable object. Arab proverb Every beetle is a gazelle in the eyes of its mother. Margaret Fuller The character and history of each child may be a new and poetic experience to the parent, if he will let it. Unknown Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said. Clarence Budinton Kelland My father didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it. Hodding Carter There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings. Frederick Buechner,'Whistling in the Dark' When a child is born, a father is born. A mother is born, too of course, but at least for her it's a gradual process. Body and soul, she has nine months to get used to what's happening. She becomes what's happening. But for even the best-prepared father, it happens all at once. On the other side of a plate-glass window, a nurse is holding up something roughly the size of a loaf of bread for him to see for the first time. Even if he should decide to abandon it forever ten minutes later, the memory will nag him to the grave. He has seen the creation of the world. It has his mark on it. He has its mark on him. Both marks are, for better or for worse, indelible. Frederick Buechner,'Whistling in the Dark' All sons, like all daughters, are prodigals if they're smart. Assuming the Old Man doesn't run out on them first, they will run out on him if they are to survive, and if he's smart he won't put up too much of a fuss. A wise father sees all this coming, and maybe that's why he keeps his distance from the start. He must survive too. Whether they ever find their way home again, none can say for sure, but it's the risk he must take if they're ever to find their way at all. In the meantime, the world tends to have a soft spot in its heart for lost children. Lost fathers have to fend for themselves. Frederick Buechner,'Whistling in the Dark' Even as the father lays down the law, he knows that someday his children will break it as they need to break it if ever they're to find something better than law to replace it. Until and unless that happens, there's no telling the scrapes they will get into trying to lose him and find themselves. Terrible blnders will be made—dissapointments and failures, hurts and losses of every kind. And they'll keep making them even after they've found themselves too, of course, because growing up is a process that goes on and on. And every hard knock they ever get, knocks the father even harder still, if that's possible, and if and when they finally come through more or less in one piece at the end, there's maybe no rejoicing greater than his in all creation.
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