Beginnings - Overview

This section presents important information from before conception through the birth of the child.  It covers many of the fundemental aspects of just being a parent.

A few quotes:

“If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do well matters very much.” -Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis


“True obedience is a matter of love, which makes it voluntary, not compelled by fear or force.” -Dorothy Day

“What a child does not receive, he can seldom later give.”
-P. D. James

“A child's life is like a piece of paper on which every passerby leaves a mark.” -Chinese proverb

“The work will wait while you show your child the rainbow, but the rainbow won't wait while you do the work.” -Patricia Clafford

“It is better to bind your children to you by a feeling of respect and by gentleness, than by fear.” - Terence

“God sends children to enlarge our hearts, and to make us unselfish and full of kindly sympathies and affections.” -Mary Howitt     
It’s too bad many do not accept the lesson.

“If you want children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders.” - Abigail Van Buren

“In the final analysis it is not what you do for your children but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings.” - Ann Landers

“Who of us is mature enough for offspring before the offspring themselves arrive? The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults.” -Peter De Vries         
We which that were always the case.

“Your children will become what you are; so be what you want them to be.” - David Bly

“Children need love, especially when they do not deserve it.” - Harold Hulbert

“Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time. -Rabbinic saying

“A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong.”- Thomas Szasz

“If we are to have real peace, we must begin with the children.”
- Mahatma Gandhi

“It takes a whole village to raise a child.” - African Proverb    
This old saying has become too politicized. The question really comes down to who has the responsibility to choose the village.

“A three-year-old child is a being who gets almost as much fun out of a … set of swings as it does out of finding a small green worm.” -Bill Vaughn

“Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.”
-Robert A. Heinlein

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

“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” -James Baldwin

“Our greatest natural resource is the minds of our children.”
-Walt Disney

“Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children, and no theories.” -John Wilmot

“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” -The Bible, Proverbs 22:6

“Children need models more than they need critics.” -Joseph Joubert

“A child tells in the street what its father and mother say at home.”
-The Talmud

“The best way to keep children home is to make the home a pleasant atmosphere - and let the air out of the tires.” -Dorothy Parker

“The greatest aid to adult education is children.” - Charlie T. Jones and Bob Phillips

“Let our children grow tall and some taller than others if they have it in them to do so.” -Margaret Thatcher

“There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One is roots; the other, wings.” -Hodding Carter

“You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.” -Franklin P. Jones

“Too often we give our children answers to remember rather than problems to solve.” -Roger Lewin

“Give me the children until they are seven and anyone may have them afterward.” -St. Francis Xavier

“The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.” -Albert Einstein
“It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know whether you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.” -Oriah Mountain Dreamer

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