parenthood

When you push your stroller past a group of elderly women, you'll see in the turning gladness of their bodies a glimpse of the children they had been, turning toward the tin music of the ice cream van.

Mothers and fathers must be gentle at least some of the time. Mothers and fathers must also be strict at least some of the time. Most of the time, though, most mothers and fathers must be mostly strict and gentle together.

And really, how insulting is it that to suggest that the best thing women can do is raise other people to do incredible things? I'm betting some of those women would like to do great things of their own.

When (The World According To) Garp was published, people who__ lost children wrote to me. ___ lost one, too,__ they told me. I confessed to them that I hadn__ lost any children. I__ just a father with a good imagination. In my imagination, I lose my children every day. (afterword)

Your children are going through life with their eyes closed, so YOU'RE the one who has to steer.

Their lifelong love of learning, their remarkable wide-ranging intellectual curiosity, was fostered primarily by their father. He read aloud to them at night, eliciting their responses to works of history and literature. He organized amateur plays for them, encourage pursuit of special interests, prompted them to write essays on their readings, and urge them to recite poetry.

the sculpting of the brain__ circuitry during this period of brain growth depends to a great degree on what a child experiences day-to-day.

George III was incapable of passing on a sense of mission to his son might a given some purpose to the crown prince's existence

it__ helpful to focus your child__ attention on the present moment by deciding together on one thing you may particularly look for.

Kids don't always stop to judge or analyze a new experience unless the adults around them react strongly. Otherwise, they just take in the experience and move on to the next one.

I wanted to explain so much to him at that moment, but you can't give a six-year-old the perspective of a 40-year-old, not really, so I gave him the short course.

although the stress response was involuntary, the relaxation response required practice.[6]

the real tests of life can come a child__ way at any moment,

He could tune her, bringing out her better instincts and filtering out her lesser ones.

Youth and age touch only the surface of our lives.

He was so much the humblest one that Wendy was especially gentle with him.

Of Teddy Roosevelt and his siblings, the author writes they were, "armed with an innate curiosity and discipline fostered by his remarkable father.

The only way your child will grow out of their dependency into self-sufficient adults is for you to essentially abandon your own independence for 20 years or so.