A Quote by Patti Smith

Sometimes you have to abandon your own children for other children. — © Patti Smith
Sometimes you have to abandon your own children for other children.
My wife runs the house. She raised our kids with me only partly there. It's just what coaching is. A lot of times, you're raising other people's children, sometimes at the expense of your own. I hope that wasn't the case with my children, but at times, it probably was.
One of the easiest things in the world to do is to tell other people how to raise their children. This is especially easy if you have no children of your own.
Parents and children were put on earth to give each other grief. You were my punishment for how I behaved to my own father. And I'll have my revenge when you have children of your own.
Children are to be born into a family where the parents hold the needs of children equal to their own in importance. And children are to love parents and each other.
Your children are not your children. They are lives longing for itself. They come here with their own destiny. Give them your love. They will find their own way.
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.
So much of America's tragic and costly failure to care for all its children stems from our tendency to distinguish between our own children and other people's children--as if justice were divisible.
For me the breakthrough was the realization that I wasn't the center of the universe or even the centre of my own world. That you and your work, your living, are not the only reason you're here. Your role is to shepherd your children through to adulthood. That's the point of life. Your own little sessions and needs and passions are just there to flavour you and help you do that job for your children.
Your children are not the same. Not at all. Each one is unique. There are no "boiler plate" clauses that fit all children. They are like snowflakes with their own patterns and their own shapes and their own sizes.
I know, you've been here a year, you think these people are normal. Well, they're not. WE'RE not. I look in the library, I call up books on my desk. Old ones, because they won't let us have anything new, but I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares. Children aren't in armies, they aren't COMMANDERS, they don't rule over forty other kids, it's more than anybody can take and not get crazy.
Sometimes it seems as though all parents are certain that their children are victims of abuse by other children.
Each of us must come to care about everyone else's children. We must recognize that the welfare of our children and grandchildren is intimately linked to the welfare of all other people's children. After all, when one of our children needs lifesaving surgery, someone else's child will perform it. If one of our children is threatened or harmed by violence, someone else's child will be responsible for the violent act. The good life for our own children can be secured only if a good life is also secured for all other people's children.
Clearly, children need to be aware of the news and current affairs. I buy my own children a children's newspaper so they can form their own views.
children need truly evolved people - not other, larger children - as parents. Therefore, don't have a child until you've forged your own identity, can support yourself, and have already begun the work of creating or maintaining an extended family.
Here's the progression. Feminism won; you can have it all; of course you want children; mothers are better at raising children than fathers; of course your children come first; of course you come last; today's children need constant attention, cultivation, and adoration, or they'll become failures and hate you forever; you don't want to fail at that; it's easier for mothers to abandon their work and their dreams than for fathers; you don't want it all anymore (which is good because you can't have it all); who cares about equality, you're too tired; and whoops--here we are in 1954.
To each his own. It's one of those things. How you build your family?you have to know what you're capable of handling and how your children will relate to each other. Maybe if you have one child and that child has a lot of needs, you realize you cannot give more attention to another. Sometimes you just know as a parent. We felt we could handle more children, and we have a very happy, very full home.
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