In this section:

• Relationships
• Parenting
• Children
• Teenagers

• Whenever you're in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude. (William James, Philosopher and Psychologist)

• Consider how hard it is to change yourself and you'll understand what little chance you have in trying to change others. (Anonymous)

• When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves. (William Arthur Ward, Author and Teacher)

• Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict --alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence. (Dorothy Thompson, Author)

• Instead of suppressing conflicts, specific channels could be created to make this conflict explicit, and specific methods could be set up by which the conflict is resolved. (Albert Low, Author)

• When the ambulance crew arrived, they helped him regain consciousness and asked if he knew what caused him to faint. "It was enough to make anybody faint," he said. "My son asked me for the keys to the garage, and instead of driving the car out, he came out with the lawn mower."

• Your children need your presence more than your presents. (Jesse Jackson, Clergyman and Politician)

• If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves. (C.G. Jung, Psychiatrist)

• Kids spell love T-I-M-E. (John Crudele, Educationalist)

• The guys who fear becoming fathers don't understand that fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man. The end product of child raising is not the child but the parent. (Frank Pittman, Psychiatrist)

• The hardest part of raising a child is teaching them to ride bicycles. A shaky child on a bicycle for the first time needs both support and freedom. The realization that this is what the child will always need can hit hard. (Sloan Wilson, Author)

• If I had my child to raise all over again, I'd build self-esteem first, and the house later. I'd finger-paint more, and point the finger less. I would do less correcting and more connecting. I'd take my eyes off my watch, and watch with my eyes. I'd take more hikes and fly more kites. I'd stop playing serious, and seriously play. I would run through more fields and gaze at more stars. I'd do more hugging and less tugging. (Diane Loomans, Poet)

• Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners. (Anonymous)

• In spite of the six thousand manuals on child raising in the bookstores, child raising is still a dark continent and no one really knows anything. You just need a lot of love and luck - and, of course, courage. (Bill Cosby, Actor)

• In bringing up children, spend on them half as much money and twice as much time. (Anonymous)

• You have a lifetime to work, but children are only young once. (Polish proverb)

• Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. (James Baldwin, Author)

• Where did we ever get the crazy idea that in order to make children do better, first we have to make them feel worse? Think of the last time you felt humiliated or treated unfairly. Did you feel like cooperating or doing better? (Jane Nelson, Author)

• Children seldom misquote. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said. (Author Unknown)

• Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes, they forgive them. (Oscar Wilde, Novelist and Poet)

• Children will not remember you for the material things you provided but for the feeling that you cherished them. (Richard L. Evans, Broadcaster and Inspirational Speaker)

• Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children. (Sitting Bull, Native American Leader)

• If you want your children to improve, let them overhear the nice things you say about them to others. (Dr. Haim Ginott, Psychologist and Child Therapist)

• "Son, you really do ask a lot of questions," said the father. "I'd like to know what would have happened if I'd asked as many questions when I was a boy." "Perhaps," said the boy, "you would have been able to answer some of mine."

• Mother Nature is providential. She gives us twelve years to develop a love for our children before turning them into teenagers. (William Galvin)

• The best substitute for experience is being sixteen. (Raymond Duncan, Author).

• Adolescence is that period in your life when parents become more difficult. (Ryan O'Neal, Actor)

• A father said to his daughter, "I want you home by eleven o'clock." She said, "But dad, I'm no longer a child!" He said, "I know, that's why I want you home by eleven."

• The main problem with teenagers is that they're just like their parents were at their age. (Anonymous)