50 Toddlerhood Quotes About the Cute Little Terrors

By Clifton Sankofa

School Leader, Language Arts Expert & Master Quote Curator

Published January 13, 2023

We have the best selection of toddlerhood quotes celebrating our little ones.

Toddlerhood is a critical time during our development, and our toddlerhood quotes will remind you of the importance of this stage.

Tell us your favorite toddlerhood quote in the comment section below.

What is toddlerhood?

Toddlerhood is a stage all human beings go through.

Our toddlerhoods last from the ages between twelve and thirty-six months.

Check out these astonishing toddlerhood facts:

Toddlers are most active at two
Toddlers have better hearing than adults
Toddlers are cute by design to enhance the bond with their parents

Evolution is always working.

Parents call toddlerhood the terrible twos for good reason!

However, what is really responsible for the behavior shifts is rapid development.

Our evolution has developed so that when we are born, our cute faces, tiny button noses, and big eyes incite strong feelings of love and protection from our parents.

We grow the most during our first six years of life, making proper nutrition and hydration vital.

Toddlers are known for having excessive energy; we are the most active at two years old.

Not only do toddlers have more brain synapses than adults, but they also start ambidextrous.

Kids use both hands equally until around two or three when they prefer a dominant hand.

Toddlers love human speech!

Toddlers enjoy copying and impersonating what they hear.

They love to repeat new words and sounds.

Exposure to new words and language is vital to a toddler’s development.

At about eighteen months old, we go through what is known as a word spurt.

During this time, we learn five new words a day.

Check out our toddlerhood quotes below for more fantastic information about toddlers.

Top 10 short toddlerhood quotes

These quotes capture the essence of toddlerhood in one sentence.

1. “Toddlers are active explorers.” — Janet Gonzalez-Mena

2. “I love toddlers, but they are a tough audience.” — Robin Williams

3. “The sun was a toddler insistently refusing to go to bed.” — John Green

4. “Toddlers are always more trouble than you thought and more wonderful.” — Charles Osgood

5. “No matter how big and bad you are, when toddlers hand you a toy phone, you answer it.” — Anonymous

6. “Toddlers want to be independent, and they have a strong sense of ownership.” — Janet Gonzalez-Mena

7. “When you have brought up toddlers, there are memories you store directly in your tear ducts.” — Robert Brault

8. “Ignorance and curiosity often make toddlers do things that make them seem suicidal.” ― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

9. “Mothers were naturals for law enforcement because toddlers, like criminals, were often belligerent and destructive.” ― Stephen King

10. “A toddler cannot participate in a discussion of the transition process or be expected to understand a verbal explanation.” ― Mary Hopkins-Best

Toddlerhood quotes everyone can relate to

This collection of toddlerhood quotes describes the everyday reality of raising a toddler.

11. “Me: *Falls down a flight of stairs*, Toddlers: ‘Mommy, can I have a snack?’” — Anonymous

12. “‘Hi, I’d like to return this.’ ‘Is it damaged or broken?’ ‘No, it’s just annoying.’ *hands toddler over*” — Anonymous

13. “The toddler must say no in order to find out who she is. The adolescent says no to assert who she is not.” — Louise J. Kaplan

14. “Being pregnant and having a toddler, as every parent says, is amazing. You’re very tired, but it’s so wonderful.” — Drew Barrymore

15. “The reason I love toddlers so much is because they’re so honest, so you know right away if they like you or they don’t.” — Colin Egglesfield

16. “There’s nothing more contagious than the laughter of toddlers; it doesn’t even have to matter what they’re laughing about.” — Criss Jami

17. “Your toddler will be ‘good’ if he feels like doing what you happen to want him to do and does not happen to feel like doing anything you would dislike.” — Penelope Leach

18. “Toddlers: Take 10 minutes to put on shoes but can download three apps, take 42 selfies, and change the language of your phone to Spanish in 20 seconds.” — Anonymous

19. “Toddlers will make love stronger, days shorter, nights longer, bankroll smaller, home happier, clothes shabbier, the past forgotten and the future worth living for.” — Anonymous

20. “Cuddling seems like it should be a super-sweet family activity, but with a toddler, it’s more like guarding your ribs from a professional kickboxer. How can someone so small take up an entire king-size bed?” — @sarahjessica710 on Instagram

Toddlerhood quotes and sayings

Toddlers make the world sweet.

21. “The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom.” — Henry Ward Beecher

22. “A mother has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.” — Sophia Loren

23. “He wanted to stay there forever, letting her soothe him, pretending he was just a kid and his mom could make everything okay.” — Suzanne Collins

24. “Forget the stunt double. Toddlers can manage to get into every dangerous corner of the house in the blink of an eye.” — @cluelessmamad on Instagram

25. “Why aren’t we amused when our toddler drops her food off the high chair for the hundredth time? Because we know about gravity (and we have to clean it up).” ― Lawrence J. Cohen

26. “Toddlers are surprisingly fast for their size. Between lifting and chasing a mischievous toddler, it’s basically a free gym membership–or one that you have to feed and change.” — Anonymous

27. “A toddler is going to feel conflicting loyalties if [they] are made to feel on some level that [they] must choose between [their] former caregiver and [their] new guardians.” ― Mary Hopkins-Best

28. “The toddler pays careful attention to the former caregiver’s face and voice, listening and watching as [they talk] to [their new guardians] and invites the [guardians’] assumption of the caregiver’s role.” — Mary Hopkins-Best

29. “Toddlers are truly just designers at heart, so don’t let the paint splatters, wall art, and cookie crumbs get you down. A little chaos is actually just creativity if you have the right attitude.” — @mylittlefarmerusa on Instagram

30. “Every toddler suddenly becomes busier than a CEO when it’s time for bed. First, we need a bathroom break, then a snack, then a story, and so much more. How can they be so awake when you’re so tired?” — @sleepymumsvillage on Instagram

Toddlerhood quotes for parents

These quotes honor the people who create toddlers.

31. “The only love that I really believe in is a mother’s love for her children.” — Karl Lagerfeld

32. “The stirrings of morality emerge early in childhood. Toddlers spontaneously offer toys and help to others and try to comfort people they see in distress.” — Steven Pinker

33. “I’ve been performing since I came out of the womb. I’ve been dancing and singing since I was a toddler. Acting seemed like a natural progression from that.” — Mary Elizabeth Winstead

34. “The attached toddler is very perceptive of [their] caregiver’s emotions and will pick up on nonverbal cues from that person as to how [they] should respond to [their] new family.” ― Mary Hopkins-Best

35. “Families survive the Terrible Twos because toddlers aren’t strong enough to kill with their hands and aren’t capable of using lethal weapons. A 2-year-old with the physical capacities of an adult would be terrifying.” — Paul Bloom

Interesting toddler quotes

36. “In 1979, when I was a toddler, the Russians invaded Afghanistan, and my whole family fled to Vienna, Virginia. Far from home, my parents were determined to raise my two sisters and me according to Afghan traditions.” — Azita Ghanizada

37. “Isn’t it funny how babies laugh a lot? I read a toddler, a young child, laughs three hundred times a day. The average adult laughs, like, four times a day. God put it in them. He put the laugh in us, but I think sometimes we let life get us down, you know, have bad breaks, and we lose our breaks.” — Joel Osteen

38. “At the age of eighty, the Dalai Lama has begun to discuss a range of prospects for the future disposition of his soul. Traditionally, after he dies, a search party of senior monks would set out to locate his new incarnation, who is most often a boy toddler, who goes on to be trained as a monk and a leader.” — Evan Osnos

39. “I grew up believing my sister was from the planet Neptune and had been sent down to Earth to kill me. I believed this because my sister Emily convinced me of it when I was a toddler. I think she’d seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and her imagination ran away with her. There’s a part of me that still believes it.” — Zooey Deschanel

Inspirational toddlerhood quotes

These toddlerhood quotes remind us to give our children the best we can.

40. “The fundamental job of a toddler is to rule the universe.” — Lawrence Kutner

41. “Whenever a toddler sees a pile of blocks, he wants to tear it down.” — J. J. Abrams

42. “Toddlers need to get off the soccer field and onto the playground.” — Darell Hammond

43. “It’s perfectly possible to love your toddler but struggle to like them when times are hard.” — Mariella Frostrup

44. “No country in history ever sent mothers of toddlers off to fight enemy soldiers until the United States did this in the Iraq war.” — Phyllis Schlafly

45. “I’ve been watching Michael J. Fox since I was a toddler, basically. I watched all the Back to the Future movies! I’ve been a fan my whole life.” — Juliette Goglia

Toddlerhood quotes about what life is like

46. “Computers tend to separate us from each other; Mom’s on the laptop, Dad’s on the iPad, teenagers are on Facebook, toddlers are on the DS, and so on.” — Tom Hodgkinson

47. “We continue to blame the poor for their own condition. They are lazy. We do not want to know that the poorest of the poor are toddlers under three years of age.” — Madeleine M. Kunin

48. “My mom told me that even as a toddler, I wasn’t afraid of anything. She thought something was wrong with me. I didn’t know how to walk or swim, but that didn’t stop me from crawling into the ocean and almost drowning over and over again.” — Julia Fox

49. “When my kids were toddlers, they had all these rotomolded plastic things. My life became surrounded by big, hollow plastic toys – from the scale of playhouses down to rocking horses and everything in between – which we would then take to the secondhand store. But we’d get sentimentally attached and hate to see them go.” — Greg Lynn

50. “When I was a toddler, my father cut hair in the townhouse we had shared together in Long Beach, California, where Dad was stationed with the U.S. Navy. The buzz of clippers consistently hummed as he gave fades to his coworkers, my uncles, and my brother, but his clippers were never oiled and plugged in for my head.” — Janet Mock

Toddlerhood is a critical time

We do a lot of growing during our toddlerhood years.

A toddler may know and understand thousands of words but only choose to speak some; this is perfectly natural and not an indicator of a child’s intelligence.

Picking eating is also prevalent for toddlers.

Eating is a new experience, and new foods may not always agree with the palette of a child with still developing tastebuds.

The best option is always to provide a variety of foods and remain patient as their tastebuds develop and grow accustomed to the cuisine we expose them to.

Nature and nurture play pivotal roles in a child’s development.

Genetics impact how we turn out, but our environment is also essential in how much we grow and develop.

A person can have the genetics to be tall and muscular, but they need to receive the nutrition and exercise to reach their potential.