Back To School

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18 Sweet & Relatable First-Day-Of-School Quotes For Moms

You’re feeling all the feels right now.

by Caroline Hogeveen
Updated: 
Originally Published: 

Back-to-school season brings up so many different emotions. On one hand, you know how much your child will learn and grow over the course of this new year. On the other hand... who swapped your baby for this big kid overnight? Don't worry, you're not the first one working through all the emotions in your inventory, and some back-to-school quotes for moms will help you feel optimistic, inspired, and ready for the first day of school. Maybe they'll help you celebrate, or maybe they'll simply help you get through it.

Most importantly, don't try to talk yourself out of the mess of emotions you might be feeling. Some moms can't wait to get their children out of their hair after a seemingly endless summer. Some moms are vicariously excited, thinking of all the cool new stuff and sweet new friends their children will make during the school year. Other moms are devastated, because growing up is bittersweet. And, of course, some moms fit into all of those categories. Either way, there’s bound to be a quote or 10 from this list that speak to you either by summing up exactly how you feel, or offering a totally new perspective you can relate to.

1Dorothy Nolte

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"Children do learn what they live. Then they grow up to live what they learned."

2Taylor Swift

"This is a new year. A new beginning. And things will change."

3Dr. Seuss

"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose."

4Lady Bird Johnson

“Children are apt to grow up to what you believe of them.”

5Oprah WinfreyEducation is the key to unlocking the world, a passport to freedom.

“Education is the key to unlocking the world, a passport to freedom.”

6Author Unknown

“To raise a child who is comfortable enough to leave you means you've done your job. They are not ours to keep, but to teach how to soar on their own.”

7Malala Yousafzai

“Let us remember: One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world.”

8Edgar W. Howe

“If there were no schools to take the children away from home part of the time, the insane asylums would be filled with mothers.”

9Josie Bisset

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“Dreams come a size too big so that we can grow into them.”

10Erin Kelly, The Burning Air

“A good mother loves fiercely but ultimately brings up her children to thrive without her. They must be the most important thing in her life, but if she is the most important thing in theirs, she has failed."

11Avicii, "The Days"

"These are the days we'll never forget."

12Chuck Norris

“Asking your children about their fears or worries about going back to school will help them share their burden.”

13Lemony Snicket

“A long time ago, there was no such thing as school, and children spent their days learning a trade, a phrase which here means 'standing around doing tedious tasks under the instruction of a bossy adult.' In time, however, people realized that the children could be allowed to sit, and the first school was invented.”

14Benjamin Franklin

“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.”

15Debra Ginsberg

“Through the blur, I wondered if I was alone or if other parents felt the same way I did — that everything involving our children was painful in some way. The emotions, whether they were joy, sorrow, love or pride, were so deep and sharp that in the end they left you raw, exposed and yes, in pain. The human heart was not designed to beat outside the human body and yet, each child represented just that - a parent's heart bared, beating forever outside its chest.”

16L.R. Knost

“It's not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world. It's our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless.”

17Jojo Moyes, Me Before You

“It's just that the thing you never understand about being a mother, until you are one, is that it is not the grown man — the galumphing, unshaven, stinking, opinionated offspring — you see before you, with his parking tickets and unpolished shoes and complicated love life. You see all the people he has ever been all rolled up into one.

I look at him and see the baby I held in my arms, dewing besotted, unable to believe that I'd created another human being. I see the toddler, reaching for my hand, the schoolboy weeping tears of fury after being bullied by some other child. I saw the vulnerabilities, the love, the history.”

18J.Craine

“Raising your child well is hard. But learning to let them go out into the world and prove that you did your job right is even tougher.”

No matter how you feel when the first day of school rolls around, these quotes are a reminder than times are changing, your child is growing, and you and your child have so much to look forward to and reflect on.

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