Favourite quotes on children or parenthood!

[offtoseethewizard]

Just been researching for our Christmas Festival and need to find quotes on children and parenting. Does anyone have any favourites or unusual ones? Two I especially like are ;
'Making the decision to have a child - it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking outside your body' ELIZABETH STONE and 'There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One is roots; the other is wings' HODDING CARTER
Please let me know of any which touch you or make you laugh.

A child is just that not a finished article.

Every child eventually learns that dogs don't guard food

Becoming a parent is hard. Being a parent is wonderful.

When you have a baby, your life will not be the same or your own, in the best possible way.

Ah there is a fab (but longish) one in an Ina May book.... will go dig

Arm ache when they're young, heartache when they're older.

okay, not the most positive one there ... sorry

From Spiritual Midwifery
by Ina May Gaskin
When a child is born, the entire Universe has to shift and make room. Another entity capable of free will, and therefore capable of becoming God, has been born. In that way, every child's birth is exactly like the birth of a world teacher. Every child born is a living Buddha. Some of them only get to be a living Buddha for a moment, because nobody believes it. Nobody knows it, and they get treated like they're dumb. Babies are not dumb. A newborn infant is just as intelligent as you are. When you're relating with him, you should consider that you are relating with a very intelligent being who just doesn't speak your language yet. And you shouldn't do anything gross to him before he learns to speak with you.
quote from Stephen Gaskin

I always try to think of my ds4 as potentially the next Buddha

Anything by Erma Bombeck - a few favourites below

Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.

Insanity is hereditary. You can catch it from your kids.

There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.

Youngsters of the age of two and three are endowed with extraordinary strength. They can lift a dog twice their own weight and dump him into the bathtub

Thanks everyone, some great quotes! I also like 'Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them'
and 'If you must hold yourself up to your child as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example' by George Bernard Shaw and controversially (didn't happen with me)
'The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother'

I'm afraid I'm going to totally lower the tone because the first one to come to my mind was the Philip Larkin one: www.artofeurope.com/larkin/lar2.htm

Not that I agree with it - but it still makes me laugh!

If you have one child, you are a parent, if you have more than one, you are a referee.
(anon)

Men do not turn into their mothers, that is their tragedy. Women do, that is theirs. (Oscar Wilde)

The young are always ready to give the old the benefit of their inexperience.

Your children are not you.

Or what about 'The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents, and the second half by our childrem'