I was more like a middle child. My youngest brother was the baby, so he got all the attention that the baby gets. And my older brothers were getting into so much trouble that I was left in the middle, doing plays. I was up to no good, but my mother didn't know it!
They're free because they don't know any, better. So they can just run around and do whatever, and do whatever, and most of the time they don't get caught.
A lot of people who start work at a very young age never grow up because they never got that opportunity to be a child, so they hold on to that and still do a lot of childish, silly things.
I was a wild kid. I was left to climb trees. And you know those railways logs, they piled them up, six feet apart, and I'd jump from one to the other. Without a safety net! I was an incredible tomboy.
Some parents let their kids sleep at other people's houses, where they drink alcohol, watch TV for hours and God knows what else. But if you say you have to get all A's and practice the violin for two hours, then they consider that abusive. That upsets me.
You never came home for lunch: you just stayed doing, playing, having fun, surfing, running round.
I grew up in the countryside, so I had quite a feral life up until the age of about fourteen.
I was very much a latchkey kid. My parents would feel the back of the television to make sure I hadn't been watching it when they were gone, which inevitably I was.
If you give children the freedom to do very little, quite a lot will do very little.
In the Seventies, my children played in the street, read politically incorrect stories, ate home-cooked food and occasional junk and, yes, were sometimes smacked.
I was part of a generation where kids had a lot of freedom and aimless downtime. I had no scheduled after-school activities. As long as you came home for dinner, everything was fine.
Every day, new laws are created that further hamper the ways children can engage with the world.
I guess I'm like any other concerned father, except that nobody else's son guns a cycle over 17 pickups without holding on to the handlebars.
When children are doing nothing, they are doing mischief.
Mummy’s coming home late tonight. It’ll be just we guys, so we can get drunk and watch porn.
I was a really bad teenager and I got my tongue pierced. I don't even remember where I did it, but it was under very surreptitious circumstances.
Because my father was often absent on naval duty, my mother suffered me to do much as I pleased.
I don't think parents always know where their children are going or what they are doing, what they are up to.
I lived in small town out in the desert and my friend used to steal his mom's car in the middle of the night. He'd drive over to my house, I'd sneak out and we'd go out to the desert and just burn things down.
I'm doing naughty things, I'm drinking too much, I'm going to clubs. It really didn't matter to me, other than the fact that some parents wouldn't let their kids hang out with me.
I wish we could get back to those days, just let kids go and play and enjoy themselves on the streets instead of at academies too young.
When I was young, all I wanted to do was go to nightclubs, drink, have fun and be unproductive.
And I remember as a second or third grader having some autonomy to go to the store if I felt like it, walk home, take my time, kick the can. We were on our own schedule after school, so that was cool.
Back then, as a kid, you could really just do whatever you wanted until your parents got home.
My mom has this thing where if I'm doing anything doing dirty or crazy, she sniffs it out and yells at me. But the good thing is my mom doesn't have cable, and so much of the stuff I've done was on cable, so many times she'll miss it. I tend to gloss over the crazier things I shoot.
