Seeing my children makes me come most alive. I come home and I see my kids' faces light up when they see me at the door with my guitar case. They run to me, we hug. I never go beyond a few weeks without being in their presence, so they have adjusted quite well.
When you turn on the news, they don't say, "Hey, 2 Million kids went to school safely today...40,000 flights took place without incident." They don't say that.
In those days, in Far Rockaway, there was a youth center for Jewish kids at the temple.... Somebody nominated me for president of the youth center. The elders began getting nervous, because I was an avowed atheist by that time.... I thought nature itself was so interesting that I didn't want it distorted like that. And so I gradually came to disbelieve the whole religion.
If war occurs, that positive adult contact in every shape is needed more than ever. It will be a matter of emotional life and death. There's not a handy one-minute way of talking to your kid about war.
I do not trust technology. I mean, I don't think we're in any danger of kids, you know, doing without video games in the future, but I am saying that their lives are largely out of balance.
Kids and adults pay a price for too much tech, and it's not wholesale.
Our kids are actually doing what we told them to do when they sit in front of that TV all day or in front of that computer game all day. The society is telling kids unconsciously that nature's in the past. It really doesn't count anymore, that the future is in electronics, and besides, the bogeyman is in the woods.
How can our kids really understand the moral complexities of being alive if they are not allowed to engage in those complexities outdoors?
It's easy to blame the nature-deficit disorder on the kids' or the parents' back, but they also need the help of urban planners, schools, libraries and other community agents to find nature that's accessible.
What if more and more parents, grandparents and kids around the country band together to create outdoor adventure clubs, family nature networks, family outdoor clubs, or green gyms? What if this approach becomes the norm in every community?
When you're sitting in front of a screen, you're not using all of your senses at the same time. Nowhere than in nature do kids use their senses in such a stimulated way.
There's a generation now that didn't grow up in nature. Some of these adults are parents and they know that nature is good for their kids but they don't know where to start.
My sisters would swear that I was the spoiled kid who got everything he wanted, and I would go "No way! I worked my ass off and you guys got everything." We're all kind of in our own narratives.
When I was a kid, I loved horror films. I used to stay up on Saturday night to watch.
Sports are an acceptable way for men to show emotion. A guy who won't hug his kid will slip a guy a tongue in a sports bar when his team wins.
One third of all of our cancers are from tobacco. It's one of the big killers in America and more than half of our kids still have environmental tobacco smoke exposure when environmental tobacco smoke is known to be associated with sudden infant death syndrome, with ear infections, respiratory infections and the rest. If we had to pick something to really go after, that would be one that I would really argue is an extraordinarily high priority and something people can actually do something about.
I like playing Vernon Dursley in 'Harry Potter,' because that gives me a license to be horrible to kids. I hate the odious business of sucking up to the public.
I went from being a beanpole - like a normal kid of the 1950s - and exploded. The weight piled on and didn't stop until into my adulthood.
Julia [Roberts]. She's got two kids and animals, and I think she's a night nibbler. There'd be crumbs everywhere.
To teach our kids how to run our country, before they are called upon to run our country... if we don't, someone else will run our country.
I was always the kid at the side of the playground, looking at the other kids. I didn't know how to get into the group. I was quiet and bookish, a bit of a geek. I was into orienteering when my friends were out clubbing.
If you have conflicts, everything breaks down in society. Kids can't go to school. Basic health can't be looked after. Every aspect of society falls apart.
If you're bringing up kids, you just want to smother them with love and praise and enthusiasm. So I don't think you can mollycoddle your kids too much really.
I've been very lucky. I come from a very close family. I'm also in a relationship that's been really good. Lasted a long time. We've got wonderful kids from that relationship, and they've had the benefit of being together. It's fantastic to have that sort of togetherness. It's a rarity these days.
I abhor 'baby talk.' I speak to kids like I would any other person, and they seem to respond to it.
