“Putting down the power right from the whistle would be ugly and brutal, but it would get the job done. He wanted to tell her that, but this was the thing with coaching: you had to step back at exactly the moment you ached to step forward.”
“I figure when my husband comes home from work, if the kids are still alive, then I ve done my job.”
“Yes it s true, you wake the child inside of you up because you re a Mom!”
“Some of the best friends you ll ever meet in your life, you ll meet though your children--mothers and fathers of their friends, parents from school. You ll see. That s the way it was for Bill and me. It s one of the many gifts of parenting.”
“A dam doesn t try to reason with the water. Its main purpose is to hold it still for a while. When I lecture my kids I m doing much the same thing. I m not trying to necessarily reason with them, just hold them still for a short while.”
“Mina wanted some of the kind of love Momma gave to her children, wheere love was the first and deepest thing, and the questions came later and the answers wouldn t matter much measured up against the love.”
“Science and discovery, especially in the field of non-abnormal pediatric mysteries, is built on the work of those who have been sneezed on before us. Causation and rationale may someday be reached, but until then it is the heartwarming and parental nature of the journey that drives us on; well, that and a fresh box of Kleenex.”
“Interesting how fashion is cyclical,” Jaccob said when she came out of the store with two black plastic bags. “Goth was the look when I was young, too.” “It’s not a look,” Chuck said. “I’m just wearing my feelings on the outside.” “Uh huh.” His phone buzzed. “Hang on a second. He rolled up his sleeve to check his HUD, but the call hadn’t come through there. Huh. He had to pick up his phone and check the read-out, which listed a phone number: an old school page. “That’s funny…” “Dad, you’re doing that thing again,” Chuck said. “What thing?” Jaccob asked. “That thing where you have to check every single doohickey you carry around.” “I am not.” Jaccob took his hand out of his coat pocket, where he’d been reaching to check his police scanner or music player (he hadn’t decided which to use first).”
“Adelaide believes that all children should have enough grown-ups around who love them so that one can tell them to fight, one can tell them not to, and one can tell them not to worry so much.”
“Everyone over 50 in America feels like a refugee. In the Old America there were a lot of bad parents. There always are, because parenting is hard. Inadequate parents could say, Go outside and play in the culture, and the culture -- relatively innocent, and boring -- could be more or less trusted to bring the kids up. Grown ups now know that you can t send the kids out to play in the culture, because the culture will leave them distorted and disturbed.”
“Parenting is something that happens mostly while you’re thinking of something else.”
“The most important thing anyone can do is raise their kids well.”
“If we can keep ourselves from interfering with the natural laws of life, mistakes can be our child s finest teachers.”
“Mr Cobb would acquaint him, that when he was his age, his father thought no more of giving him a parental kick, or a box on the ears, or a cuff on the head, or some little admonition of that sort, than he did of any other ordinary duty of life; and he would further remark, with looks of great significance, that but for this judicious bringing up, he might have never been the man he was at that present speaking; which was probable enough, as he was, beyond all question, the dullest dog of the party.”
“If you can pick the baby up without him squirting our of your hands like a bar of soap in the shower, he s not oiled up enough.”
“If Mother had to be told not to shove the entire brick of Ivory up Junior s hindquarters, constipation is the least of his problems.”
“You could slap his wrist for saying it, but then he said it with his face, and you could spank him for making faces, but then he said it with his eyes, and there were limits to correction—no way, in the end, to penetrate behind the blue irises and eradicate a boy’s disgust.”