Parenting & Family Quote by Erika Slezak

The charm of this quote is how it accidentally catches a culture mid-sentence. Erika Slezak, a soap icon who spent decades making scripted life feel spontaneous, slips into a very unscripted recalibration: “my son is - well, our daughter and our son - is a sophomore.” That little stutter isn’t just a verbal tic; it’s the sound of someone actively updating the story she’s telling in public, choosing precision over momentum. You can hear the brain doing the respectful work of getting it right.

The phrasing also telegraphs a particular kind of parental identity: practical, not performative. She’s not framing college as a grand rite of passage; she’s running the logistics of modern family life. “Selected weekends,” “vacations,” “summer,” “although they have jobs” reads like a calendar, not a metaphor. It’s the suburban reality behind the inspirational poster version of parenting: adulthood arrives in installments, and even “home” is now scheduled around employment.

There’s subtext, too, in the quick shift from “my” to “our.” It subtly widens the frame from individual ownership to shared family structure, a small linguistic nod to co-parenting and to the way kids’ milestones belong to the household, not just the speaker. The end tag, “although they have jobs,” lands like a humble brag that’s also a sigh of relief: the children are independent enough to work, dependent enough to return. That tension is the point - and the reason the quote feels so human.