Motherhood / Fatherhood

PARENTHOOD & Common Sayings

1. If you've never been hated by your child, you've never been a parent
2. Children seldom misquote you. They more often repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said.
3. Why do grandparents and grandchildren get along so well? They have the same enemy -- the mother.
4. A hundred years from now... it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove... but the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child.
5. Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.
6. Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you
7. You will always be your child's favorite toy.
8. If you want your children to improve, let them overhear the nice things you say about them to others.
9. Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.
10. Parenthood is a lot easier to get into than out of.
11. A child enters your home and for the next twenty years makes so much noise you can hardly stand it. The child departs, leaving the house so silent you think you are going mad
12. Your children vividly remember every unkind thing you ever did to them, plus a few you really didn't
13. In spite of the six thousand manuals on child raising in the bookstores, child raising is still a dark continent and no one really knows anything. You just need a lot of love and luck - and, of course, courage

 MOTHERHOOD & it's Rewards

1. Mothers are a biological necessity; fathers are a social invention
2. There never was a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him asleep
3. Children are the anchors that hold a mother to life.
4. A vacation frequently means that the family goes away for a rest, accompanied by mother, who sees that the others get it.-
5. People always talked about a mother's uncanny ability to read her children, but that was nothing compared to how children could read their mothers
6. To be a mother is a woman's greatest vocation in life. She is a partner with God. No being has a position of such power and influence. She holds in her hands the destiny of nations, for to her comes the responsibility and opportunity of molding the nation's citizens
7. Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family. But here again, because there is nothing to sell, there is a very general disposition to regard a married woman's work as no work at all, and to take it as a matter of course that she should not be paid for it.
8. Motherhood is the one thing in all the world which most truly exemplifies the God-given virtues of creating and sacrificing. Though it carries the woman close to the brink of death, motherhood also leads her into the very realm of the fountains of life and makes her co-partner with the Creator in bestowing upon eternal spirits mortal life.
   
9. It's the three pairs of eyes that mothers have to have...One pair that see through closed doors. Another in the back of her head...and, of course, the ones in front that can look at a child when he goofs up and reflect 'I understand and I love you' without so much as uttering a word.
10. The hand that rocks the cradleIs the hand that rules the world.
11. Who is it that loves me and will love me for ever with an affection which no chance, no misery, no crime of mine can do away? It is you, my mother.
12. My love for her and my hate for her are so bafflingly intertwined that I can hardly see her. I never know who is who. She is me and I am she and we're all together.
13. My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.  You don't have to deserve your mother's love.  You have to deserve your father's.  He is more particular....
14. Ma-ma does everything for the baby, who responds by saying Da-da first.

FATHERHOOD & Common Thoughts

1. The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.
2. When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry.

A Mother's wish

If I had my child to raise all over again,

I'd build self-esteem first, and the house later.

I'd finger-paint more, and point the finger less.

I would do less correcting and more connecting.

I'd take my eyes off my watch, and watch with my eyes.

I'd take more hikes and fly more kites.

I'd stop playing serious, and seriously play.

I would run through more fields and gaze at more stars.

I'd do more hugging and less tugging.

The different stages of Father / Son interaction during ages:

4 years: My Daddy can do anything!

7 years: My Dad knows a lot…a whole lot.

8 years: My father does not know quite everything.

12 years: Oh well, naturally Father does not know that either.

14 years: Oh, Father? He is hopelessly old-fashioned.

21 years: Oh, that man-he is out of date!

25 years: He knows a little bit about it, but not much.

30 years: I must find out what Dad thinks about it.

35 years: Before we decide, we will get Dad's idea first.

50 years: What would Dad have thought about that?

60 years: My Dad knew literally everything!

65 years: I wish I could talk it over with Dad once more.