When you’re a parent you will have good and bad days, and there is nothing strange about that. But the most important thing is to find the strength to pick yourself up whenever you fall down.
I have compiled these positive parenting quotes for this exact purpose, and to let you know you’re not alone in your struggles. I hope they will help inspire you to be a better parent.
They’re here to help you achieve the ultimate goal of gentle parenting: making your children happy.
Read my top picks of the best positive parenting quotes and see for yourself.
Motivational Positive Parenting Quotes
You won’t need to read a parenting book or take parenting classes once you get a hold of this list of positive parenting quotes. Each one of them serves as a lesson and parenting hack, so make sure you read them all carefully.
1. “There is no such thing as a perfect parent. So just be a real one.”―Sue Atkins
2. “One explanation was offered by Alice Miller: “Many people continue to pass on the cruel deeds and attitudes to which they were subjected as children, so that they can continue to idealize their parents.” Her premise is that we have a powerful, unconscious need to believe that everything our parents did to us was really for our own good and was done out of love. It’s too threatening for many of us even to entertain the possibility that they weren’t entirely well-meaning—or competent. So, in order to erase any doubts, we do the same things to our own children that our parents did to us.”― Alfie Kohn, Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason
3. “Treat a child as though he already is the person he’s capable of becoming.”―Haim Ginott
4. “The way we talk to your children becomes their inner voice.”― Peggy O’Mara
5. “My mom and dad gave their kids the greatest gift of all – the gift of unconditional love. They cared deeply about who we would be, and much less about what we would do.” ―Mitt Romney
6. “Tantrums are not bad behavior. Tantrums are an expression of emotion that became too much for the child to bear. No punishment for kids is required. What your child needs is compassion and safe, loving arms to unload in.”― Rebecca Eanes, The Newbie’s Guide to Positive Parenting
7. “What it’s like to be a parent: It’s one of the hardest things you’ll ever do but in exchange it teaches you the meaning of unconditional love.”― Nicholas Sparks, The Wedding
8.“Parenting has nothing to do with perfection. Perfection isn’t even the goal, not for us, not for our children. Learning together to live well in an imperfect world, loving each other despite or even because of our imperfections, and growing as humans while we grow our little humans, those are the goals of gentle parenting. So don’t ask yourself at the end of the day if you did everything right. Ask yourself what you learned and how well you loved, then grow from your answer. That is perfect parenting.”― L.R. Knost, The Gentle Parent: Positive, Practical, Effective Discipline
9. “My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me. – Jim Valvano
10. “There is an instinct in a woman to love most her own child – and an instinct to make any child who needs her love, her own.” ―Robert Brault
11. “By loving them for more than their abilities we show our children that they are much more than the sum of their accomplishments.”― Eileen Kennedy-Moore
12. “Don’t let yourself become so concerned with raising a good kid that you forget that you already have one.” ― Glennon Melton
13. “Children must never work for our love, they must rest in it.” – Gordon Neufeld
14. “Of course I’d like to be the ideal mother. But I’m too busy raising children.” ― From the comic strip The Family Circus by Bil Keane
15. “To be in your children’s memories tomorrow, you have to be in their lives today.”― Barbare Johnson
16. “You become a parent, and your whole life becomes about worrying. You just worry constantly whether they’ll be okay. And the idea that I’ll be worried forever about them and what they do…I almost have a panic attack when I think about it. I’m worried, and I’m worried about having to worry so goddamn much.”― Drew Magary, The Postmortal
17. “One of the greatest things a father can do for his children is to love their mother.”― Howard W. Hunter
18. “Every day, in a hundred small ways our children ask, “Do you hear me? Do you see me? Do I matter” Their behavior often reflects our response.”— L.R. Knost
19. “Your children need your presence more than your presents.”― Jesse Jackson
20. “If you want your children to improve, let them overhear the nice things you say about them to others.” ― Haim Ginott
21. “Children are educated by what the grown-up is and not by his talk.” ― Carl Jung.
22. “Affirming words from moms and dads are like light switches. Speak a word of affirmation at the right moment in a child’s life and it’s like lighting up a whole roomful of possibilities.” — Gary Smalley, family therapist
23. “We may not be able to prepare the future for our children, but we can at least prepare our children for the future.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt
24. “Your children are the greatest gift God will give to you, and their souls the heaviest responsibility. He will place in your hands. Take time with them, teach them to have faith in God. Be a person in whom they can have faith. When you are old, nothing else you’ve done will have mattered as much.”― Lisa Wingate
25. “Do you not realize that your kids are going to make mistakes, and a lot of them? Do you not realize the damage you do when you push your son’s nose into his mishaps or make your daughter feel worthless because she bumped or spilled something? Do you have any idea how easy it is to make your child feel abject? It’s as simple as letting out the words, “why would you do that!?” or “how many times have I told you…”― Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing
26. “We should never permit ourselves to do anything that we are not willing to see our children do. We should set them an example that we wish them to imitate.”― Brigham Young
27. “When we set children against one another in contests—from spelling bees to awards assemblies to science “fairs” (that are really contests), from dodge ball to honor rolls to prizes for the best painting or the most books read—we teach them to confuse excellence with winning as if the only way to do something well is to outdo others.”― Alfie Kohn, The Myth of the Spoiled Child: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom About Children and Parenting
28. “I think that’s a special thing…that your daughters will get to grow up and see a woman and a mom who’s making lots of time and space for them, but who’s also making time and space for herself. That changes everything.”― Ashley Asti, Up: A Love Letter to the Down Syndrome Community
29. “Just like a seed that needs intensive care to grow into a magnificent tree, a child needs the same amount of love, effort, care, and kindness to grow into a healthy, aware, responsible adult. A sapling doesn’t grow with neglect, thirst, or underfeeding, and neither do children. Fulfilling their various needs will help them grow into fine grown-ups who repay kindness with kindness, and return love with love.”― Noora Ahmed Alsuwaidi
30. “Someone is going to teach your children about life. I implore you to be this person.” ― Meredith Essalat, The Overly Honest Teacher: Parenting Advice from the Classroom
31. “People without children thought that having a newborn was the hardest part of parenthood, that upside down, the day is night twilight zone feedings and toothless wails. But parents knew better. Parents knew that the hardest part of parenthood was figuring out how to do the right thing in 24 hours a day, forever, and surviving all the times you failed.”― Emma Straub, All Adults Here
32. “Loving your children fearlessly and relentlessly and with every bit of your heart will make a great impact on their lives. They will grow up and know that they were loved always. This still doesn’t teach them how to love themselves. You knowing how to love yourself and showing them a proper example of how to set boundaries, how to do self-care, and how to balance working and resting, will be things that they learn from you and will eventually mimic as adults.”― Rachel D. Greenwell
33. “Why is it so important to affirm a child? Because a child who is truly accepted by his parents and/or influencing adults can grow up learning to accept himself. Without a constant, debilitating sense of guilt and defeat, he will become at ease with himself. He’ll be able to admit his own failures and weaknesses. He’ll be able to forget himself and love others. He won’t spend his energies worrying about what people think of him, and he won’t spend his energies putting down others.”― Anne Ortlund, Children are wet cement: Make the right impression in their lives
34. “Parenting is the privilege of constant failure… and being loved anyway.”― Damon Thueson
35. “To my children, I say, “Fall on me.” For what greater privilege has a parent than to be that place to fall in a world that is itself fallen?”― Craig D. Lounsbrough
36. “Our greatest duty to our children is to love them first. Secondly, it is to teach them. Not to frighten, force, or intimidate our children into submission, but to effectively teach them so that they have the knowledge and tools to govern themselves.”― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year
37. “Don’t try to make children grow up to be like you, or they may do it.”― Russell Baker
38. “It’s not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us see what we do with ours. I can’t tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself.” ― Joyce Maynard
39. “Allow yourself to think that the possibility of failure is a necessary part of parenting well… Avoiding the possibility of failure means avoiding the possibility of being an extraordinary parent-and avoiding what you want for your child.” ― Lisa Coyne, The Joy of Parenting: An Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Guide to Effective Parenting in the Early Years
40. “Children are people, and they should have to reach to learn about things, to understand things, just as adults have to reach if they want to grow in mental stature. Life is composed of lights and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows. Most things are good, and they are the strongest things, but there are evil things too, and you are not doing a child a favor by trying to shield him from reality. The important thing is to teach a child that good can always triumph over evil.”― Walt Disney
41. “Parents are the ultimate role models for children. Every word, movement, and action has an effect. No other person or outside force has a greater influence on a child than the parent.”―Bob Keeshan
42. “But I think parents aren’t teachers anymore. Parents — or a whole lot of us, at least — lead by mouth instead of by example. It seems to me that if a child’s hero is their mother or father — or even better, both of them in tandem — then the rough road of learning and experience is going to be smoothed some. And every little bit of smoothing helps, in this rough old world that wants children to be miniature adults, devoid of charm and magic and the beauty of innocence.”― Robert R. McCammon
43. “I do not know many people who think they have succeeded as parents. Those who do tend to cite the markers that indicate (their own) status in the world: the Stanford degree….Those of us less inclined to compliment ourselves on our parenting skills, in other words, most of us, recite rosaries of our failures, our neglects, our derelictions and delinquencies.”― Joan Didion, Blue Nights
44. “So often, children are punished for being human. Children are not allowed to have grumpy moods, bad days, disrespectful tones, or bad attitudes, yet we adults have them all the time! We think if we don’t nip it in the bud, it will escalate and we will lose control. Let go of that unfounded fear and give your child permission to be human. We all have days like that. None of us are perfect, and we must stop holding our children to a higher standard of perfection than we can attain ourselves. All of the punishments you could throw at them will not stamp out their humanity, for to err is human, and we all do it sometimes.”― Rebecca Eanes, The Newbie’s Guide to Positive Parenting
45. “Don’t raise your kids to have more than you had. Raise them to be more than you were.”— Unknown
46. “We want our children to have a childhood that’s magical and enriched, but I’ll bet that your best childhood memories involve something you were thrilled to do by yourself. These are childhood’s magic words: “I did it myself!”― Lenore Skenazy, Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry
47. “If parents want to give their children a gift, the best thing they can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning. That way, their children don’t have to be slaves of praise. They will have a lifelong way to build and repair their own confidence.”― Carol S. Dweck
48. “People treat having a kid as somehow retiring from success. Quitting. Have you seen a baby? They’re pretty cute. Loving them is pretty easy. Smiling babies should actually be categorized by the pharmaceutical industry as a powerful antidepressant. Being happy is really the definition of success, isn’t it?”― Jim Gaffigan, Dad Is Fat
49. “Parents must try to be, or at least put forth their best efforts to be, what they wish [their] children to be. It is impossible for you to be an example of what you are not.”― Joseph Fielding Smith
50. “Again, the most effective (and least destructive) way to help a child succeed—whether she’s writing or skiing, playing the trumpet or a computer game—is to do everything possible to help her fall in love with what she’s doing, to pay less attention to how successful she was (or is likely to be) and show more interest in the task. That’s just another way of saying that we need to encourage more, judge less, and love always.”― Alfie Kohn, Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason
51. “Children are God’s way of saving us. They give us a second chance at getting it right.”― Nancy Arroyo Ruffin, Letters to My Daughter: A collection of short stories and poems about Love, Pride, and Identity
52. “It is as hard for our children to believe that we are not omnipotent as it is for us to know it, as parents. But that knowledge is necessary as the first step in the reassessment of power as something other than might, age, privilege, or the lack of fear. It is an important step for a boy, whose societal destruction begins when he is forced to believe that he can only be strong if he doesn’t feel, or if he wins.”― Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
53. “What we sometimes see as annoying, incessant questions from a child may be a plea for recognition. Maybe they do not need an answer as much as attention.”― Dr. Rand Olson, Children of Promise: The Ultimate Guide to Raising Healthy Kids
54. “Sometimes to be a good parent… You have to laugh when you want to be angry. You have to be angry when you want to laugh. And that is why good parenting is tough.”― Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing
55. “It’s so easy and convenient to buy our children gifts, but I encourage and challenge you to give them gifts that TRULY matter! The gift of unconditional love. The gift of encouragement. The gift of support. The gift of friendship. The gift of communication, understanding, and patience. The gift of guidance and support. The gift of quality time. And the gift of loving them for who THEY are. Material things are nice, but NOTHING compares to genuine love! Parenting should be taken seriously.”― Stephanie Lahart
56. “The absolute best way to raise kind kids is to be kind parents.”― Galit Breen, Kindness Wins
57. “Be careful not to give your child the impression that you love her perfect, performing parts more than you do her mediocre, stumbling parts.” ― Henry Cloud & John Townsend, Boundaries with Kids: When to Say Yes, When to Say No to Help Your Children Gain Control of Their Lives
58. “Your love, not your worry, is the most valuable thing any of us can give our children.”― Jason E. Royle, Jesus vs. Santa: Christmas Misunderstood
59. “As a parent, you just have no idea what anything means. On some level everything your kids do and say is in code.”― Bill Clegg, Did You Ever Have a Family
60. “We must remember that one day our children are going to follow our example instead of our advice.” ― Carolina King
Positive Co-Parenting Quotes
These co-parenting quotes will help you see that co-parenting and happy parenting can go hand in hand. Trust me, joint or shared parenting can be healthy and successful when done properly.
1. “This is probably one of the most difficult challenges any parent could face, learning to love the other parent enough to make the children first.” ― Iyanila Vanzant
2. “When you go for co-parenting, always keep in mind that you are not managing an inconvenience. You are raising another human being.”― Kittie Franz
3. “You have a lot of regret with a child, and feeling like you’re failing them in some way. Not giving them the idealistic scenario. Your child comes first. That’s all. It’s all about that. He comes first and you have to get past your own egos and you never talk bad about each other.” – Idina Menzel
4. “If you love your child more than you hate your ex, you can solve most co-parenting problems.” ― Helen Fried
5. “Families are like branches on a tree. Though we grow in different directions, our roots will always remain together as one.” ―Unknown
6. “The greatest thing a father can do for his children is to respect the woman that gave birth to his children. It is because of her that you have the greatest treasures in your life. You may have moved on, but your children have not. If you can’t be her soulmate, then at least be thoughtful. Whom your children love should always be someone that you acknowledge with kindness. Your children notice everything and will follow your example.” ― Shannon Alder
7. “Co-parenting is not asking permission. It’s about discussing your child’s needs and wants and deciding what’s best.”― Unknown
8. “We are both totally committed to raising our son and being in love with our son… It’s a concept that’s fairly new, particularly in the psychology of raising a child in a divorce. And the idea is, it’s really not the child’s fault that you got divorced. It’s your fault and therefore it should not be the child’s problem to go back and forth between two different homes.” – Josh Lucas on the “bird nesting” co-parenting arrangement
9. “But at the end of the day, we’ve got a great kid who’s got two parents who love him very much. And we’re finding a way to navigate this while still remaining friends and still being kind to one another.”― Chris Pratt
10. “I don’t think children’s inner feelings have changed. They still want a mother and father in the very same house; they want places to play.” ―Beverly Cleary
Funny Positive Parenting Quotes
These funny positive parenting quotes perfectly sum up all the troubles that arise on the path of reaching your parenting goals. Not only that, but they also show you that you’re not crazy, and that you’re not alone in feeling this way.
1. “As a young father it’s important to remember that, when you’re at the beach, there’s a BIG difference between telling your five-year-old son to just go pee in the ocean and telling him to get in the water at least waist deep and then pee in the ocean.” ― Spuds Crawford
2. “I figure when my husband comes home from work, if the kids are still alive, then I’ve done my job.”― Roseanne Barr
3. “Having children is like living in a frat house – nobody sleeps, everything’s broken, and there’s a lot of throwing up.”― Ray Romano
4. “Once you sign on to be a mother, 24/7 is the only shift they offer.” ― Jodi Picoult
5. “Becoming a mom to me means that you have accepted that for the next 16 years of your life, you will have a sticky purse.” ― Nia Vardalos
6. “Being a parent is like folding a fitted sheet; no one really knows how.”― Unknown
7. “I feel very blessed to have two wonderful, healthy children who keep me completely grounded, sane, and throw up on my shoes just before I go to an awards show just so I know to keep it real.” ― Reese Witherspoon
8. “Teach your kids to spend more time annoying each other so they have less time to spend annoying you.” ― Unknow
9. “When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen. When they’re finished, I climb out.” ― Erma Bombeck
10. “On our 6 a.m. walk, my daughter asked where the moon goes each morning. I let her know it’s in heaven, visiting Daddy’s freedom.” ― Ryan Reynolds
Final Thoughts
Some of these inspirational quotes on positive parenting will make you laugh, some will reveal an eye-opening truth and some will provide you with useful parenting tips.
Either way, each one will be motivational on your parenting journey. Do you have a favorite positive parenting quote?
Like this post? Please share or pin it for later. You can also stay in the loop and follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.
This post contains affiliate links. Please see our full disclosure for more info.