Be the parent you know you can be-be the person you know you can be. The rest will follow.

Our first job, our first responsibility, is instilling a sense of learning, a sense of a love of learning, in our kids. -Barack Obama

Parenting, like exercise, is a process of growth through pain, through struggle against resistance.

Prepare them to make good decisions so they can make the best possible life for themselves.

Whatever your children's ages, you have to be ready to make adjustments. Whatever your job is, it can and must be adjusted around what we all know is our most important job. Family come first.

Our job is to love them and to be patient with them, not to demand the impossible from them.

We don’t need to check our email as much as we do. Worrying about money never solves our money problems. We have to push all that stuff away. So we can be present. So we can be patient. So we can be parents.

See their perspective. Crawl inside it, walk around in it. Then take a step back and parent accordingly.

“Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret." —Ambrose Bierce

Do It Together

Are you the kind of example they need? Have you left the kind of legacy that will protect them? That will guide them? That will inspire them to be decent and disciplined?

You are teaching them about hard work, about doing what’s right, about fulfilling one’s potential, about being of use to others.

Nothing will eclipse the impact we have on our kids.

It’s your chance. You can’t waste it. You can’t send them the wrong message. You have to seize it. You have to show them who you are.

“Your kids are not keeping score on your career. . . . They just want a parent who’s emotionally present and supportive of them." —Ben Stiller

Put your family first. Put your kids first. Say that you’re too busy. Politely decline. You have other priorities.

When your days in the spotlight are over, when your fame and import have receded, you will still be a parent and your kids will still need you for the things kids have always needed their parents for

What could it look like if you put your family first? If you really put them ahead of everything else? You can’t be sure exactly until you do it, but you can be certain that it will feel great.

“Future love does not exist. Love is a present activity only." —Leo Tolstoy

Let us try, right now, while we still can, to love them more.