Children who grow up getting nutrition from plant foods rather than meats have a tremendous health advantage. They are less likely to develop weight problems, diabetes, high blood pressure and some forms of cancer
Benjamin SpockRead
All the time a person is a child he is both a child and learning to be a parent. After he becomes a parent he becomes predominantly a parent reliving childhood.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Parenting involves both learning from childhood and reflecting on it once one becomes a parent.
Benjamin Spock's quote emphasizes the continuity between childhood and parenthood. It suggests that while growing up, individuals gain experiences and lessons that shape their future parenting styles, and once they become parents, they often find themselves revisiting their own childhood to inform the way they raise their children.
Themes
ParentingChildhoodLearningExperienceReflection
In practice
Example use cases
During a parenting workshop, this quote can help illustrate the ongoing journey of growth in parenting.
More from Benjamin Spock
All quotes →Don't be afraid to trust your own common sense.
Benjamin SpockRead
Don't take too seriously all that the neighbors say. Don't be overawed by what the experts say. Don't be afraid to trust your own common sense.
Benjamin SpockRead
On the average, older parents are more flexible, tolerant, understanding, and happy in child care.
Benjamin SpockRead
Our greatest hope is to bring up children inspired by their opportunities for being helpful and loving.
Benjamin SpockRead
What good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies is usually best after all.
Benjamin SpockRead
Similar quotes
Some parents let their kids sleep at other people's houses, where they drink alcohol, watch TV for hours and God knows what else. But if you say you have to get all A's and practice the violin for two hours, then they consider that abusive. That upsets me.
Amy ChuaRead
My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness. Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance.
Adrienne RichRead
The lack of emotional security of our American young people is due, I believe, to their isolation from the larger family unit. No two people - no mere father and mother - as I have often said, are enough to provide emotional security for a child. He needs to feel himself one in a world of kinfolk, persons of variety in age and temperament, and yet allied to himself by an indissoluble bond which he cannot break if he could, for nature has welded him into it before he was born.
Pearl S. BuckRead
I tell my children now that they are older, 'If something happens to me... don't make no big fuss over me. Don't make no big expense on my funeral. Don't put any pressure on the rest of the family. I've loved everybody, and I hope they loved me. But don't create this big expense for the family.'
B. B. KingRead
The baby boomers owe a big debt of gratitude to the parents and grandparents - who we haven't given enough credit to anyway - for giving us another generation.
Steven SpielbergRead
I have two younger brothers, and I know my parents have spoken to them about driving and interacting with police. They didn't have those conversations with me, but they did have conversations about being exceptional black people.
Opal TometiRead