Did You Meet the Ten Criteria of A Good parent ?

Understanding childhood requires one being a child again. Josh Billings has said it well, To
bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while.

"Don't you understand that we need to be childish in order to understand? Only a child sees things
with perfect clarity, because it hasn't developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things
that we don't expect to see."
~ Douglas Adams (Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency)

Did You Meet the Ten Criteria of A Good Parent?

Criteria #1 : THEY ARE CRAZY ABOUT THEM
Good parents make it clear that they are crazy about the child. They are constantly thinking
about the child and desire to be with them, and feel that the child is special.
There is only one pretty child in the world, and every mother has it. ~Chinese Proverb
Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children, and no
theories. ~John Wilmot
"I fell for her in summer, my lovely summer girl,
From summer she is made, my lovely summer girl,
Id love to spend a winter with my lovely summer girl,
But Im never warm enough for my lovely summer girl,
Its summer when she smiles, Im laughing like a child,
Its the summer of our lives; well contain it for a while
She holds the heat, the breeze of summer in the circle of her hand
Id be happy with this summer if its all we ever had."
~ Maggie Stiefvater (Shiver)
"Having a child is surely the most beautifully irrational act that two people in love can commit."
~ Bill Cosby (Fatherhood)

Criteria #2 : THEY INTERACT
Good parents interact, especially verbally, with the child. They enjoy talking to the child and
encourage the child to talk. They are interested to know more about the child.
"And I learned what is obvious to a child. That life is simply a collection of little lives, each lived one
day at a time. That each day should be spent finding beauty in flowers and poetry and talking to
animals. That a day spent with dreaming and sunsets and refreshing breezes cannot be bettered. But
most of all, I learned that life is about sitting on benches next to ancient creeks with my hand on her
knee and sometimes, on good days, for falling in love."
Nicholas Sparks
"Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk
together, we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear."
~ Judy Blume
"The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop."
~ Mark Twain

Criteria #3 : THEY RESPECT
Good parents work to help the child to develop a high level of self-esteem. They respect and
pay attention to the child, taking the childs opinion into their consideration.
Whenever I held my newborn baby in my arms, I used to think that what I said and did to him could
have an influence not only on him but on all whom he met, not only for a day or a month or a year, but
for all eternity - a very challenging and exciting thought for a mother. ~Rose Kennedy
Likely as not, the child you can do the least with will do the most to make you proud. ~Mignon
McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
The secret of dealing successfully with a child is not to be its parent. ~Mell Lazarus
Parents need to fill a child's bucket of self-esteem so high that the rest of the world can't poke enough
holes to drain it dry. ~Alvin Price
"A torn jacket is soon mended, but hard words bruise the heart of a child."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Criteria #4 : THEY MOTIVATE
Good parents condition their children to reach their best potential. They reward the children
for their performances and are continuously encouraging and motivating the children.
Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed. ~Maria Montessori
All good teachers will tell you that the most important quality they bring to their teaching is their
love for the children. But what does that mean? It means that before we can teach them, we need to
delight in them. Someone once said that children need one thing in order to succeed in life:
someone who is crazy about them. We need to find a way to delight in all our students. We may be
the only one in their lives to do so. We need to look for the best, expect the best, find something in
each child that we can truly treasure.... If children recognize that we have seen their genius, who
they really are, they will have the confidence and resilience to take risks in learning. I am convinced
that many learning and social difficulties would disappear if we learned to see the genius in each
child and then created a learning environment that encourages it to develop. ~ Steven Levy

Criteria #5 : THEY LET CHILD EXPLORE
Good parents encourage the children to explore and when situation permits, explore together
with them. The Children feel the freedom to move out and explore as a kid.
Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve. ~Roger Lewin
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

Criteria #6 : THEY HAVE FAMILY TIME
Good parents give their children a sense of family solidarity, even in single-parent home.
Family spend time together talking, solving problems, making decision together, playing and
explore together.
Your children need your presence more than your presents. ~Jesse Jackson
Kids spell love T-I-M-E. ~John Crudele
A child, like your stomach, doesn't need all you can afford to give it. ~Frank A. Clark
In bringing up children, spend on them half as much money and twice as much time. ~Author
Unknown
Always kiss your children goodnight - even if they're already asleep. ~H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
"No time is more precious and well rewarded than those few moments you spend reading a story to
a child" ~ Robert D. Harris

Criteria #7 : THEY ENCOURAGE SELF-DISCIPLINE
Good parents are good at moving children from parent discipline to self-discipline. A child will
at some point in life know how to take care and discipline of themselves, to do what is right
and necessary. They know how to lead a responsible life rather than driven by self-
enhancement or immediate pleasure.
If you have never been hated by your child you have never been a parent. ~Bette Davis
"You can't make your kids do anything. All you can do is make them wish they had. And then, they
will make you wish you hadn't made them wish they had. "
~ Marshall B. Rosenberg
"I don't mean to be like some old guy from the olden days who says, "I walked thirty miles to school
every morning, so you kids should too." That's a statement born of envy and resentment. What I'm
saying is something quite different. What I'm saying is that by having very little, I had it good.
Children need a sense of pulling their own weight, of contributing to the family in some way, and
some sense of the family's interdependence. They take pride in knowing that they're contributing.
They learn responsibility and discipline through meaningful work. The values developed within a
family that operates on those principles then extend to the society at large. By not being quite so
indulged and "protected" from reality by overflowing abundance, children see the bonds that
connect them to others."
~ Sidney Poitier (The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography)

"Parents teach children discipline for two different, indeed diametrically opposed, reasons: to render
the child submissive to them and to make him independent of them. Only a self-disciplined person
can be obedient; and only such a person can be autonomous."
~ Thomas Stephen Szasz
"Society tried to teach me that children are by nature selfish, out-of-control, and demanding, that
their goal is power and that they are always trying to see how much they can get away with, that
you can't let children manipulate you or become too dependant, and that disobedience equals
disrespect. As a mother, I have come to believe strongly that my child's primary goals are having his
needs met, feeling connected to others, and feeling self-worth. His misbehavior is an attempt to get
a need met or to feel significance and connection, done in an appropriate way.... my job as a parent
is to help my child identify and meet those needs in appropriate ways." - Lisa S."
~ Hilary Flower (ADVENTURES IN GENTLE DISCIPLINE: A Parent-to-Parent Guide)


Criteria #8 : THEY TEACH CHILDREN VALUES
Good parents teach their children values. The children are anchored to a set of moral code or
value which they hold on to later in their lives.
Good, honest, hardheaded character is a function of the home. If the proper seed is sown there and
properly nourished for a few years, it will not be easy for that plant to be uprooted. ~George A.
Dorsey
Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good
manners. ~Author Unknown
Character is largely caught, and the father and the home should be the great sources of character
infection. ~Frank H. Cheley
"The home is the first and most effective place to learn the lessons of life: truth, honor, virtue, self
control, the value of education, honest work, and the purpose and privilege of life. Nothing can take
the place of home in rearing and teaching children, and no other success can compensate for failure
in the home."
~ David O. McKay

Criteria #9 : THEY GIVE CHILDREN RESPONSIBILITIES
Good parents help their children to experience plenty of responsibilities. The children are
given jobs to do while their progress is being monitored until they could do it on their own.
If you want children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders.
~Abigail Van Buren
"What it means to be human...is to bring up your children in safety, educate them, keep them
healthy, teach them how to care for themselves and others, allow them to develop in their own way
among adults who are sane and responsible, who know the value of the world and not its economic
potential. It means art, it means time, it means all the invisibles never counted by the GDP and
census figures. It means knowing that life has an inside as well as an outside."
~ Jeanette Winterson (The Stone Gods)

Criteria #10 : THEY GROW
Good parents know that being a parent is a continuous learning process. They learn from
their mistakes, improve and move on. They grow. They set good role models for their kids, as
they know kids love to imitate.
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 to 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
The trouble with learning to parent on the job is that your child is the teacher. ~Robert Brault,
www.robertbrault.com
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, Integration of the Personality,
1939
Children have more need of models than of critics. ~Carolyn Coats, Things Your Dad Always Told
You But You Didn't Want to Hear
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, Man Enough


Finally,
This is sad, for me personally, but unfortunately true :
You see much more of your children once they leave home. ~Lucille Ball
So, do enjoy your kids while they are still staying with you.

If you like the quotes above, here are the links to read more :
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes
http://www.quotegarden.com/parents.html