Wit & Attitude Quote by Frederick Buechner

Parenthood gets treated like a series of big speeches, but Buechner aims at the throwaway line: the offhand remark in the doorway, the joke at someone else's expense, the casual verdict on a kid's ability. His warning is quietly brutal. Children are not tape recorders for our intended lessons; they are scavengers for meaning, grabbing whatever feels charged and building a private theology out of it. The adult thinks he is improvising. The child is filing evidence.

As a clergyman, Buechner is allergic to the fantasy of clean moral messaging. Faith, in his world, is made as much from tone as from doctrine. "Too careful" sounds like fussy overprotection until you notice what follows: memory as identity. The phrase "remembering you by" flips the usual power dynamic. Adults imagine they'll be remembered for their sacrifices or wisdom; Buechner suggests you might be remembered for one flash of impatience, one moment of contempt, one stray sentence that landed like a stone. That's not sentimentality; it's moral consequence.

The subtext is also grace, in the most uncomfortable sense: your influence exceeds your control. You can't curate what a child will canonize. That makes speech an ethical act, not just communication. It also hints at repair. If words can scar, they can also bless - not through grand declarations, but through small, repeated accuracies: seeing the child clearly, speaking as if your voice might become their inner voice.