I was an ugly child. I got lost on the beach. I asked a cop if he could find my parents. He said, 'I don't know. There's lots of places for them to hide'.
When infants aren't held, they can become sick, even die. It's universally accepted that children need love, but at what age are people supposed to stop needing it? We never do. We need love in order to live happily, as much as we need oxygen in order to live at all.
It might sound a paradoxical thing to say --for surely never has a generation of children occupied more sheer hours of parental time -- but the truth is that we neglected you. We allowed you a charade of trivial freedoms. . .
I don't necessarily want kids. A lot of our friends are having children and I don't know if it's for me. I haven't come down hardcore on either side of the argument. I think when people come from a stable family having children becomes a celebration and I'm not sure it would be that way for me.
You have to write the book that wants to be written.
I am only as good as my children are.
We all know how to be a child. It's inside all of us. For me, it's just remembering how to enjoy it.
Even tiny children looking at a picture book are using their imaginations, gleaning clues from the images to understand what is happening, and perhaps using the throwaway details which the illustrator includes to add their own elements to the story.
Sometimes you have to abandon your own children for other children.
You need more than your own wisdom in rearing [your children]. You need the help of the Lord. Pray for that help and follow the inspiration which you receive.
I pray that no child of mine would ever descend into such a place as a library. They are indeed most dangerous places and unfortunate is she or he who is lured into such a hellhole of enjoyment, stimulus, facts, passion and fun.
Now the thing about having a baby - and I can't be the first person to have noticed this - is that thereafter you have it.
Question four: What book would you give to every child? Answer: I wouldn't give them a book. Books are part of the problem: this strange belief that a tree has nothing to say until it is murdered, its flesh pulped, and then (human) people stain this flesh with words. I would take children outside and put them face to face with chipmunks, dragonflies, tadpoles, hummingbirds, stones, rivers, trees, crawdads. That said, if you're going to force me to give them a book, it would be The Wind In The Willows, which I hope would remind them to go outside.
If you the American citizen leave a child in a hot car and that child was harmed by that you will be charged with negligence even if your action was unintentional.
As adults, we must ask more of our children than they know how to ask of themselves. What can we do to foster their open-hearted hopefulness, engage their need to collaborate, be an incentive to utilize their natural competency and compassion. . . show them ways they can connect, reach out, weave themselves into the web of relationships that is called community.
We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country because such affections come naturally to us and are good in themselves, although we may corrupt them. We are commanded to love our neighbor because our natural attitude toward the other is one of either indifference or hostility.
I do not approve of children being beaten. It is always a confession of failure.
I grew up at 'All My Children;' I got married, had a daughter and made life-long friends there!
It's a mistake not to give people a chance to learn to depend on themselves while they are young.
On any given day, something claims our attention. Anything at all, inconsequential things. A rosebud, a misplaced hat, that sweater we liked as a child, an old Gene Pitney record. A parade of trivia with no place to go. Things that bump around in our consciousness for two or three days then go back to wherever they came from. . . to darkness. We've got all these wells dug in our hearts. While above the wells, birds flit back and forth.