50 Inspiring Parenting Quotes That Get You Through Hard Times

Raising a child is one of life’s most challenging and important tasks. 

As exhausting and challenging as parenthood can be, it is also one of the most rewarding and fulfilling roles.

Here are some quotes about parenting to help you through the challenges of parenthood and remember the joys.

Also See: Qualities of a Good Parent

Parenting Quotes For Hard Times

“My heroes are and were my parents. I can’t see having anyone else as my heroes.”

Michael Jordan

“We are apt to forget that children watch examples better than they listen to preaching”.

Roy L. Smith

“Parents, deliberately or unaware, teach their children from birth how to behave, drink, feel and perceive. Liberation from these influences is no easy matter.”

Eric Berne^​1​

“In any given moment we have two options: To step forward into growth or to step back into safety.”

Abraham Maslow^​2​

“It’s not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can’t tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself.”

Joyce Maynard

“We’re all imperfect parents, and that’s perfectly okay. Tiny humans need connection, not perfection.”

LR Knost

“Parenting shouldn’t feel like a competitive sport. It’s plenty challenging without any added obstacles. Strive to be loving and kind; have the courage to ask for help; take a break when you need it; celebrate all the great stuff; be kind to yourself, and be yourself. That’s who your kid loves anyways.”

Ariadne Brill

 “The point of parenting is not to have all the answers before we start out but instead to figure it out on the go as our children grow. Because as they do, so will we.”

Bridgett Miller

“It takes a village to raise a child. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.”

“I may not be able to give my kids everything they want, but I give them what they need: love, time, and attention. You can’t buy those things.”

Nishan Panwar

“The truth is, parenting as well as we can is always hard – really, truly, the hardest thing any of us has ever done.”

Laura Markham^​3​

“If you’re completely exhausted and don’t know how you’re going to keep giving this much of yourself day after day, you’re probably a good parent.”

Bunmi Laditan

“Motherhood has taught me the meaning of living in the moment and being at peace. Children don’t think about yesterday, and they don’t think about tomorrow. They just exist in the moment.”

Jessalyn Gilsig

“If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.”

Carl Jung^​4​

“No one is ever quite ready; everyone is always caught off guard. Parenthood chooses you. And you open your eyes, look at what you’ve got, say “Oh, my gosh,” and recognize that of all the balls there ever were, this is the one you should not drop. It’s not a question of choice.”

Marisa de Los Santos

“Hugs can do great amounts of good – especially for children.”

Princess Diana

“Children start out loving their parents, but as they grow older and discover their parents are human, they become judgmental. And sometimes, when they mature, they forgive their parents, especially when they discover they are also human.”

Oscar Wilde

“Speak with your children as if they are the wisest, kindest, most beautiful humans on earth, for what they believe is what they will become.”

Brooke Hampton

“Parenting is a lifetime job and does not stop when a child grows up.

Jake Slope

”To be in your children’s memories tomorrow, you have to be in their lives today.”

Barbara Johnson

“There is no such thing as a perfect parent. So just be the best one you can be.”

“Parenting is the easiest thing in the world to have an opinion about, but the hardest thing in the world to do.”

Matt Walsh

“We never know the love of a parent till we become parents ourselves.”

Henry Ward Beecher

“There is no way to be a perfect parent and a million ways to be a good one.”

Jill Churchill

“No parent is always conscious, gentle, positive, peaceful, and authentic. We have to choose to be and practice moment by moment, day after day. The more we practice, the stronger we grow.”

Lelia Schott

 “Making the decision to have a child — it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”

Elizabeth Stone

“Love doesn’t have goals or benchmarks or blueprints, but it does have a purpose. The purpose is not to change the people we love, but to give them what they need to thrive. Love’s purpose is not to shape our beloved’s destiny, but to help them shape their own. It isn’t to show them the way, but to help them find a path for themselves, even if the path they take isn’t one we would choose ourselves, or even one we would choose for them. The”

Alison Gopnik^​5​

”Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.”

Phyllis Diller

“Your kids require you most of all to love them for who they are, not to spend your whole time trying to correct them.”

Bill Ayers

“Motherhood is a constant learning process that requires flexibility and a sense of humor. And just when you think you have it all figured out, your children like to remind you that you certainly don’t.”

Stacey A. Shannon

“Children are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work.”

C.S. Lewis

“Having a child is like getting a tattoo … on your face. You better be committed.”

Elizabeth Gilber

My children aren’t a burden or annoyance; they are my greatest masterpiece.” 

Stacey A. Shannon

“The Golden Rule of Parenting is do unto your children as you wish your parents had done unto you!”

Louise Hart

“No matter how far we come, our parents are always in us.”

Brad Meltzer

”Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.”

Robert Brault

“You will never really know what kind of parent you were or if you did it right or wrong. Never. And you will worry about this and them as long as you live. But when your children have children, and you watch them do what they do, you will have part of an answer.”

 Robert Fulghum

Also See: 10 Keys To A Happy Childhood

Parenting Quotes For Raising Great Kids

“The goal of education is not to increase the amount of knowledge but to create the possibilities for a child to invent and discover.”

Jean Piaget^​6​

“Play is the answer to the question, ‘How does anything new come about? “

Jean Piaget

“If you follow the child… you can find out something new.”

Jean Piaget

“If parents want to give their children a gift, the best thing they can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning. That way, their children don’t have to be slaves of praise. They will have a lifelong way to build and repair their own confidence.”

Carol S. Dweck^​7​

“Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?”

Samuel Johnson

“I think it’s necessary to let kids get bored once in a while – that’s how they learn to be creative.”

Kim Raver

“Too much love never spoils children. Children become spoiled when we substitute presents for presence.”

Anthony Withman

“It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity, there is beauty, and there is strength.”

Maya Angelou

“At the end of the day, the most overwhelming key to a child’s success is the positive involvement of parents.”

 Jane D. Hull

“Having a parent who listens creates a child who believes he or she has a voice that matters in this world.”

Rachel Macy Stafford

“The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice.”

Peggy O’Mara

“Affirming words from moms and dads are like light switches. Speak a word of affirmation at the right moment in a child’s life and it’s like lighting up a whole roomful of possibilities.”

Gary Smalley

“So our job as parents is not to make a particular kind of child. Instead, our job is to provide a protected space of love, safety, and stability in which children of many unpredictable kinds can flourish. Our job is not to shape our children’s minds; it’s to let those minds explore all the possibilities that the world allows. Our job is not to tell children how to play; it’s to give them the toys and pick the toys up again after the kids are done. We can’t make children learn, but we can let them learn.”

Alison Gopnik^​5​

Also See: Top 10 Good Parenting Tips

References