How are we supposed to get old? What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to get old? My kids tell me, 'We want you to look like a grandmother.' I agree with them. I want to look like a grandmother.
I grew up a happy kid in Toronto. I've never suffered. I've never even had a real job! But I understand sadness and striving, and those two things tie into all the roles that I've played.
We always reference kids but very rarely ask their opinion. Our inexperience might be what gives us the ability to teach our elders something, due to the fact that we are not jaded or cynical.
I went from just a regular nappy-headed kid in poverty to Amar'e Stoudemire, New York Knicks captain superstar. But there's a lot in between that allowed me to get from point A to point B.
I wanted to be a designer since I was a kid, and I was always attracted to the way rock stars dressed and the way their girlfriends dressed. I always thought that they were the most interesting people.
Kids born today will see us navigate past the first greatest test of humanity, which is: can we actually be smart enough to live on a planet without destroying it?
So I consider myself a dog person. Kind of. Had dogs when I was a kid, but my parents would never have dreamed of having them in the house.
You know, when you go to high school or, you know, when kids are younger and there's not an understanding of differences. But I built up a very strong, thick skin.
I've sometimes thought that it's only by recalling that desperate devotion my kids once felt for me that I can maintain my own desperate devotion in the face of their adolescent sneering.
It's hard to separate your remembered childhood and its emotional legacy from the childhoods that are being lived out in your house, by your children. If you're lucky, your kids will help you make that distinction.
The whole system was based upon getting kids to a certain standard and packing their minds with information so they could go on to a good university ... The great failure in education, much of the time, is a lack of excitement and stimulus.
The problems with kids having short attention spans is driven by entertainment, reset buttons on games, games having to do with getting somewhere and heads blowing up. Everything is 'cut to the chase, cut to the chase.'
And then ultimately what I tell the kids is: coaches can give you information, they can give you guidelines, and they can put you in a position. But the only person who can truly make you better is you.
When I was a kid, Eisenhower had been President forever, and all of a sudden, everything in the world was all about Jack Kennedy. I was 12, interested in politics; my father was from Massachusetts, had an accent like Kennedy.
It's like being at the kids' table at Thanksgiving - you can put your elbows on it, you don't have to talk politics... no matter how old I get, there's always a part of me that's sitting there.
Very often when you see families it's all perfect and neat, and parenting isn't like that. You do have constant negotiations. Things are ever developing and ever changing, and you constantly have to evaluate how you deal with your kids.
Giving kids whatever they ask for is disastrous parenting. There's no sense of something earned. I'm sorry, but when you're 12, you don't need a new cell phone every few months just because a new one comes out.
In Los Angeles, parenting is a competitive sport. From Beverly Hills baby boutiques to kids' yoga classes, L.A. fuses high style, industrial-strength materialism, and parental outsourcing into our own unique version of child-rearing.
I always tell my kids that as soon as you have a secret, something about you that you are ashamed to have others find out, you have given other people the power to hurt you by exposing you.
Kid's books should be just as good as any other books. No. They should be held to a *higher* standard than other literature for the same reason that we take extra care with children's food.
When you're a kid and you're trying to find your own voice, it's rather daunting to hear somebody like Howlin' Wolf, because you know that you'll never achieve that.
