David Elkind Quotes

Taking care of children was not something I was good at.

Raising children is like making biscuits: it is as easy to raise a big batch as one, while you have your hands in the dough.

The bearing and the training of a child Is woman's wisdom.

In my opinion, the teaching, rearing, and training of children requires more intelligence, intuitive understanding, humility, strength, wisdom, spirituality, perseverance, and hard work than any other challenge we might have in life.

Some people aren't great with babies, or they're not great with a smaller child - it's not that they're bad mothers.

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

I think when you have children, it just changes your worldview.

I know of no more sacred duty than to rear and educate a child.

As much as we teach our kids, the process teaches us. If we're being diligent, we're learning from our strengths as parents, but also from the mistakes that we make.

A baseball manager has learned a lot about his job from having played the game, but a parent has not learned a thing from having once been a child.

No metaphor reinvents the job of the nurture of children except to muddy or mock.

Parenthood is an endless series of small events, periodic conflicts, and sudden crises which call for a response. The response is not without consequence: it affects personality for better or for worse.

It is a pity that, commonly, more care is had--yea, and that among very wise men--to find out rather a cunning man for their horse than a cunning man for their children.

Our children give us the opportunity to become the parents we always wished we'd had.

It is no hard matter to get children; but after they are born, then begins the trouble, solicitude, and care rightly to train, principle, and bring them up.

I’ve noticed that one thing about parents is that no matter what stage your child is in, the parents who have older children always tell you the next stage is worse.

There is but one way to eliminate juvenile delinquency - that is by providing each child in America with competent parents.

I always say that a successful parent is one who raises a child so that they can pay for their own psychoanalysis.

Raising a child is like taking care of someone who's on way too many shrooms, while you yourself are on a moderate amount of shrooms. I am not confident in my decisions, but I know you should not be eating a mousepad.

The reason child care is such a loaded issue is that when we talk about it, we are always tacitly talking about motherhood. And when we're talking about motherhood we're always tacitly assuming that child care must be a very dim second to full-time mother care.

Parents often brag about the amount of money spent per child, but I think, perhaps ironically, those great monies that are spent - I call it putting a band-aid on a hemorrhage.

I have great faith in 'ordinary parents.' Who has a child's welfare more at heart than his ordinary parent? It's been my experience that when parents are given the skills to be more helpful, not only are they able to use these skills, but they infuse them with a warmth and a style that is uniquely their own.

There are so many common occurrences in raising children that people just can't seem to figure out.

Do the best you can. And remember that the greatest asset you have in this world is those children who you've brought into the world, and for whose nurture and care you're responsible.

Rearing three children is like growing a cactus, a gardenia, and a tubful of impatiens. Each needs varying amounts of water, sunlight and pruning. Were I to be absolutely fair, I would have to treat each child as if he or she were absolutely identical to the other siblings, and there would be no profit for anyone in that.