60+ Positive Parenting Quotes To Help Raise Happy Kids

Parenting is the most challenging, exciting, rewarding, and frustrating job we’ll ever have. Most days are all-consuming. Having a little encouragement or just knowing we’re not alone can work wonders for our state of mind.

Here are some of our favorite positive parenting quotes to lift your spirits or help through the rough days.

These quotes are only meant to encourage you. If one of them makes you feel judged, find one that feels good in your soul. One of the best things you can do as a parent is learn how to really tune out the rest of the world and feel into your own instincts.

It’s not always easy. We are bombarded by distractions. We tend to look outside ourselves for the answers. And we’ve been trained to take the advice of experts, doctors (who might not understand our full history or situation), or even influencers over our own gut feelings.

Getting quiet with yourself, a meditation, or an inspiring quote can be the nudge you need to connect with the part of you that is undoubtedly the best parent for your child.

Positive Parenting Quotes

“The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice.” ~ Peggy O’Mara

“Nurturing never happens in a rush.” — Emma Scheib

“Behind every child who believes in himself is a parent who believed in them first.” ~ Matthew L. Jacobson

“Too much love never spoils children. Children become spoiled when we substitute presents for presence.” ~ Anthony Withman

“Children must never work for our love, they must rest in it.” ~ Dr. Gordon Neufeld

“Every day in a hundred small ways our children ask us, ‘Do you see me? Do you hear me? Do I matter?’ This behavior often reflects our response.” ~ L.R. Knost

“Parenting shouldn’t mean imposing rules or impressing others with your supposed intelligence and superiority. Keep in mind that nature never forces anything to grow, but is silently and invisibly ever present.” ~ Dr. Wayne Dyer

“Don’t worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.” ~ Robert Fulghum

“Children need to learn that silence is the home of spirit. All other voices speak out loud, but spirit communicates without making a sound.” ~ Deepak Chopra

“I often hear, ‘Oh, your kids are going to be so spoiled; the world is going to beat them up. They’re just going to expect everyone to love them.’ Yeah, I’m ok with a kid that expects everyone to love him. And when people don’t, I want my kid to wonder why, and then work towards a world where people behave kindly and with compassion.” ~ Mayim Bialik

“If every 8 year old in the world is taught meditation, we will eliminate violence from the world within one generation.” ~ Dalai Lama XIV

“Children need time to become themselves – through play and social interaction. If you overwhelm a child with stuff–with choices and pseudochoices – before they are ready, they will only know one emotional gesture: More!” ~ Kim John Payne, author of Simplicity Parenting

“Catch your children doing something right instead of doing something wrong. Remind them of their greatness on a daily basis.” ~ Dr. Wayne Dyer

“Release your attachment to how things ‘ought’ to be and instead to surrender to how they actually are.” ~ Dr. Shefali Tsabary

“When we refute the notion that our child’s development is a race we have to win, and that their imagination is for sale, we step off a consumer treadmill.” ~ Lisa M. Ross

“It is time for parents to teach young people that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.” ~ Dr. Maya Angelou

“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken adults.” ~ Frederick Douglass

Positive Parenting Quotes for Discipline

“When conflict arises in peaceful parenting, we must remember that it’s not parent versus child; it’s parent and child versus whatever problem they’re trying to solve. We’re working together. We’re on the same team.” ~ Sarah R. Moore, author of Peaceful Discipline

“Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.” ~ Rumi

“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

“If you are tempted to “teach” your child by guilt, shame, or punishment, you will be creating discouraging beliefs that are difficult to reverse in adulthood.” ~ Jane Nelson

“If your children fear you, they cannot trust you. If they don’t trust you, they cannot learn from you.”
~ Lori Petro

“Don’t let yourself become so concerned with raising a good kid that you forget you already have one.” ~ Glennon Melton Doyle

“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! None of us are perfect, and we must stop holding our children to a higher standard of perfection than we can attain ourselves.” ~ Rebecca Eanes

“Adults who are respectful of children are not just modeling a skill or behavior, they are meeting the emotional needs of those children, thereby helping to create the psychological conditions for children to treat others respectfully.” ~ Alfie Kohn

A toddler learns discipline best when he experiences natural consequences for his behavior, rather than a disconnected punishment like time-out. If a child throws food, his or her mealtime is over. If a child refuses to get dressed, we don’t go to the park today. ~ Janet Lansbury

“I’m always amazed when adults say that children ‘just did that to get attention’. Naturally children who need attention will do all kinds of things to get it. Why not just give it to them?” ~ Lawrence J. Cohen

Parenting Quotes for Helping Your Child Feel Safe

“When we help a child to feel secure, feel appreciated, feel that ‘somebody is deeply, truly interested in me,’ by the way we just look, the way we just listen, we influence that child’s whole personality, the way that child sees life.” ~ Magda Gerber

“When life gets shaky for your child out there, in the world, it’s important to make certain life in here, within the family sphere, is solid.” ~ Kim John Payne

“When kids feel safe, they feel like you as a parent are in charge and are going to protect them from harm, but also that you are going to work really hard to not be the source of their fear.” ~ Dr. Tina Bryson

“Never fear spoiling children by making them too happy. Happiness is the atmosphere in which all good affections grow.” ~ Thomas Bray

“Accepting and supporting our child’s uncomfortable emotions – letting them be – encourages resilience and authenticity and deepens our connection.” ~ Janet Lansbury

“The best security blanket a child can have is parents who respect each other.” ~ Janet Blaustone

“The central struggle of parenthood is to let our hopes for our children outweigh our fears.” ~ Lisa M. Ross

“Life doesn’t come with a manual, it comes with a mother.” ~ Unknown

Parenting Quotes to Encourage Creativity

“I think it’s necessary to let kids get bored once in a while – that’s how they learn to be creative.” ~ Kim Raver

“Childhood is fleeting, so let kids be kids and cherish the time you have together.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

“Children do not develop responsibility when parents and teachers are too strict and controlling, nor do they develop responsibility when parents and teachers are permissive. Children learn responsibility when they have opportunities to learn valuable social and life skills for good character in an atmosphere of kindness, firmness, dignity, and respect.” ~ Jane Nelson

“As we observe children, we see the vitality of their spirit, the maximum effort put forth in all they do, the intuition, attention and focus they bring to all life’s events, and the sheer joy they experience in living.” ~ Dr. Maria Montessori

“If you raise your children to feel that they can accomplish any goal or task they decide upon, you will have succeeded as a parent, and you will have given your children the greatest of all blessings.” ~ Brian Tracy

“Play is an inherently educational opportunity for self-directed exploration, freedom of expression and fun. Kids aren’t looking to make something that looks good to anyone else. Like most artists, young children run on instinct and create just to please themselves. They live in the moment, revel in the process, while learning and developing self-confidence.” ~ Janet Lansbury

Parenting Quotes About Spending Time Together

“If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money.” ~ Abigail Van Buren

“Give the ones you love wings to fly, roots to come back and reasons to stay.” ~ Dalai Lama XIV

“Each day of our lives we make deposits into the memory banks of our children.” ~ Charles R. Swindoll

“Listen earnestly to anything your children want to tell you, no matter what. If you don’t listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won’t tell you the big stuff when they are big, because to them all of it has always been big stuff.” ~ Catherine M. Wallace

“The most powerful way to change the world is to live in front of our children the way we would like the world to be.” ~ Graham White 

“Don’t tell your kids, ‘I’m proud of you.’ Tell them, ‘You should be proud of yourself.’” ~ Kristen Welch

“What if parenting became less about telling our children who they should be and more about asking them again and again forever who they already are?” Glennon Doyle

“A child seldom needs a good talking to as much as a good listening to.” ~ Robert Brault 

“At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child, or a parent.” ~ Barbara Bush

“Children, after all, are not just adults-in-the-making. They are people whose current needs and rights and experiences must be taken seriously.” ~ Alfie Kohn

“It’s not what you do for your children but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings.” ~ Ann Landers

“If a child can’t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.” ~ Ignacio Estrada

“Peaceful parenting is simply treating our tiny humans with the same humanity that we like to be treated with ourselves.” ~ L.R. Knost

“A lot of parents will do anything for their kids except let them be themselves.” ~ Banksy

“We all need someone who understands.” ~ Magda Gerber

“One generation of deeply loving parents would change the brain of the next generation, and with that, the world.” ~ Charles Raison

“The greater our desire for the perfect kid and the perfect life, the greater our sense of inner unworthiness. We want this sense of outer perfection because we want control. It gives us a feeling of comfort and safety.” ~ Dr. Shefali Tsabary

“To be in your children’s memories tomorrow, you have to be in their lives today.” ~ Barbara Johnson

“Many of us will perform best at a role when we are entrusted with it, rather than over-managed, doubted, or nit-picked. Children are no different.” ~ Janet Lansbury

“There is no single effort more radical in its potential for saving the world than a transformation of the way we raise our children.” ~ Marianne Williamson

“There is no such thing as a perfect parent. Just be a real one.” ~ Sue Atkins

“Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.” ~ W.E.B. DuBois

“What good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies is usually best after all.” ~ Benjamin Spock

“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  

“Remember you are not managing an inconvenience. You are raising a human being.” ~ Kittie Franz

“The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.” ~ Denis Waitley

“The success we want our children to achieve has to be defined in many nonmaterial ways as well. It should include the ability to love and have compassion, the capacity to feel joy and spread it to others, the security of knowing that one’s life serves a purpose, and finally, a sense of connection to the creative power of the universe.” ~ Deepak Chopra

“Your kids require you most of all to love them for who they are, not to spend your whole time trying to correct them.” ~ Bill Ayers

“The point of parenting is not to have all the answers before we start out but instead to figure it out on the go as our children grow. Because as they do, so will we.” ~ Bridgett Miller 

“One of the best ways of becoming an effective parent—or, for that matter, an effective human being—is to understand the perceptions of other people, to be able to “get into their world.” ~ Jane Nelson

And this poem by William Martin in his book The Parent’s Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents really resonates with us:

“Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.”

Is there a positive parenting quote that inspires you or helps settle your nerves? Feel free to share in the comments and help other mamas in the thick of it.