Your kids give you a chance to learn about how the world looks from someone who hasn’t been fully shaped by it. That should be an exciting educational opportunity for parents. I see that as one reason to have kids.
When you start looking at life through the lens of a 3-year-old, it's like your whole filter changes. Everything you look at is like a painting that's been restored. Everything is alive again, because you just don't take it for granted.
All grown-ups were once children-although few of them remember it.
Grown-ups never ever understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.
I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn't much improved my opinion of them.
Perhaps I am a little like the grown-ups. I have had to grow old.
But seeds are invisible. They sleep deep in the heart of the earth's darkness, until some one among them is seized with the desire to awaken. Then this little seed will stretch itself and begin-timidly at first to push a charming little sprig inoffensively upward toward the sun.
On matters of consequence, the little prince had ideas which were very different from those of the grown-ups.
Only the children are flattening their noses against the windowpanes. Only the children know what they are looking for.
Men and women have complementary, not competing, responsibilities. There is difference but not inequity. Intelligence and talent favor both of them. But in the woman’s part, she is not just equal to man; she is superior! She can do that which he can never do; not in all eternity can he do it. There are complementing rewards which are hers and hers alone.
Children are more influenced by sermons you act than by sermons you preach.
Adults are just obsolete children...
This I think is sufficiently evident, that children generally hate to be idle. All the care then is, that their busy humour should be constantly employ'd in something of use to them; which, if you will attain, you must make what you would have them do a recreation to them, and not a business.
"How then shall they have the play-games you allow them, if none must be bought for them?" I answer, they should make them themselves, or at least endeavour it, and set themselves about it. ...And if you help them where they are at a stand, it will more endear you to them than any chargeable toys that you shall buy for them.
Children have not yet built wide hinterlands: to them, the world is still opaque and full of necessary bewilderment. Those who write for children have the chance to point them towards beauty that they do not yet know exists: towards versions of joy that they have not yet imagined possible.
In being written for those to whom the world is new and strange, for those who are without economic power, and for those who need short, sharp, bold stories, children’s literature can be a form of distillation: of what it means to hope, to fear, to yearn, distilled down and down into a piece of concentrated meaning.
All children grow up: those who write for children need, therefore, to write fiction that will speak to them both now and in their future.
What else did I long for as a child? I wanted action. I wanted characters brought right to the very edge of themselves.
Yet the thing I longed for most in children’s books were stories that would salute the reader’s intelligence...
President Kimball said, "Could the Lord have prevented these tragedies? The answer is, Yes. The Lord is omnipotent, with all power to control our lives, save us pain, prevent all accidents, drive all planes and cars, feed us, protect us, save us from labor, effort, sickness, even from death, if he will. But he will not. "We should be able to understand this, because we can realize how unwise it would be for us to shield our children from all effort, from disappointments, temptations, sorrows, and suffering. . . . If we looked at mortality as the whole of existence, then pain, sorrow, failure, and short life would be calamity. But if we look upon life as an eternal thing stretching far into the pre-earth past and on into the eternal post-death future, then all happenings may be put in proper perspective."
Elder Orson F. Whitney wrote, "No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted." Such cosmic conservation! He continues, "It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God." (Ibid., p. 4.)
We ought to listen as carefully to those we supervise as to those who supervise us. You and I are usually pretty good at paying attention upward, but we are not nearly as good at heeding that which comes from other directions. Likewise, while parents are to teach their children, my, how we can learn from them at times!
We should, therefore, without being artificial, regularly give deserved, specific praise. One of the reasons for doing this is that we are all so very conscious of our shortcomings that it takes a persistent pattern of appreciation to finally penetrate. We are so certain, sometimes, we do not really have a particular skill or attribute that we severely discount praise. One of the reasons we need regular praise from "outside auditors" is to offset the low level of self-acknowledgment most of us have.
Commending communications ought to flow from us without too much concern with "the balance of trade." There is a straight and narrow path of communication, and off to each side are the perils and pitfalls of poor communication that is too caustic, too flattering, too little, too much, too general, too narrow, too soon, and too late. In the case of commendation in particular, sometimes it comes too late to be maximally helpful. Further, if we are not careful (and there is this tendency sometimes in the Church), we may be a little artificial and flowery. We are quick to discern undeserved praise, which we then discount—along with the credibility of the giver. Sometimes we even communicate too soon. We have all had the experience as parents of being so anxious to praise our children that we sometimes overpraise them before their job is done.
We ought to build a climate around us in which we are, in all situations, open to the comments of others. We should not make it too expensive emotionally for others to try to communicate with us. If it is too hard to do so, people will just pull back. If we are too well protected and too well defended, they are not going to extend themselves overmuch in an effort to communicate with us. It is difficult to say which is most dangerous—the mote in one's eye or the moat around his "castle" that keeps out the needed communications, involving correction, counsel, or commendation.
Perhaps our difficulties with receiving justified reproof stem from our thinking of love as being all sweetness. Love surely includes sweetness. But love must sometimes be tough love, sinew as well as sweetness. So it is with loving communication also.
If our efforts to communicate with someone are tied to their role rather than our regard for them, these efforts will not survive when that individual's role changes. If our friendship is a matter of function, what do we do when the function is changed or dissolved—cease caring? This is a bigger block to communication than we may care to acknowledge. While the blocks that seem to get in the way of brotherly communication include the obvious, much restraint no doubt reflects the fact that communication is not risk-free. Communication opens the windows of our soul—and what is inside will be seen. Communication, of course, needs to take careful account of the realities of our mortal relationships in order to avoid errors.
Thus one of the biggest blocks to Christian communication is that we are so afraid of being misunderstood. So, when in doubt, we withhold. Yet Paul said to speak the truth in love; we can then take the chance. We worry (and understandably so) that some communications will only produce more distance. But silence is very risky, too.
Usually, when we do not know somebody, it is difficult for us to trust them, and this becomes a restraint upon communication and growth. Opening the windows of the soul helps us to build healthy relationships. But if those windows are always closed or the blinds are drawn, it is difficult to help; one simply does not know what is needed.
Our self-esteem is stretched, however, only as we are stretched, and true humility includes believing in and exploring our own possibilities.
Besides, a neighbor is apt to hold to a view all the more until he has a chance to explain it. Counsel is more apt to be received after listening has occurred.
If we received a genuine and regular flow of deserved recognition and appreciation, we would be freed from the concerns over whether or not we are valued and whether or not we are going to get credit for something. We would know that we are valued—whether or not a particular idea of ours makes its way through the network successfully! When life is seen as good, a bad day can easily be absorbed.
Our pride should not hold us hostage when we have erred, nor should we mourn our mistakes for the wrong reasons. Yet correction, when it comes, is seldom welcome, and often the issue becomes "Can we take it?" Yet those who have proved that they can "take it" usually have so much to give!
Effective communication provides much of the material out of which rich relationships are made.
Let us in our ministry be nondiscriminatory in the giving of commendation. True, he who is down spirited needs to be lifted up. True, those who are fledglings in the faith may need extra encouragement and deserved, specific praise. But meanwhile, let us not forget the often unnoticed, faithful veterans, lest, like the son who stayed loyally at home and saw the banquet and benefactions given to the prodigal son, the faithful wonder if they are truly appreciated. Let us not assume that another has no need of commendation. Let us give it even if the other does not seem to need it, for we need to give commendation in any event.
Let us never unwittingly turn others in the direction of the praise of the world merely because they are so starved for the praise of the righteous!
I testify that your own personal journey as a child of God did not begin for you as the first flow of earth’s air came rushing into your lungs, and it will not end when you take your last breath of mortality. May we always remember that each spirit child of God is coming to earth on his or her own personal journey.25 May we welcome them, safeguard them, and always love them. As you receive these precious children in the Savior’s name and help them in their eternal journey, I promise you that the Lord will bless you and shower His love and approval upon you.
If a child can problem solve, they can self-govern.
It may be true that you have to be able to read in order to fill out forms at the DMV, but that’s not why we teach children to read. We teach them to read for the higher purpose of allowing them access to beautiful and meaningful ideas.
Life is growth. You grow or you die.
Nevertheless, Lucifer has supported abortion and in a horrific paradigm shift has convinced many people that children represent lost opportunity and misery instead of joy and happiness.
As you center your home on the Savior, it will naturally become a refuge not only to your own family but also to friends who live in more difficult circumstances. They will be drawn to the serenity they feel there. Welcome such friends into your home. They will blossom in that Christ-centered environment. Become friends with your children’s friends. Be a worthy example to them.
Whoever approaches a child without humility, without wonderment and without infinite respect, misses his judgment of what is before him...Children are greater than the grown man. All grown men have more experience, but only a very few retain the greatness that was theirs before the system of compromises began in their lives.
In reality, we are raising our children in enemy-occupied territory. The homes of our members must become the primary sanctuaries of our faith, where each can be safe from the sins of the world.
...the future of nations is linked to children. Families with children need to be re-enthroned as the fundamental unit of society.
All Children and Youth activities and all Children and Youth teachings are about helping young people become more like Jesus by joining with Him in His work of salvation and exaltation.
Children learn through gentle direction and persuasive teaching. They search for models to imitate...
Speaking of this affluence, one youngster said: "Kids are caught between the values given them as desirable by their churches, schools, and parents on one hand and on the other the spectacle of mothers and fathers both working with great concentration to get 'things.'"
A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on.
The soul is healed by being with children.
Sometimes, when I see my granddaughters make small discoveries of their own, I wish I were a child.
You're never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read to a child.
Children are our greatest natural resource.
The future of the race marches forward on the feet of little children.
Your kids give you a chance to learn about how the world looks from someone who hasn’t been fully shaped by it. That should be an exciting educational opportunity for parents. I see that as one reason to have kids.
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