Hunter Clarke-Fields > Quotes

“When you love someone, the best thing you can offer is your presence. How can you love if you are not there?”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids

“What do you want for your kids? And are you practicing these things in your own life?”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids

“children tend to be terrible at doing what we say but great at doing what we do.”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids

“Meeting your own needs for sleep, exercise, meditation, and time with friends is essential to living a happier life as a parent. Plus, you are modeling how to live life for your child.”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids

“The only way out of our difficult feelings is through.”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids

“We need four hugs a day for survival. We need eight hugs a day for maintenance. We need twelve hugs a day for growth.”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids

“What do you want for your kids? After you answer that, the big question becomes, Are you practicing these things in your own life?”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids

“We often try to control our children’s feelings and behavior when actually it is our own internal experience that is triggering our upset feelings about their behavior.”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids

“Mindful Parents practice self-compassion and see their challenges as teachers, not flaws.”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids

“Treat a child as though he already is the person he’s capable of becoming.”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids

“kids. This is one of the reasons why the “self-sacrificing parent” idea is so insidious. When we constantly sacrifice our own needs in favor of our children’s, we all lose. Our children lose out by having an ungrounded parent who is frequently on the brink of collapse. We lose out on enjoying our life and our children. We also perpetuate this harmful pattern—effectively passing the buck to the next generation.”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids

“For instance, when your child leaves a backpack in the middle of the hallway, you are the one who has the problem. It’s not a problem to your child. It’s your need to enjoy a tidy home that is not being met. Other times, your child might have an issue—an argument with a friend at school, for instance—that is not your problem.”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids

“We can’t put up the walls of a house without a foundation. Our intentions form the foundation of our communications. To shift our language, we have to shift our intention. Let’s be real: in our interactions with our kids, we’re usually trying to manipulate them—to make them do something. We need to change our way of thinking, from changing the other to expressing our own unmet needs. This is where the mindfulness training comes in hand—to help us become more aware of what’s happening under the surface. Whatever the situation, we can get curious about the unmet needs underneath. When we drop to this deeper level, compassion for ourselves and for our children arises. We can express ourselves with an intention of curiosity and care—for both ourselves and the other.”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids

“parental presence is key to optimizing the chance of your child having a life of well-being and resilience.”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids

“and specific about our praise. For example, instead of “You are such a good girl helping Mommy!” you could say “I really feel good when I see you helping to clear the table.” When I see my girls at the bus stop, I usually say, “I’m so happy to see you!” right away rather than peppering them with questions about the school day.”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids

“practice. Mindful Acknowledgment with Children I see this scene often: a child comes to a parent visibly upset. The parent wants to make the child feel better, so he skips right to trying to fix her problem. It usually sounds like, “Why don’t we…,” or “You can just instead.” A solution is offered and the problem is solved…right? Yet with this response, parents have just missed a potent opportunity to connect. They’ve skipped over the powerful step of acknowledgment—recognizing what’s happening for the child in that moment. Acknowledgment shows that we are seeing and accepting the truth or existence of something, such as the child’s hurt feelings.”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids

“When we’re not meeting our own needs, we have nothing to give.”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids

“aversion leads to fear; fear leads to hatred; hatred leads to aggression. Unwittingly, the oh-so-natural instinct to avoid the unpleasant becomes the root of hatred. It leads to war: war within, war without.” —Stephen Cope”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids

“Saying yes to play with your child doesn’t have to be onerous or take up a lot of time. In fact, kids are often ready to move on after just a short while. Set a timer for ten minutes and dive in whole-heartedly for that time.”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids

“How we talk to ourselves after our mistakes can shape whether we shrink or grow from the experience.”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids

“You won’t find suggestions to use threats or punishment in this book. There are good reasons for this: for one thing, when we threaten our kids, they learn to threaten others. And it’s simply a much less effective parenting tool than skillful communication.”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids

“Since our kids are always changing and labels are static, we must realize that labels can be unreliable. Plus, our preconceived ideas can become a self-fulfilling prophecy—our children live up to our negative expectations.”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids

“When we give our kids screen time so we can get stuff done around the house, we not only teach them not to help, but we reduce their ability to do this kind of deep, creative play in the real, nonscreen world. I encourage you to limit screen time so that your child can instead build their inner resources—their energy, creativity, interests, resiliency—as well as become a more helpful member of the home.”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans Every Day: 50 Simple Ways to Press Pause, Stay Present, and Connect with Your Kids

“children tend to be terrible at doing what we say but great at doing what we do. From infancy, we are teaching our children how to treat others by the way we treat them. How we respond to our children on a moment-to-moment basis creates a pattern that our children may follow for a lifetime. Therefore, the onus is on us to behave the way we want our children to behave.”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids

“What we say to ourselves in the privacy of our own thoughts really matters. Why? To borrow a metaphor from best-selling self-help author and motivational speaker Wayne Dyer: If I have an orange, what will come out when I squeeze it? Juice, of course. But what kind of juice will come out? Not pomegranate or kiwi. Orange juice. And like that orange, when we are squeezed, what’s inside is what will come out.”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids

“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids

“With mindfulness meditation, our reactive responses to stress can be superseded by more thoughtful ones.”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids

“But when we instead tell our children how their unacceptable behavior makes us feel, the language turns into an “I” message: “I feel discouraged when I see this big mess.” “I don’t want to race right now because I’m tired.” “I feel stressed when we have to hurry.” Kids receive an I-message as a statement of fact about what the parent is feeling, so it causes less resistance. How do you”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids

“Stop that yelling!” becomes: “When you yell, I can’t hear anything and I feel grumpy and frustrated.” “You are so lazy! No one cleaned this up.” becomes: “I feel disappointed when I see this big mess.”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids

“Acknowledging our feelings is a mindful way of deflating the drama bubble. Feeling irritated with your kids? Say what you see out loud: “I’m feeling grumpy right now.” Simply acknowledging that can provide a lot of relief, and it communicates to your child what’s going on with you. Win-win! You’re feeling slightly better and you’ve modeled healthy emotional intelligence for your child.”
― Hunter Clarke-Fields, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids