If your parent is deployed and you are that young, you spend the whole time wondering where they are and waiting for them to come home. As time passes and the absence is longer and longer, you become more and more concerned - but you don't really have the words to express your concern. There's only this continued absence.
It is not a sufficient answer to say that the Jewish child need not join in the singing or the pageant if he does not want to. It is unfair and unconscionable to place on the child the burden of isolating himself from his classmates, to stand alone during the festivities and preparations for them which in many schools occupy practically all the time in December.
My life, like most people's, has been negatively affected by cancer, and the thought of my young children living in an age where this is no longer humanity's No. 1 health fear was simply overpowering.
I hated school. Even to this day, when I see a school bus it's just depressing to me. The poor little kids.
So many things can drive you mad as a child, not only music.
I go to third grade, and I'm scared to death. I'm just 6 years old, and the kids are so much bigger than me.
Disobedient parents are a great trouble to their children.
It was stressful [to live as a child in a Sylvian Hills]. It's always been complicated, honestly... I do not really want to tell you, actually. It bothers me that you want me to tell this.
Jane-Sweetie, we've talked about your weight-" my mother began. I'm only eight years old," I said. "How about I promise to be anorexic later?
I think that comedy is a good defense for a child. Because you know childhood is a nightmare as it is. And so why not use comedy and being funny as a defense to get through your life as opposed to drugs, alcohol and good looks? Because those things are dangerous when your young.
Any kid who grew up with an alcoholic parent will tell you how nauseating it feels never to know what it will be like when you come home.
My father passed away when I was 12, so it was very difficult. But I was always the class clown. I don't know why - maybe as an escape. But then I was sent away to military prep school.
I think a lot of parents live their lives through the kids. Because they didn't make it [achieve something], they want their kids to make it. It puts a lot of undue pressure on the kids.
People who have had severe childhood traumas lack the ability to regulate emotions and, as a result, gravitate toward whatever primitive means they can come up with.
I hate the cliche of 'just have fun,' but what I've seen in today's sports, especially with parents, is they put so much pressure on the kids.
When I was a little girl, my family was extremely close, loving and really happy, and then overnight, things just became a nightmare, and instead of them becoming a nightmare and getting better, they became a nightmare and just kept getting worse.
When my kids were very young, I have seen them crying, as they didn't want to go to school.
A lot of my childhood memories involve walking home in floods of tears. At that age, feeling unpopular is difficult to handle.
When I was in first grade, some psychologist told my mom if I didn't go to graduate school, she basically failed as a parent, because I had the aptitude to do it. Which is so dumb. Huge pressure!
I think - you know, the big trauma in my life, personally, was the fact that at 14, I was taken out of Poland unwittingly because my parents were divorced. Left the country - my mother left for England with her new husband. I wasn't even aware that she'd married him.
As a kid growing up, I put a lot of pressure on myself.
August used to be a sad month for me. As the days went on, the thought of school starting weighed heavily upon my young frame. That, coupled with the oppressive heat and humidity of my native Washington, D.C., only seemed to heighten the misery.
This idea that some kids have now in some communities that if they haven't filled out their college resumes by the time they're 12, they are going to fail in life, it's a lot of stress on kids.
My dad left when I was 3 1/2, and he left my mom and I.
Consider what we sometimes do with our children: We imbue them with this sense, very early on, that they have got to succeed. We are not content that they just do well, they have got to wipe the floor with the opposition.
