Thomas Bailey Aldrich Quotes

No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly.

I would infinitely prefer a daughter.

Parents of young children should realize that few people, and maybe no one, will find their children as enchanting as they do.

I've never really viewed myself as particularly talented. I've viewed myself as slightly above average in talent.

I'm as proud as the next guy, but I've always been a little skeptical of the daddies who walk around talking about what great athletes their kids are.

Everyone thinks their baby is a genius. People find it delightfully refreshing when I tell them, My baby? Totally average. Like, 100 percent average.

In any event, parents never underestimated the abilities of their own children. Quite the reverse. Sometimes it was well nigh impossible for a teacher to convince the proud father or mother that their beloved offspring was a complete nitwit.

Fortunately for those who pay their court through such foibles, a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing.

Launching a kid into college is about more than having the money to pay for it. Parents invest so much of their time and identities in the process that it can feel like a part time job. For many parents, the college your child ends up attending becomes a parenting grade.

No one likes a pushy parent, and, 'pride' being one of the seven deadly sins, I needed to tread very carefully when creating a show about my eldest son, Tom, better known as Peter Parker and even better known as Marvel's new 'Spider-Man.'

My parents are really open-minded, but with their own daughter, it's not the same thing.

I'm sure all parents think their kids are funny, and I'm sure a lot of kids are, whether their parents are comics or not.

Is there such a thing as a normal childhood?

They called me 'Mr. Average' in school.

I want my kids to be proud of me.

According to fathers, their kids are always good.

I have five children. There were four boys. The fifth, I got weak, and a girl came.

I wanted to do everything right. I wanted to be good, and I wanted to be obedient, and I wanted to be the object of my parents' pride. I wanted to go to Heaven.

My father expected his first child to be a boy, and when it didn't turn out that way he didn't let the fact get in the way of a good story.

Nobody can misunderstand a child as much as his own parents.

I'm happy that I've raised six kids, and not one of them is a Ph.D.

It was sad, the imbalance of it all. Why do kids assume so much from one parent and hold the other to a lower, looser standard?

When I was a kid, I wanted to make my parents happy. I'd always say to them, "What do you want me to do? Do sports? Be rich? Be funny?" My mother would say, "Whatever we want from you, you already gave us - we wanted you to be alive, and you made it."

"Mediocrity" doesn't mean average intelligence, it means an average intelligence that resents and envies its betters.

There are only two kinds of parents. Those who think their offspring can do nothing wrong, and those who think they can do nothing right.