Want to give your kids a strong foundation for life? Parenting with empathy is linked to everything from healthy attachment to emotional intelligence and solid relationship skills!

But it’s not always easy, particularly when we’re stressed or our children display challenging behaviors. Below are sixteen quotes to help you master parenting with empathy.

Quotes to Guide You in Parenting with Empathy

Quote 1: When we don’t understand a behavior, we tend to assume a child is doing it on purpose. – @raisinghumankind

Quote 2: The more we can look underneath a child’s behavior to understand it, the more compassion we’ll have. – Unknown

Quote 3: Beneath every behavior, there is a feeling. And beneath each feeling is a need. And when we meet that need rather than focus on the behavior, we begin to deal with the cause, not the symptom. – Ashleigh Warner

Quote 4: When a child is upset, logic often won’t work until we have responded to the right brain’s emotional needs. – Dr. Dan Siegel

Quote 5: When kids believe your first goal is to empathize and understand rather than to admonish and correct, you leave the door open for future conversations. – Philip Daniel De Jesus

Quote 6: Kids will hear you better if you speak from a voice of compassion instead of authority. They long to be understood more than to be lectured. – Inspired by Dodinsky

Quote 7: Our kids want us to give them a safe space to process their hard feelings more than they want us to fix all their problems. – Shelly Robinson

Quote 8: As a parent, the coolest tool I learned a while back was when one of my kids started complaining to me about something was to say, “do you need me to get involved, offer advice, or just listen?” 9/10, they just want my ear. – Inspired by Tobias Buckell

Quote 9: It’s crucial to keep in mind that no matter how nonsensical and frustrating our child’s feelings may seem to us, they are real and important to our child. It’s vital that we treat them as such in our response. – Daniel J. Siegel

Quote 10: What people of all ages can use in a moment of distress is not agreement or disagreement; they need someone to recognize what it is they’re experiencing. – Adele Faber

Quote 11: Children don’t need to have their feelings agreed with; they need to have them acknowledged. The more you try to push their unhappy feelings away, the more they become stuck in them. The more comfortable you can be accepting the bad feelings, the easier it is for kids to let them go. – Inspired by Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish

Quote 12: Sometimes parents avoid talking about upsetting experiences, thinking that doing so will reinforce their children’s pain or make things worse. But telling the story is often exactly what children need to make sense of the event and move on to a place where they can feel better about what happened. – Unknown

Quote 13: By acknowledging our children’s emotions, we are helping them learn skills for soothing themselves, skills that will serve them well for a lifetime. – John Gottman, Ph.D.

Quote 14: The goal is for children to express their wants and needs with us openly. That doesn’t mean they always get what they want. It means they feel safe enough to share—even when the answer is no. – Inspired by @dr.siggie

Quote 15: The next time you lock horns with your child and tempers are flaring, remember this… It is likely a head-on collision of both parent and child not feeling seen or heard in that moment. As the adult with more power and resources, it is our job to recognize this and remove our egos from the equation so we can parent from a place of calm, curiosity, and compassion. – Shelly Robinson

Quote 16: Don’t normalize pain or neglect by refusing to be a safe haven for your child because the “real world won’t coddle them when they grow up.” Show them what love and respect look like so they’ll recognize when they’re being mistreated. – Amanda Erickson

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Parenting a foster child with trauma history can be challenging.

Trauma profoundly influences brain development, impacting children’s behaviors, ability to regulate emotions, and even their capacity to form healthy relationships.

And for many, it’s coupled with attachment issues, rooted in everything from abuse and neglect early on in life to repeated moves due to broken-down placements.

Here are some signs that may indicate a child is struggling with attachment.

Parenting children with attachment issues rooted in a history of trauma can be a formidable task. To put it simply—it’s not easy to be a foster parent.

But the work is so critical. The bonds foster parents build with kids help them heal and serve as the foundation for healthy connections in adulthood.

We want to guide you on the path to parenting kids with trauma history. So, here are a few tips to help build trust and influence children’s behavior.

Tips on Parenting Kids with a History of Trauma

Meet Needs

Your #1 goal is to find out your foster child’s needs and meet them. And the best way to find out is to ask. When doing so, be direct, using exact language. For example, “What’s going on?” “What are your needs?” “How can I support you?”

Say “Yes”

Kids in foster care have little power over their lives. So, often that manifests in a desire for control.

You can go miles when it comes to building trust with children by focusing on dishing out “yes” more than “no.” The optimal ratio is 7:1, saying “yes” 7 times for every “no.”

Learn More: How to Skip Power Struggles with Kids by Saying Yes

Make Eye Contact

Our eyes speak louder than words.

Nonverbal cues are critical components of communication, especially for kids with trauma history. As often as possible, get on your foster child’s eye level when speaking to them.

Mirror Behavior

Be a mirror. Secure attachment is characterized by a healthy rhythm between children and their caregiver’s behavior. For instance, if a baby coos, their mother will coo back, or when a toddler laughs, their father laughs too.

Congruent behaviors build trust and attachment.

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When emotions run high, your ability to regulate—to effectively manage your emotions, energy levels, and behaviors—makes all the difference. It’s an essential skill, not just for your own well-being, but for navigating relationships with others in a way that builds trust and connection.

We all have moments when our feelings take over—when frustration builds or someone hits a nerve. In those moments, it’s easy to react. But when we pause, reflect, and respond with intention, we strengthen our relationships and model emotional balance for those around us.

How to Regulate Emotions & Respond to Others

Here are five simple, powerful tips to help you regulate in the moment and respond with clarity—not overwhelm.

Identify Your Triggers

Start by paying attention to the patterns—those moments that consistently spark strong emotional responses. Do certain situations, tones, or topics light a fuse? Recognizing your triggers isn’t about blame. It’s about awareness. When you understand what’s setting you off, you’re better equipped to respond instead of react.

Pause and Breathe

When you notice your body or mind getting activated, give yourself a beat. Pause. Breathe. That tiny gap between stimulus and response? It matters. It’s where self-control lives. The goal isn’t to ignore what you’re feeling—it’s to create just enough space to choose how you want to respond.

Notice What You Feel

Emotions often show up in the body before the brain fully catches on. A tight chest. Clenched jaw. Restless legs. Be curious about those signals—they’re information. Tuning in to what you feel physically can offer insight into what’s happening emotionally.

Accept Your Emotions

There’s no “bad” emotion. Anger, sadness, fear—these are all natural parts of being human. Accepting your emotions doesn’t mean letting them run the show. It means acknowledging what’s present without judgment. Practicing self-compassion in tough moments helps us show up better for others and for ourselves.

Practice Mindfulness

Mindfulness doesn’t need to be complicated. It’s simply about noticing what’s happening—inside you and around you. Use your senses. What do you hear? Feel? See? Returning to the present helps you stay grounded when emotions feel big.

The Bottom Line

Regulating emotions isn’t about stuffing them down or pretending everything’s fine. It’s about building awareness, creating space, and responding with intention. Whether you’re parenting a child with big feelings or navigating the complexities of professional life, these small shifts can have a big impact.

You won’t get it perfect every time—and that’s okay. But with practice, you’ll start to notice moments of calm where there once was chaos. And those moments matter.

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Great things come to those who put in focused, strategic effort. And that requires keeping it simple—to practice discipline and say no much more than saying yes.

Below are sixteen quotes illustrating the power of focused effort.

Quotes on the Power of Focused Effort

Quote 1: Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort. – Paul J. Meyer

Quote 2: Juggling, multitasking, and other forms of “attention shifting” are highly inefficient. Simply, the brain works much faster and more accurately when attention is focused, for a stretch of time, on one thing at a time. – Harvard Business Review

Quote 3: The concept of always being reachable makes us present nowhere. – Peter Arvai

Quote 4: Multitasking takes a toll. At home or at work, distractions lead to poor choices, painful mistakes, and unnecessary stress. – Gary W. Keller

Quote 5: The mind is like water. When it’s turbulent, it’s challenging to see. When it’s calm, everything becomes clear. – Inspired by Prasad Mahes

Quote 6: Complexity means distracted effort. Simplicity means focused effort. – Edward De Bono

Quote 7: Simplicity of approach is always best. – Charlie Chaplin

Quote 8: Doing less is often harder than doing more. – Inspired by Carolyn Rubenstein

Quote 9: You can do anything—but not everything. – David Allen

Quote 10: The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes. – Tony Blair

Quote 11: Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do. – Steve Jobs

Quote 12: Time and energy are limited. Any successful person has to decide what to do in part by deciding what not to do. – Angela Duckworth

Quote 13: It’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important. – Steve Jobs

Quote 14: You have to say no to a lot of good things in order to be able to say yes to a lot of great things. – Steve Jobs

Quote 15: You can’t do big things if you’re distracted by small things. – Unknown

Quote 16: Focus is about saying no. And the result of that focus is going to be some really great products where the total is much greater than the sum of the parts. – Steve Jobs

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