There's no handbook for parenting. So you walk a very fine line as a parent because you are civilizing these raw things. They will tip the coffee over and finger-paint on the table. At some point, you have to say, 'We're gonna have to clean that up because you don't paint with coffee on a table.'
Interpretation
Parenting involves navigating challenges without a manual while teaching children boundaries.
The quote highlights the complexities of parenting, emphasizing that there is no definitive guide for raising children. It illustrates the balance parents must maintain between allowing their child's creativity and imposing necessary limits to teach them appropriate behavior in different situations.
In practice
During a parenting seminar to emphasize the challenges of raising kids without predefined rules.
I drank for about 25 years getting over the loss of my father and I took the anger out on myself. I did a good job at beating myself up at sometimes. I don't drink anymore but my alcoholic head occasionally says different. 'Nil By Mouth' was a love letter to my father because I needed to resolve some issues in order to be able to forgive him.
The thing a drama school can't give you is instinct. It can sharpen instinct but that can't be taught, and you have to have intuition. It's an essential ingredient.
I wanted to play Dracula because I wanted to say: 'I've crossed oceans of time to find you.' It was worth playing the role just to say that line.
Change is vital to any actor. If you keep playing lead after lead, you're really gonna dry up. Because all those vehicles wean you away from the truths of human behaviour.
Getting sober was one of the three pivotal events in my life, along with becoming an actor and having a child. Of the three, finding my sobriety was the hardest thing.
My parents raised me and my siblings in an armor of advice, an ocean of alarm bells so someone wouldn't steal the breath from our lungs, so that they wouldn't make a memory of this skin.
As she stood in the darkened room and watched my sister and father, I knew one of things that heaven meant. I had a choice, and it was not to divide my family in my heart.
If you have a family mission statement that clarifies what your purpose is, then you use that as the criterion by which you make the decisions.
Personal sins should not require press releases and problems within a family shouldn't have to mean public confessions.
The Lord only knows how many times I let my children go hungry rather than take secretly the bread I liked not to ask for.
For me, already being part of a single parent household and knowing it was just me and my mom, you'd would wake up times and hope that the next day you'd be able to be alongside your mother because she was out trying to make sure that I was taken care of. But all I cared about was her being home.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.