Dave Barry Quotes

Parents are always more knowledgeable than their children, and children are always smarter than their parents.

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.

The most influential of all educational factors is the conversation in a child's home.

Older siblings get more total-immersion mentoring with their parents before younger siblings come along. As a result, they get an IQ and linguistic advantage because they are the exclusive focus of their parents' attention.

Dad taught me everything I know. Unfortunately, he didn't teach me everything he knows.

Children are very smart, in their own stupid way. A child's brain is like a sponge, and you know how smart sponges are.

I think that children are very smart.

Parents, just keep in mind that kids will always round off to the nearest obscenity.

If I raised my hand to wipe the hair out of my children's eyes, they'd flinch and call their attorney.

I was an only child, eventually.

Parents always make their worst mistakes with their oldest children. That's when parents know the least and care the most, so they're more likely to be wrong and also more likely to insist that they're right.

Our present culture may be largely shaped by this strange idea of isolating children's thought from adult thought. Perhaps the way our culture educates its children better explains why most of us come out as dumb as they do, than it explains how some of us come out as smart as they do.

My relationship with my father had been on the proverbial fritz since the time I was fifteen and called the police to report him for child molesting. He had never molested me, but I wanted to have a party that weekend and needed him out of the house.

People get burned out in big families, you can even see it in the naming of children. Like the first kid, "You were named after Grandma." The seventh kid, "You were named after a sandwich I had. Now get your brother, Reuben."

A teacher who cannot explain any abstract subject to a child does not himself thoroughly understand his subject; if he does not attempt to break down his knowledge to fit the child's mind, he does not understand teaching.

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

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

I love the complication of the kids in the characters' lives. I love that these two people are very capable in all these ways. They're so trained. They're kind of deadly. They're smart and vicious at times, but I love that they're undone by a teenager, like we all are. We're all incensed and undone by the ungratefulness of a child, and I love that it matters so greatly to them, in a way that it matters to every parent. Teenagers are going to do that no matter where you live or who you are.

But what parent can tell when some . . . fragmentary gift of knowledge or wisdom will enrich her children's lives? Or how a small seed of information passed from one generation to another may generate a new science, a new industry-a seed which neither the giver nor the receiver can truly evaluate at the time.

My sister Wendy has a husband and two children, and they have a family photo on top of the VCR, where they're all looking slightly to the left. As though something is going on over there! I guess something happened over to the left that made everybody happy! Except my sister is cross-eyed, so she can't quite pull it off. One eye is right-on.

No matter how much knowledge and wisdom you acquire during your life, not one jot will be passed on to your children by genetic means. Each new generation starts from scratch.

Divorce isn't such a tragedy. A tragedy's staying in an unhappy marriage, teaching your children the wrong things about love. Nobody ever died of divorce.

I loved this smart, funny, big-hearted novel. As hilarious and wise as early Philip Roth, The Mathematician's Shiva will delight and move you.

I used to believe my father about everything but then I had children myself & now I see how much stuff you make up just to keep yourself from going crazy.

For example, parents who talk a lot to their children have kids with better language skills, parents who spank have children who grow up to be violent, parents who are neither too authoritarian or too lenient have children who are well-adjusted, and so on.