One of my sisters is physically and mentally handicapped. She took a lot of my parents' attention, so I grew up in my own world, playing in my room for hours and hours.
I always knew I would come to London. I loved Glasgow, but it seemed filled with echoes of my parents' lives, and sometimes you just want a city of your own.
I grew up with my grandparents around. I think that's important for a child. If for no other reason than to hear stories about their parents when they were children.
Students read for tests and because their parents ask them to, but I think it's very important to tell children that you can read for fun, too, and to understand human spirit. It builds empathy.
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.
As a parent, the most responsible thing I can do is get as much information about my children as possible so I can then think through how I can make them as healthy as possible.
My kids are incredibly secure. More and more of their friends' parents are divorcing, but my kids have absolute confidence that we'll stay together forever. That goes a long, long way.
I think there's a settled quality, there's a gravitas that comes with aging and with being a parent because you certainly come to recognize that there's nothing else that takes greater priority than raising your children.
Our children are counting on us to provide two things: consistency and structure. Children need parents who say what they mean, mean what they say, and do what they say they are going to do.
If you have one of the worst schools in the city, then chances are the teachers are not going to care for you. Chances are the parents don't feel seriously about coming to meet with teachers.
I think because both of my parents were essentially salespeople, and Italian-Americans, I always seemed to get along with people; I had a knack of finding something to talk about.
I was taught by my parents that people who are loud don't have anything to say. I've found if you're suggesting quite big changes, a quiet style may be reassuring.
I do not think there was anything abusive in my house. Yet, I stand by a lot of my critiques of Western parenting. I think there's a lot of questions about how you instill true self-esteem.
I'm not the first to admit that raising a child in Park Slope, Brooklyn, can bear an embarrassing resemblance to the TV show 'Portlandia.' My wife and I try to have some ironic distance from the culture of organic, chemical-free parenting, but we're ...
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.
The challenging part of parenting for me is to make sure that an individual person is an individual and not some sort of cookie-cutter version of me. At the same time, I want to make sure that I impart my sense of the world as an adult.
Autism is a neurological disorder. It's not caused by bad parenting. It's caused by, you know, abnormal development in the brain. The emotional circuits in the brain are abnormal. And there also are differences in the white matter, which is the brain...
Don't ever brag about the funds(money) of your parents because they might leave wuth it when their time comes instead strive to make yours and have your personal bragging rights
I realize parenting is hard and boring at times and a four-hour break would be super, but this is the job we signed up for. Some days it sucks, but most days it's great.
With no sense of smell, your memories dropped like pennies out of a ripped pocket, until the past was ashes and your parents were blanks: nothing more than the holes in Swiss cheese.