Sometimes, it's just easier to say yes to that extra snack or dessert, because frankly, it is exhausting to keep saying no. It's exhausting to plead with our kids to eat just one more bite of vegetables.
One thing that I've learned from male role models is that they don't hesitate to invest in themselves, with the view that, if I'm healthy and happy, I'm going to be a better support to my spouse and children. And I've found that to be the case: Once my kids were settled, the next thing I did was take care of my own health and sanity. And made sure that I was exercising and felt good about myself. I'd bring that energy to everything else that I did, the career, relationship, on and on and on.
Our kids didn't do this to themselves. They don't decide the sugar content in soda or the advertising content of a television show. Kids don't choose what's served to them for lunch at school, and shouldn't be deciding what's served to them for dinner at home. And they don't decide whether there's time in the day or room in the budget to learn about healthy eating or to spend time playing outside.
To get kids involved in meal planning and preparation, create games out of trying new foods, and provide ample opportunities for physical activity, recognizing it may take some time to find an activity they truly enjoy.
Catching up on pictures of your good friend's kids ahead of a visit across the country to see her is a great way to deepen your time together. Following near-strangers can leave us feeling detached and lonely.
When you're a kid and you go to Disneyland or Disneyworld and you're so pumped and then you go when you're grown up and it's not as much fun as you remember it.
The mythology around colorblindness leads people to imagine that if poor kids of color are failing or getting locked up in large numbers, it must be something wrong with them. It leads young kids of color to look around and say: "There must be something wrong with me, there must be something wrong with us. Is there something inherent, something different about me, about us as a people, that leads us to fail so often, that leads us to live in these miserable conditions, that leads us to go in and out of prison?"
Now that's hard for many people to believe, given that the media image of a drug dealer is a black kid standing on the street corner with his pants sagging down.
Kids are growing up in communities in which they see their loved ones cycling in and out of prison and in which they are sent the message in countless ways that they, too, are going to prison one way or another. We cannot build healthy, functioning schools within a context where there is no funding available because it's going to building prisons and police forces.
If you really want your kids to fly, you don't put stones in their pockets.
Personal credibility has everything to do with how others perceive us and how we perceive ourselves. Sandy Allgeier’s book teaches the all-important truth that it doesn’t matter how much money, status, or power you have if nobody believes in you. Every parent should read The Personal Credibility Factor and instill its lessons in their kids.Achieving a full understanding of these principles is the first step in becoming a truly great human being.
I love women. I love their hearts. There are a lot of women who are suffering. A lot of women who have been disappointed, have been let down. One thing I'd like women to know is the message: Hold on. Hold on. Be faithful to your kids. Hold on for the future because life doesn't always necessarily stay the way that it is. It will get better.
We had everything. We were young kids. We were driving cars our parents couldn't afford, living in big houses. For me to sit here and say, "Oh my God, I didn't enjoy any of it" - no, I did. Of course I did.
Kids in different countries know my movies by heart because they've seen them so many times. And wonderful returns never stop.
The quality and success of Disney was actually bad for us animators because everyone on the planet thought that animation was only for kids and only in a certain domain. The big film festivals never thought much about animated films.
When you put more than a million kids in school, you take a plane today and go to Haiti, you cannot see the results. You will see the results in 30 years when you see a different type of Haitian.
I went to Hollywood. I put the action in Hollywood. I watched a lot of movies, maybe 100 or something close to that. I have tons of DVDs now at home. I don't know what to do with them because they're not useful anymore. My kids never watched them. I read a lot of autobiographies, listened to a lot of music by classical era composers like Franz Waxman, Max Steiner, Bernard Herrmann, Alfred Newman and Leonard Bernstein. I listened to only that kind of music the entire time I was writing, even at home.
My father had a Super 8 camera when I was a kid and sometimes he would use it. I did some animation with it. I did a lot of flipbooks.
I've always loved 3D. In fact, as a kid, I was exposed to 3D at an early age because my grandfather was a specialist of 3D in cinematheques. And then my cousin put it in 'Science of Sleep' with toilet paper tube cities. But he was a specialist and I always wanted to do something in 3D.
I don't like the idea of competition - maybe because I kept losing them when I was a kid. Maybe it's better to be the one who loses?
When I was young, I would stay in my backyard and I would create roads and tunnels and systems. My uncle had a sawmill, and we had all sorts of pieces of wood, and we'd create a city. I truly believe that kids enjoy the box better than the car or the toy that's inside. So many times during Christmas, watching a kid, or even myself... There is excitement toward your toy, but then you put the toy on the side and something is created with the package.
I'm not judging the films. People make these connections through a film, or because they know them. But the fact that they erase them and have to start from scratch, I think that's an important point. A lot of kids, when they have a camera, have tended to do remakes of existing films. You have a lot of kids that make Star Wars. And I think that's creativity, but not as much creativity as starting from scratch.
Since I was a kid, I've liked to see how things are done. Sometimes when you see how things are done, it's like watching a 'making of' within the story. You see the physical aspect, the construction of things.
Children's games are hardly games. Children are never more serious than when they play.
Acting is an art and a science and there is more to me then that young blonde kid.
