Children are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work.

The conversation that took place on Facebook is the earliest occurrence that we could locate. After being asked about the source of the quotation, Trainer claimed that the quote was "repurposed . . . from a cheesy old nugget in customer service." We can only assume that the original quotation was referring to "customers" as opposed to "children", but we don't have any other information to support that. Although commonly attributed to C. S. Lewis, there isn't any evidence that he said it. And according to the C.S. Lewis Foundation, there aren't any records of the quote being associated with him.