A Quote by David Whyte

There are many tough conversations, but one of the most difficult is between a parent and an adolescent daughter, partly because as a parent we are almost always attempting to relate to someone who is no longer there.
The parent-adolescent relationship is like a partnership in which the senior partner (the parent) has more expertise in many areasbut looks forward to the day when the junior partner (the adolescent) will take over the business of running his or her own life.
This is the hope of many adolescent girls--to capture a parent's heart with love for them as they are, as people. They reject thenotion of being loved just because they are the child of the parent. They want the parent to fall in love with them all over again, because being new, they deserve a new love.
It's difficult to parent one kid, let alone five! It's insane. It's this strange, overwhelming mess that I would not trade for anything. I think it's more difficult in New York City. It's not like we can hop in the minivan and go somewhere. I don't own a car. It's chaos anywhere. Being a parent is difficult. Being a son and a daughter is difficult. It's a human relationship.
Preoccupied with her self, the adolescent sees enormous changes, whereas the parent sees the child she knew all along. For the parent, new developments are superficial and evanescent. For the adolescent, they are thrilling and profound.
Any statements from the parents may seem like criticism or judgment by the child or adolescent. It's very important that the child or adolescent does most of the talking and the parent asks questions curiously to understand the perspective of the child or adolescent.
This is probably one of the most difficult challenges any parent could face - learning to love the other parent enough to make the children first.
There are times as a parent when you realize that your job is not to be the parent you always imagined you'd be, the parent you always wished you had. Your job is to be the parent your child needs, given the particulars of his or her own life and nature.
To be a parent, especially to rock & roll kids, I think being a parent is the most difficult job on the face of the earth. You hate to say things that will upset your kids, but then sometimes you have to because you can't let them run around wild.
Being a parent is such a difficult business; you don't always get things right. And also, you don't want to be a perfect parent... You need people to be human, and part of it is imperfection.
Prayer has been hedged about with too many man-made rules. I am convinced that God has intended prayer to be as simple and natural, and as constant a part of our spiritual life, as the intercourse between child and parent in the home. And as a large part of that intercourse between child and parent is simply asking and receiving, just so is it with us and our Heavenly Parent.
I am an only child, so I relate to the intensity of that single-parent, mother-daughter relationship.
I was a solo parent. Not a single parent as far as I was concerned. Single parent implies that the other parent is around somewhere.
It was extremely hard going from being a parent of one to a parent of three, because now all these instant decisions have to be made about how you balance out the time and attention between them.
When a child or adolescent is troubled, the most important thing for the parent to focus on may very well be their relationship with their child or adolescent. Parents need to do whatever they can to make sure the relationship is strong.
As every parent knows, children go through an adolescent growth spurt, during which they put on inches at an alarming rate. Humans are unique in this respect: most mammalian species, including apes, progress almost directly from infancy to adulthood.
It's quite difficult for a parent to know that their daughter is in great danger.
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