Ayelet Waldman Quotes About Children

Quotes about: Children

• If you focus all of your emotional passion on your children and you neglect the relationship that brought that family into existence... eventually, things can go really, really wrong.

  Ayelet Waldman

  Children, Passion, Emotional

  "Ayelet Waldman Stands By Essay That Infuriated Moms Nearly A Decade Ago". www.huffingtonpost.com. December 6, 2017.

• One of the darkest, deepest shames so many of us mothers feel nowadays is our fear that we are Bad Mothers, that we are failing our children and falling far short of our own ideals.

  Ayelet Waldman

  Inspiring, Mothers Day, Children

  Ayelet Waldman (2009). “Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace”, p.3, Anchor

• There are times as a parent when you realize that your job is not to be the parent you always imagined you'd be, the parent you always wished you had. Your job is to be the parent your child needs, given the particulars of his or her own life and nature.

  Ayelet Waldman

  Jobs, Children, Parent

  FaceBook post by Ayelet Waldman from Apr 27, 2010

• I hate homework. I hate it more now than I did when I was the one lugging textbooks and binders back and forth from school. The hour my children are seated at the kitchen table, their books spread out before them, the crumbs of their after-school snack littering the table, is without a doubt the worst hour of my day.

  Ayelet Waldman

  Children, Hate, Book

• I think it's worth trying to be a mother who delights in who her children are, in their knock-knock jokes and earnest questions. A mother who spends less time obsessing about what will happen, or what has happened, and more time reveling in what is.

  Ayelet Waldman

  Mother, Children, Thinking

• A good mother remembers to serve fruit at breakfast, is always cheerful and never yells, manages not to project her own neuroses and inadequacies onto her children, is an active and beloved community volunteer. She remembers to make play dates, her children's clothes fit, she does art projects with them and enjoys all their games.

  Ayelet Waldman

  Love, Mother, Art

• I believe that mothers should tell the truth, even - no, especially - when the truth is difficult. It's always easier, and in the short term can even feel right, to pretend everything is okay, and to encourage your children to do the same. But concealment leads to shame, and of all hurts shame is the most painful.

  Ayelet Waldman

  Inspiring, Mothers Day, Hurt

  Ayelet Waldman (2009). “Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace”, p.3, Anchor

• If a good mother is one who loves her child more than anyone else in the world, I am not a good mother. I am in fact a bad mother. I love my husband more than I love my children.

  Ayelet Waldman

  Mother, Children, Husband

  “The centre of my universe” by Ayelet Waldman, www.theguardian.com. November 26, 2005.

• Perhaps my children will one day pledge their loyalty to the Republican Party. Or perhaps they'll dismiss my liberalism as mild pap, and become anarchists. Either way may well be a reaction to my manipulation, my values. We are all the product of the indoctrination we received at the hands of our parents, even when we are repudiating that ideology.

  Ayelet Waldman

  Loyalty, Children, Party

• By presenting a faithful and honest record of my experience as a mother, I hope to show both my readers and my children how truth can redeem even what you fear might be the gravest of sins.

  Ayelet Waldman

  Mother, Children, Faithful

• Because of my bipolar disorder, I tend to these mixed states, which are depressed but loud and agitated. So I can be terribly irritable. I go to cognitive behavioral therapy in order not to yell at my children.

  Ayelet Waldman

  Children, Order, Bipolar

• Look, if you ask a child, 'Would you rather have a fulfilled mother or a stay-at-home Sylvia Plath,' they'll pick Sylvia Plath every time. But I think it's really important that children don't feel their parents' emotional lives depend on their success.

  Ayelet Waldman

  Mother, Children, Home

• During the periods in my marriage when I chose to stay home with my kids rather than work as an attorney, it caused me no end of anxiety. Despite the fact that I knew I was contributing to our family by caring for our children, I still felt that my worth was less because I wasn't earning.

  Ayelet Waldman

  Children, Kids, Home

• I love my husband more than I love my children.

  Ayelet Waldman

  Children, Husband, Bad Mother

  "The centre of my universe" by Ayelet Waldman, www.theguardian.com.

• My own husband was divorced when we met, but without kids. I don't know what I would have done if he'd had them. I got the message very early on that the worst mistake a woman can make is marrying a man with children.

  Ayelet Waldman

  Children, Husband, Mistake

  "‘Impossible Pursuits’ on film: A Q&A with Ayelet Waldman". Interview with Katie Hafner, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 4, 2011.

• I did not want to raise a genetically compromised child. I did not want my children to have to contend with the massive diversion of parental attention, and the consequences of being compelled to care for their brother after I died. I wanted a genetically perfect baby, and because that was something I could control, I chose to end his life.

  Ayelet Waldman

  Baby, Brother, Children

• Personally, I think four is the perfect number of children for our particular family. Four is enough to create the frenzied cacophony that my husband and I find so joyful.

  Ayelet Waldman

  Children, Husband, Thinking

• I tend to approach giving interviews with the same sense of circumspection and restraint as I approach my writing. That is to say, virtually none. When asked what I made of blogs like my own, blogs written by parents about their children, I said, 'A blog like this is narcissism in its most obscene flowering.'

  Ayelet Waldman

  Children, Writing, Giving

  "Living Out Loud — Online". The Salon column, www.salon.com. March 14, 2005.

• It's hard to separate your remembered childhood and its emotional legacy from the childhoods that are being lived out in your house, by your children. If you're lucky, your kids will help you make that distinction.

  Ayelet Waldman

  Children, Kids, Emotional

• Roaring like a tiger turns some children into pianists who debut at Carnegie Hall but only crushes others. Coddling gives some the excuse to fail and others the chance to succeed.

  Ayelet Waldman

  Crush, Children, Giving

• I certainly don't think it's inevitable that we don't love children who don't carry our own DNA. If that were true we wouldn't have millions of successful adoptions to consider. I do think that it's harder to love a child when you come into that child's life after the unrequited passion of infancy and early childhood has passed.

  Ayelet Waldman

  Children, Passion, Successful

  "‘Impossible Pursuits’ on film: A Q&A with Ayelet Waldman". Interview with Katie Hafner, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 4, 2011.

• So many women today have become so focused on their children, they've developed these romantic entanglements with their children's lives, and the husbands are secondary. They're left out. And the romantic focus is on the children.

  Ayelet Waldman

  Children, Husband, Focus

  "A Mother's Love". “The Oprah Winfrey Show”, www.oprah.com. April 20, 2005.

• The capacity for extravagant emotion that my husband finds so attractive in me can be exhausting, especially to a child. My moods are mercurial, and this can be terrifying. I know, because I was a daughter of a mother with a changeable temperament.

  Ayelet Waldman

  Mother, Daughter, Husband

  Ayelet Waldman (2009). “Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace”, p.95, Anchor

• I have made so many mistakes as a mother. But the one thing that I know I do is I make sure my children know how much I love them and they are absolutely secure in that.

  Ayelet Waldman

  Mother, Children, Mistake

• When the babies were very young, I found it difficult to write. I told myself each time that it would be different, I was used to it now, but with every child, for the first four months, I would accomplish nothing.

  Ayelet Waldman

  Baby, Children, Writing

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