A Quote by Sandra Scarr

Parents sometimes think of newborns as helpless creatures, but in fact parents' behavior is much more under the infant's control than the reverse. Does he come running when you cry?

Sandra Scarr

Quote Topics

Behavior Come Control Creatures Cry Does Fact Helpless In Fact Infant More Much Parents Reverse Running Sometimes Than Think

Quote Author

Sandra Scarr

Parents of handicapped children are occasionally embarrassed or hurt by others who awkwardly express sympathy but cannot know or appreciate the depth of the parents love for a handicapped child. Perhaps there is some comparison in the fact that there is no less love in families for the helpless infant who must be fed, bathed, and diapered than for the older but still dependent members. We love those we serve and who need us.

James E. Faust

Parents can ruin children, and sometimes that's a learned behavior. Sometimes you can't blame your parents for it, sometimes you can. I think to me, that's what the whole paradox is, is people that have children that don't even know how to raise them.

Terry McMillan

A Jewish man with his parents alive is half the time a helpless infant!

Philip Roth

It's a crazy time right now with kids. They are so much, more savvy than even their parents are. They are handing down their devices to their parents. They are giving their parents the old iPad in exchange for the new one. It's a whole different world nowadays and they are in control and in charge of technology. It's scary but at the same time it's exciting. There are a lot of choices for them.

Tyra Banks

An adolescent does not rebel against her parents. She rebels against their power. If parents would rely less on power and more on nonpower methods to influence their children from infancy on, there would be little for children to rebel against when they become adolescents. The use of power to change the behavior of children, then, has this severe limitation: parents inevitably run out of power, and sooner than they think.

Thomas Gordon

Children see in their parents the past, their parents see in them the future; and if we find more love in the parents for their children than in children for their parents, this is sad but natural. Who does not entertain his hopes more than his recollections.

John Ruskin

But I think that parents who criticise their children too much are in fact better than parents who praise their children too much.

Arne Jacobsen

The nature of the infant is not just a new permutation-and-combination of elements contained in the natures of the parents. There is in the nature of the infant that which is utterly unknown in the natures of the parents.

D. H. Lawrence

Parents who are cowed by temper tantrums and screaming defiance are only inviting more of the same. Young children become more cooperative with parents who confidently assert the reasons for their demands and enforce reasonable rules. Even if there are a few rough spots, relationships between parents and young children run more smoothly when the parent, rather than the child, is in control.

Sandra Scarr

I think, with my cartoons, the parent-like figures are kind of my own archeypes of parents, and they're taken a little bit from my parents and other people's parents, and parents I have read about, and parents I dreamed about, and parents that I made up.

Roz Chast

My parents have sacrificed so much, more than any parents really should.

Kevin Jonas

Contrary to what some parents might believe or hope for, children are not born a blank slate. Rather, they come into the world with predetermined abilities, proclivities and temperaments that nurturing parents may be able to foster or modify, but can rarely reverse.

Jane Brody

Children make you confront your own childhood. Which I think is common. Suddenly you're remembering your own parents as parents, not to mention the fact that you're confronted by them as grandparents. So you also have that terrible shock, a mirror image of your own. You suddenly seem to be so helpless in the face of young children. And you think, "How did you ever bring up me?"

Sam Mendes

A two-year-old can be taught to curb his aggressions completely if the parents employ strong enough methods, but the achievement of such control at an early age may be bought at a price which few parents today would be willing to pay. The slow education for control demands much more parental time and patience at the beginning, but the child who learns control in this way will be the child who acquires healthy self-discipline later.

Selma Fraiberg

I think all kids think their parents are strict. My parents aren't superstrict, but they seem to be stricter than most. But even though it's like, 'Oh, gosh, I've gotta be in at this time,' they know what they're doing. I have great parents.