Kids are people, too, and once they start getting older, they make their own decisions. There's only so much you can do.

I guess——" she said, wistfully—"I guess the only thing that's wrong with children is that they grow up to be people like you.

That was the way of things, after all. Children had to grow up. They did not always become what others wanted.

A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong.

Youth is a circumstance you can't do anything about. The trick is to grow up without getting old.

Little girls grow up to be women, little boys grow up to be little boys.

All teenagers knew this was true. The process of growing up was nothing more than figuring out what doors hadn't yet been slammed in your face. For years, parents tell you that you can be anything, have anything, do anything. That was why she'd been so eager to grow up-until she got to adolescence and hit a big fat wall ofreality. As it turned out, she couldn't have anything she wanted. You didn't get to be pretty or smart or popular just because you wanted it. You didn't control your own destiny, you were too busy trying to fit in.

Few things are more satisfying than seeing your children have teenagers of their own.

It seemed as if she had given these treasures and left him alone — to use them or lose them, apply them or misapply them, according to his own choice. That is all we can do with children, when they grow into big children, old enough to distinguish between right and wrong, and too old to be forced to do either.

There are children born to be children, and others who must mark time till they can take their natural places as adults.

Then you have kids again in this situation who can't do anything about it. Kids are supposed to be kids. This is not the only big problem we have in the world today when it comes to being human to each other.

Little did she yet understand that the end of childhood comes not when a child’s body changes with puberty, but when her mind is finally able to see her life through the eyes of an outsider.

Well, I think the way you feel as a teenager stays with you, forever. I really believe that. And we try to change and we hope that we change, but we don't really in big ways, in serious ways. I think the personality is formed at that time, for the good and for the bad. … We all want to grow up and move on and appear to be different to people. And we want people to see us in a different way. But, I don't know, I think the personality is very, very strongly cemented, and we just bear whatever shortcomings we have and learn to live with it.

Are you the adult that you want your child to grow up to be?