While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about.

The quote reverses the usual direction of instruction: adults may pass on practical knowledge and social rules, but children—through curiosity, candor, and unselfconscious joy—remind adults of life’s essentials. It suggests that parenting is reciprocal, not merely supervisory: children model presence, wonder, and emotional honesty, and they expose how easily grown-ups drift into anxiety, routine, or abstraction. The line also carries a moral humility, implying that wisdom is not strictly correlated with age or authority. In a broader sense, it argues that “what life is all about” is learned experientially—through relationships and attention—rather than through lectures or plans.