parent-child relationship Quotes

“With me as the glaring exception, my father molded the world around him to his liking. The problem, of course, was that Baba saw the world in black and white. And he got to decide what was black and what was white. You can’t love a person who lives that way without fearing him too. Maybe even hating him a little.”

“Then he saw me and waved. Smiled. He motioned for me to wear my mortarboard, and took a picture of me with the school’s clock tower in the background. I smiled for him – in a way, this was his day more than mine. He walked to me, curled his arm around my neck, and gave my brow a single kiss. ‘I am moftakhir, Amir,’ he said. Proud. His eyes gleamed when he said that and I liked being on the receiving end of that look.”

″‘One day’ - I gestured with my chin toward the plate glass - ‘all that will be gone, and so will all that so-called loyalty. And when that day comes, I don’t want you to have any knowledge of some of the things that went on here. That’s why I’m evasive with you sometimes. It’s not that I don’t trust you or that I don’t respect you - or that I don’t value your opinion. It’s the opposite, Dad. I keep things from you because I love you, and because I admire you, and because I want to protect you from the fallout when all this starts to unwind.‘”

“Ezinma did not call her mother Nne like all children. She called her by her name, Ekwefi, as her father and other grown-up people did. The relationship between them was not only that of mother and child. There was something in it like the companionship of equals, which was strengthened by such little conspiracies as eating eggs in the bedroom.”

“‘If they wanted to claim their son, why didn’t they respect the life he chose to live? How come they never came to visit? Or supported his music?’”

“My dad was a man of infinite varieties of bitterness, rage, distaste. In my lifelong struggle to avoid becoming him, I’d developed an inability to demonstrate much negative emotion at all… It was a constant problem: too much control or no control at all.”

“I thought it would make me feel better to have the man vanished from the earth, but I actually felt a massive, frightening hollowness open up in my chest. I had spent my life comparing myself to my father, and now he was gone.”

“At the time of his death, my father remained a myth to me, both more and less than a man.”

“She went to him. ‘Atticus,’ she said. ‘I’m—’ ‘You may be sorry, but I’m proud of you.’ She looked up and saw her father beaming at her. ‘What?’ ‘I said I’m proud of you.’ ‘I don’t understand you. I don’t understand men at all and I never will.’ ‘Well, I certainly hoped a daughter of mine’d hold her ground for what she thinks is right—stand up to me first of all.‘”

“She did not stand alone, but what stood behind her, the most potent moral force in her life, was the love of her father. She never questioned it, never thought about it, never even realized that before she made any decision of importance the reflex, ‘What would Atticus do?’ passed through her unconscious; she never realized what made her dig in her feet and stand firm whenever she did was her father; that whatever was decent and of good report in her character was put there by her father; she did not know that she worshiped him.”

“‘You don’t get to be the mother if you show up after the kids are already grown up. She’s like all those animals at the end of the story who show up to eat the Little Red Hen’s bread.’”

“She called her dad instead. He sounded tired, but he wasn’t trying to replace the stairs with a water slide, so that was an improvement.”

“‘Everything I have ever done I’ve done from a place of love. If I don’t punish you, the world will punish you even worse. The world doesn’t love you. If the police get you, the police don’t love you. When I beat you, I’m trying to save you. When they beat you, they’re trying to kill you.’”

“But he’d been with me the whole time. He’d always been proud of me. Circumstance had pulled us apart, but he was never not my father.”

“A girl’s relationship with her father is the most important male relationship of her life.”

“Dominant parties maintain power by the threat (acted upon or not) that abusive punishment, physical or psychological, will be used whenever the hierarchal structures in place are threatened, whether that be in male-female relationships, or parent and child bonds.”

“Crying, semi-hysterically, Mom made a number of points: •Your friend is dying •It’s just so hard to watch a child die •And it’s much harder to watch a friend’s daughter die •But the hardest is watching your son watching his friend die •You have to make your own decisions now •It’s so hard for me to let you make your own decisions •But I have to let you make your own decisions •I am so proud of you •Your friend is dying, and you have been so strong.”

“Researchers find that whatever a family does do to influence a child’s personality, it affects each child differently, as if each is growing up in a completely different family.”

“Highly sensitive children need to feel heard, as they often have deep feelings or good reasons for what they were doing and they are unusually disillusioned by injustice. Getting an accurate statement of your child’s feelings and viewpoint will help both of you decide what to do.”

“There is always a good fit when parents accept their children for who they are. (...) A good fit is a family and school environment that supports and encourages a child’s natural way of behaving.”

“Parents who are less available and responsive - perhaps they are overwhelmed themselves, or not comfortable with intense emotions - may cause a highly sensitive child to hide her feelings in order to be accepted and not cause any trouble.”

“My father held Christopher’s little fingers protectively, proudly. As one of those memories that you capture and that remains unchanged through the years, the image of the two of them walking along in that night produced a surprising reaction in me that would come back every time I recalled it. What first flashed in my brain and my heart was--How come that couldn’t have been me? How come I never got a chance to do that? As time went on, I recognized that it wasn’t anger of course. But I was jealous of my little boy, ridiculous as that was. Below that layer, in the core of my being, was simple hurt.”

“I was acting like the crazy person now, smashing everything. Maybe I was going to go mad like Marigold. We’d both end up in the loony bin. While Star had her shiny new life with her father.”

“Though she loved her children, in her practical, unsentimental way, they were to her always “the children”, to be ruled and reared, clothed and educated, but never in any respect her companions.”

Now it happened that Kanga had felt rather motherly that morning, and Wanting to Count Things—like Roo’s vests, and how many pieces of soap there were left, and the two clean spots in Tigger’s feeder; so she had sent them out with a packet of watercress sandwiches for Roo and a packet of extract-of-malt sandwiches for Tigger, to have a nice long morning in the Forest not getting into mischief.

“Tomorrow?” said Roo hopefully. “We’ll see,” said Kanga. “You’re always seeing, and nothing ever happens,” said Roo sadly.

“Nasty cold day,” said Rabbit, shaking his head. “And you were coughing this morning.” “How do you know?” asked Roo indignantly. “Oh, Roo, you never told me,” said Kanga reproachfully. “It was a Biscuit Cough,” said Roo, “not one you tell about.”

“I shall have to go and find them,” explained Tigger to Roo. “May I find them too?” asked Roo eagerly. “I think not today, dear,” said Kanga. “Another day.” “Well, if they’re lost tomorrow, may I find them?” “We’ll see,” said Kanga, and Roo, who knew what that meant, went into a corner, and practised jumping out at himself, partly because he wanted to practise this, and partly because he didn’t want Christopher Robin and Tigger to think that he minded when they went off without him.

“There are a great many things in this world that I can’t understand very well, Matthew.” “Well now, I dunno as I comprehend them all myself,” acknowledged Matthew.

Matthew thanked his stars many a time and oft that he had nothing to do with bringing her up. That was Marilla’s exclusive duty; if it had been his he would have been worried over frequent conflicts between inclination and said duty. As it was, he was free to, “spoil Anne”—Marilla’s phrasing—as much as he liked. But it was not such a bad arrangement after all; a little “appreciation” sometimes does quite as much good as all the conscientious “bringing up” in the world.

The child she had learned to love had vanished somehow and here was this tall, serious-eyed girl of fifteen, with the thoughtful brows and the proudly poised little head, in her place. Marilla loved the girl as much as she had loved the child, but she was conscious of a queer sorrowful sense of loss.

“I just couldn’t help thinking of the little girl you used to be, Anne. And I was wishing you could have stayed a little girl, even with all your queer ways.

“I rather miss my wild girl, but if I get a strong, helpful, tenderhearted woman in her place, I shall feel quite satisfied.”

The name of father is sacred in two senses; he should be reverenced as the author of our being and as a master whom we ought to obey.

“I am broken-hearted,” said Albert. “Listen, Beauchamp! I cannot thus, in a moment relinquish the respect, the confidence, and pride with which a father’s untarnished name inspires a son. Oh, Beauchamp, Beauchamp, how shall I now approach mine? Shall I draw back my forehead from his embrace, or withhold my hand from his? I am the most wretched of men.”

“My father, Pip, he were given to drink, and when he were overtook with drink, he hammered away at my mother, most onmerciful. It were a’most the only hammering he did, indeed, ‘xcepting at myself. And he hammered at me with a wigor only to be equalled by the wigor with which he didn’t hammer at his anwil.”

How often afterwards she thought of words she might have said. But now she did not know how to say it, and could say nothing. But Seryozha knew all she wanted to say to him. He understood that she was unhappy and loved him. He understood even what the nurse had whispered. He had caught the words “always at nine o’clock,” and he knew that this was said of his father, and that his father and mother could not meet. That he understood, but one thing he could not understand—why there should be a look of dread and shame in her face?... She was not in fault, but she was afraid of him and ashamed of something. He would have liked to put a question that would have set at rest this doubt, but he did not dare; he saw that she was miserable, and he felt for her. Silently he pressed close to her and whispered, “Don’t go yet. He won’t come just yet.”