A grandparent will help you with your buttons, your zippers, and your shoelaces and not be in any hurry for you to grow up.
Interpretation
Grandparents provide patient and loving support to children, allowing them to enjoy their youth without pressure to grow up too fast.
This quote by Erma Bombeck reflects the nurturing and selfless nature of grandparents. They often take on a supportive role in a child's life, offering practical assistance with everyday tasks while also allowing children to bask in the joys of childhood. By not rushing them to grow up, grandparents create a safe space for children to learn and explore at their own pace.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of family bonds, you might use this quote to highlight the special role of grandparents.
We've got a generation now who were born with semiequality. They don't know how it was before, so they think, this isn't too bad. We're working. We have our attache' cases and our three piece suits. I get very disgusted with the younger generation of women. We had a torch to pass, and they are just sitting there. They don't realize it can be taken away. Things are going to have to get worse before they join in fighting the battle.
You hear a lot of dialogue on the death of the American family. Families aren't dying. They're merging into big conglomerates.
Making coffee has become the great compromise of the decade. It's the only thing "real" men do that doesn't seem to threaten their masculinity. To women, it's on the same domestic entry level as putting the spring back into the toilet-tissue holder or taking a chicken out of the freezer to thaw.
Not everyone is comfortable with the kissing ritual. My husband is one of them. Her refuses to press lips with anyone except his wife, mother, and dog. If someone wanted to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, he would refuse until he had been formally introduced.
There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.
Maybe age is kinder to us than we think. With my bad eyes, I can't see how bad I look, and with my rotten memory, I have a good excuse for getting out of a lot of stuff.
The difference between keeping things clean and keeping kids clean was that things just sat still and waited for the dirt to collect. We kids were carriers. We ran a pickup and delivery service.
Perhaps it takes courage to raise children.
The transmission of human life is a most serious role in which married people collaborate freely and responsibly with God the Creator.
She yearned to see her mother again, and Robb and Bran and Rickon… but it was Jon Snow she thought of most. She wished somehow they could come to the Wall before Winterfell, so Jon might muss up her hair and call her “little sister.” She’d tell him, “I missed you,” and he’d say it too at the very same moment, the way they always used to say things together. She would have liked that. She would have liked that better than anything.
I was raised by strong women, and that DNA is in my daughter and wife.
All mothers are mothers of great people, and it is not their fault that life later disappoints them.
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