L.R. Knost Quotes

Remember, you’re growing a person, not fixing a problem.

It is helpful to remember that the most strong-willed children tend to be the ones who identify the most strongly with their parents. So instead of viewing their seemingly constant challenges as defiance or attempts to thwart authority, work to parent from a place of understanding that your strong-willed child is actually on a discovery mission and is doing endless 'research' on you by testing and retesting and digging and chiseling to discover all of your quirks and foibles and ups and downs and strengths and weaknesses.

To need to be seen, to be heard, to be understood, is simply to be human.

Namaste
means that my soul
acknowledges yours -
not just your light,
your wisdom,
your goodness,
but also your darkness,
your suffering,
your imperfections.
It is a recognition
and acceptance of
the inexplicable
divine absurdity,
the miraculous woven
into the ordinary,
light and darkness
intimately entwined
in magical, messy
humanity.
It means that I honor
all that you are
with all that I am.
So, namaste,
my fellow travelers.
I'm so glad we're on
this trek through
the universe together.

Be kind. Be friendly. Be likable.
But don't worry if someone doesn't like you.
You won't be everyone's cup of tea, and that's okay.
You can be someone's cup of coffee instead.
And coffee is AWESOME.

YELLING silences your message. Speak quietly so your children can hear your words instead of just your voice.

Telling a child that something that matters to them isn't important doesn't convince them it doesn't matter. It just convinces them that it doesn't matter to you and often makes them feel like they don't matter, either. Remember, caring about the little things that matter to little people creates big connections.

Keep working on you. Remind yourself that it’s your emotions and experiences and expectations that are causing your outbursts, not your little one’s behavior.

Respecting a child teaches them that even the smallest, most powerless, most vulnerable person is worthy of respect. And that is a lesson our world desperately needs to learn.

Giving our children rest means being their safe harbor, their place to retreat when life hurts and the world looms large and people disappoint and mistakes are made. Becoming that safe harbor means being free ~ freely available, freely offered, freely welcoming.

The goal of parenting shouldn't be to prepare children to withstand the world, but to grow children who will change the world.

Respond to your
children with love in
their worst moments
their broken moments
their angry moments
their selfish moments
their lonely moments
their frustrated moments
their inconvenient moments
because it is in their most
unlovable human moments
that they most need to feel loved.

If life is what we make it, let's make it beautiful.

For a child, it is in the simplicity of play that the complexity of life is sorted like puzzle pieces joined together to make sense of the world.

Some say they get lost in books, but I find myself, again and again, in the pages of a good book. Humanly speaking, there is no greater teacher, no greater therapist, no greater healer of the soul, than a well-stocked library.