Erma Bombeck Quotes

It's harder for me, never having brought up a child, to enter the universe of the child.

Most parents don’t know really their children.

Fathers and mothers are too absorbed in business and housekeeping to study their children, and cherish that sweet and natural confidence which is a child's surest safeguard, and a parent's subtlest power.

A child's first teacher is its mother.

Adorable children are considered to be the general property of the human race. Rude children belong to their mothers.

People talked about being a parent, or being a mother or a father. We don't talk about "wiving" our husbands or "friending" our friends, or "childing" our parents. We just talk about being in a relationship with those people. You don't measure whether your marriage was good based on whether or not your husband is better now than he was 10 years ago, or whether your friend is richer than when they first became your friend. The relationships between parents and children is a kind of love, rather than a kind of work.

The moment when you are most repelled by a child's behavior, that is your warning light to draw the very closest to that child.

As all mothers know, children travel faster than kisses. The speed of kisses is, in fact, what Doctor Fallow would call a cosmic constant. The speed of children has no limits.

People always talked about a mother's uncanny ability to read her children, but that was nothing compared to how children could read their mothers.

It's not the child's responsibility to teach the parent who they are. It's the parent's responsibility to learn who the child is.

Children are what the mothers are.

To all those mothers and fathers who are struggling with teen-agers, I say, just be patient: even though it looks like you can't do anything right for a number of years, parents become popular again when kids reach 20.

Kids need to open up to their parents. And parents should realize that when kids are pushing you away, that's the time to really step in.

I think having children in general is always very helpful for acting.

Since the beginning of time, every child on the planet has endeavored to please their parents.

That's one thing I find about having children - it does unlock a door that separates you from other women who've had children.

Bringing up children always has a bigger role for the mother.

Kids, she says. When they’re little, they believe everything you tell them about the world. As a mother, you’re the world almanac and the encyclopedia and the dictionary and the Bible, all rolled up together. But after they hit some magic age, it’s just the opposite. After that, you’re either a liar or a fool or a villain.

The commonest fallacy among women is that simply having children makes them a mother - which is as absurd as believing that having a piano makes one a musician.

I'll never get sick of raising my children, but other people might get sick of them.

Everything‟s fine,” I said, with a tight smile. “Kiyo was just giving me his latest explanation about how my son is a terror to be feared.” Dorian scoffed. “Little Thundro? A terror? Hardly, unless perhaps we‟re discussing diapers.

Enjoy your children, even when they don't act the way you want them to.

When I began writing these pages I believed their subject to be children, the ones we have and the ones we wish we had, the ways in which we depend on our children to depend on us, the ways in which we encourage them to remain children, the ways in which they remain more unknown to us than they do to their more casual acquaintances; the ways in which we remain equally opaque to them.

Mothers aren't allowed to have favorite children!

When you have a child yourself, you go back and think about how you were parented, how you were mothered and what your parents did for you, and you just want to be able to call and ask them.