A Quote by Ogden Nash
Parents were invented to make children happy by giving them something to ignore.
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Children aren't happy with nothing to ignore, and that's what parents were created for.
Many parents make the mistake of giving love and approval to their children only when their children do something that they want them to do.
When my parents force-fed me healthy food, they were confident they were giving me the best. But now, when I feed my children, I am not sure if what I am giving them is safe. Politics and pesticides are destroying our food culture.
One can tell a child everything, anything. I have often been struck by the fact that parents know their children so little. They should not conceal so much from them. How well even little children understand that their parents conceal things from them, because they consider them too young to understand! Children are capable of giving advice in the most important matters.
When children have grieving parents it's also common for them to feel an obligation to cheer them up and make them happy.
It seems to me that the most fundamental mistake most parents make with children is to expect them to be grateful. Children are never grateful. ... The 'sacrifices' you made were not for them, they were for you.
The real questions for parents should be: "Are you engaged? Are you paying attention?" If so, plan to make lots of mistakes and bad decisions. Imperfect parenting moments turn into gifts as our children watch us try to figure out what went wrong and how we can do better next time. The mandate is not to be perfect and raise happy children. Perfection doesn't exist, and I've found what makes children happy doesn't always prepare them to be courageous, engaged adults.
The most meaningful movies I can make are the ones where parents can share them with their children and children can look forward to sharing them with their parents, a ritual if you will, where they get to spend time together and the kids are smiling.
From their teenage years on, children are considerably more capable of causing parents unhappiness than bringing them happiness. That is one reason parents who rely on their children for happiness make both their children and themselves miserable.
As a young man with celebrity parents I yearned to ignore my heritage (or, more precisely, have other people ignore my famous parents) and "make it" in my chosen career entirely on my own merit (which of course never happens, you're always found out).
Secondary school parents tell me that they are frustrated, that their teachers ignore them, their children don't give them much feedback because they are adolescents, they feel kind of out of the loop.
Children rarely want to know who their parents were before they were parents, and when age finally stirs their curiosity, there is no parent left to tell them.
Happiness is not like we were walking around fingering razor blades or anything like that. But it just sort of seems as if - we sort of knew how happy our parents were, and we would compare our lives with our parents and see that, at least on the surface or according to the criteria that the culture lays down for a successful, happy life, we were actually doing better than a lot of them were.
In great countries, children are always trying to remain children, and the parents want to make them into adults. In vile countries, the children are always wanting to be adults and the parents want to keep them children.
While not impossible, it is especially challenging for teenage parents to develop bonds with their children. A high percent of them were themselves children of teenage parents and have never experienced appropriate parenting.
I came from a happy family with loving parents, so my associations with marriage and children were all happy, positive things that brought me comfort as a child, which I wanted in my life.
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