Parents

Chum was a British boy's weekly which, at the end of the year was bound into a single huge book, and the following Christmas parents bought it as Christmas presents for male children.

My parents come down to Los Angeles a lot.

You learn a lot about love before you ever get there. You learn at least as much about love from books as you do from watching your parents.

I'm so blessed to have such enlightened parents. It must have been very hard to watch their able-bodied son lock himself up in his old room for most of his 20s.

My world was completely different to other boys my age. When I was six I was earning money, and by 10 I was paying more tax than the parents of other pupils. I feel a lot older than my years. Because I was working with adults, I had to mature a lot quicker.

The thing about travelling is that you work hard and play hard, but you can do all those things without your parents knowing.

My co-founder Dylan Smith and I left our junior year of college to move to the Bay Area. To the horror of our friends' parents, we actually had two other friends drop out of college to work on the product. The four of us were just working non-stop growing Box.

The biggest misconception people have about me is that when they see how young I am, they think, 'Oh, this guy must have always wanted to be in politics, his parents must have been politically connected.' I'm a finance major and always intended to go into business.

My parents took me to see plays, starting from when I was very little. Oftentimes, I was too young to understand. I don't know what my parents were thinking - 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' when I was eight years old, that kind of thing. So lots of times, I didn't understand what was going on, but I just loved the sound of dialogue.

I did swimming, gymnastics, dance, and the acting was just a small part. I didn't have pushy parents, it wasn't forced upon me. They just said, 'See if you like it. If you do, great, if you don't, don't worry about it.' I was really fortunate to have that guidance and supportive parents.

It is ironic that it doesn't matter how successful I am in any other capacity: ultimately, my parents' marker is 'Do you have a wife?' and 'Do you have children?'

People lament that there's no roles being written for South Asian or Muslim characters. But their parents don't want their children to go into the entertainment field. You don't get it both ways.

We just sort of thought a Web series would be a cool thing to be able to send to our parents to show them that we were, in fact, actually doing comedy.

My parents, they're the kind of people that didn't want me to get a big head, so they just kept challenging me and challenging me.

My parents played the radio, but music was never an obsession or something that I thought I could call a career.

My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families - second families, perhaps I should say.

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.

My childhood was great, honestly. I have all these incredible memories of my childhood. I was an only child. I always had all my cousins around. I had my grandparents around. I had my parents around. I had my uncles around - whatever.

Acting has made me embrace my childhood. It's become some weird form of therapy. It's like I have a place where I can release all of these emotions. When I was playing Ira Hayes, I didn't have to think about the death of my parents directly. It's just there. I can blend it into Ira's character. I can use Ira's emotions as an outlet.

Once you lose your parents, you get this numbness, this feeling of having to really be able to connect yourself with someone. I depended on my brothers for that connection, but to have that feeling of being taken care of... I lost it when my parents passed away.

With 'Smoke Signals,' the character was so much like me growing up. I lost my parents, and I wish I'd had an opportunity to find out where they were. So I was reflecting on how I grew up, that feeling of abandonment. That whole film was a reality that I always held back and kept to myself.

When I was sixteen I started acting, and I also started to embrace my tradition and culture. I had a young medicine man interpret for me what it is to be an Indian. He really caught me at a good time because I was really vulnerable after the loss of my parents with all of the feelings of abandonment.

I like my parents but they are just not good parents. They are nice enough people. I'm not interested in hurting their feelings.

My parents are very cool and wildly supportive - maybe almost too much. I want to tell them to chill out.

I auditioned in Chicago for Juilliard and didn't get in. I was basically living in a back room of my parents' house, paying rent and not doing anything with my life. I'd like to say it was patriotic to join the Marines, but it was also that I was doing nothing honorable with my life and spending too much time at McDonald's.

We don't understand why we're here, no one's giving us an answer, religion is vague, your parents can't help because they're just people, and it's all terrible, and there's no meaning to anything.

If you've got kids who aren't being looked after by their parents, there's only so many times you can try and intervene to get that right.

I was lucky enough to have an older brother who shared the splatter flicks with me, and I had parents who were cool and involved enough in my life to allow me to see them. I think my folks appreciated that I looked at these movies as a creative outlet... almost like magic shows, if you will.

I live in Las Vegas with my family, and I never realized what my parents would go through to get me to a five-minute audition.

My parents are my major supporters. I look up to Denzel Washington, Jack Nicholson and Jim Carrey. They have all opened my mind and helped me with my craft.

In theory, parents are supposed to empathize with one other - find common cause in the fervent desire to preserve and protect the world for the next generation, and connect on some deep, almost mystical level that those poor souls who have not experienced this kind of all-consuming love cannot possibly comprehend.

My parents' convictions, when it came to discipline, were not very strong. For my bar mitzvah, I gave out a mix tape of '90s grunge - if you got it now, you would think it was the 'Singles' soundtrack.

I grew up cursing a lot. It felt natural. My parents told me to stop.

When I'm around the kids I feel like I act the most grown-up just because you're supposed to. And I say things, like every other day, that remind me of my own parents.

When I take my kid to school, all the parents stop and stare.

When you're around the kids, you feel like you act the most grown up just because you're supposed to lead. I say things, like every other parent, that reminds you of your own parents. One thing I do know about being a parent, you understand why your father was in a bad mood a lot.

I started taking piano lessons when I was about 5, and there was always a lot of music in my family: my parents both play instruments, my grandparents were classical violinists, and my grandfather was actually a music professor and a conductor.

All possible means were used by the infatuated parents to conclude the bargain, and deception put an end to these usual artifices.

You look up to your parents and you want them to accept you, and you don't want them to look at you in a negative light. So you do things to make them proud and accept you.

My parents homeschooled my sister and me for many years. Why? Because the local school insisted that I, being three, should go to preschool, and my sister, being five, should go to kindergarten. The problem? You learn your alphabet in preschool, and I was already reading chapter books.

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.

I was thinking about what it was like for my parents to have a strange kid with a hobby or a pursuit that maybe they weren't that familiar with. It must have been a strange experience - nerve-wracking, in some ways.

I'm Japanese, but restaurants in my hometown served the most sanitized versions of California rolls. I grew up eating a lot of Japanese food at home that my parents or grandparents made.

I grew up without a lot of money and my parents grew up with far less money. And that's kept me in line. Really in line.

I did a lot of acting when I was a child. I was very shy - the kind of kid who ran into a corner and cried on parents' visiting day.

I wish my parents had been more strict and made me learn more instruments.

My parents were very relaxed about music.

People who lose their parents when young are permanently in love with them.

Yes, I am Algerian of Moroccan origin through my parents, but all my life is Algeria. I was born there.

I would ask my parents something, but then go to my siblings. We were encouraged to bounce ideas off everyone.

My parents told us how they felt but never imposed their beliefs on us, although I appreciate I got a healthy sense of democracy from them.

We used to tie-dye T-shirts and sell them to classmates. We used to make egg rolls and sell them at street fairs. I worked at the mall. My parents probably spent more money on the gas driving me to different jobs than I made.

When I go visit my mom in the retirement community where my parents live, she has a bunch of friends, and she will say, 'These neighbors I play bridge with have a son with an idea,' and it goes from there.

I've been blessed to have insanely hip parents who think of me as their little Chris Rock.

My parents were vegetarians. I'd show up at school, this giant black kid, with none of the cool clothes and a tofu sandwich and celery sticks.

Not only was I the only black kid and the only poor kid, but my parents were transcendental meditation devotees, and I live in an ashram for a good portion of my childhood.

So many people grew up in the church, and you can have an awesome upbringing, but I made a personal conviction, I made a personal decision when I was very young. I enjoy going to church without my parents. On Sunday mornings, I want to go. Bible studies on Wednesdays... I have a relationship - not just through my parents.

My wife is the most wonderful woman in the world, and my parents are the most extraordinary father and mother.

My parents are deeply pious Hindus.

My parents were really political. The news was very important in our home. We basically had dinner every night while watching the news, and then we'd discuss it with our parents.

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.

I get bitter, angry and disbelieving and I tell my kids there a lot of idiots out there. I also want them to know that being successful is not the real world - that their parents get treated better because they're on TV.

Following Michael Brown's death, I went to Ferguson and met with his parents. I stood with them as they tried to hold their heads high and deal with both their immense loss and the larger issues of police-community relations.

I was a very un-literary child, which might reassure parents with kids who don't read.

Parents don't reveal how often they have bitten their tongue, fought back the tears, or been too tired to take off their clothes after a day of childcare. The parent loves, but they do not expect the favour to be returned in any significant way.

Parents become very good at not hearing the explicit words and listening instead to what the child means but doesn't yet know how to say: 'I'm lonely, in pain, frightened' - distress which then unfairly comes out as an attack on the safest, kindest, most reliable thing in the child's world: the parent.

Children always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.

My parents certainly didn't have anything to do with the theater. I'm some kind of accident.

I never experienced any feelings of closeness and caring from my parents.

Some believe all that parents, tutors, and kindred believe. They take their principles by inheritance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they are born heirs to them.

My brothers and I were raised by our parents to respect everyone regardless of background or race.

My parents offered me the idea of ceilinglessness. There was no limit in terms of what was possible, no messages sent to me to say that I couldn't do anything.

It was a lot of fun being a child actress. It suited me. I don't think it suits everybody, but I was in it because I had a passion, not because my parents wanted me to make money. If other kids want to do it, and they really like acting, go for it.

I have often been struck by the fact that most parents who are experiencing positive and rewarding relationships with their pre-adolescent children are, nevertheless, waiting apprehensively and bracing themselves for the stormy adolescent period.

Osama bin Laden characterized his terrorist activities as 'defensive jihad,' provoked by 'debauched infidels' bent on enslaving the Muslim world. The lead industry blamed 'ignorant parents' for applying lead paint to juvenile furniture.

'Finding Nemo' has spawned so many sort of emotions over the years. I don't even know that you could really understand exactly what parents and kids are seeing in it, but they can see a lot of different stuff.

I've been doing comedy since I was two. You know, kids who make other kids laugh. The sickness had set in! I could make my friends' parents laugh, I had a sense of what was silly and funny.

As might be supposed, my parents were quite poor, but we somehow never seemed to lack anything we needed, and I never saw a trace of discontent or a failure in cheerfulness over their lot in life, as indeed over anything.

My parents used to do these little film festivals in our house where we'd watch all the Marx Brothers movies, or Chaplin movies, and a lot of westerns.

When I was a little kid, my parents would show me Marx Brothers' films and westerns and stuff like that. That's where all my desire to be an actor comes from and probably most of my understanding of acting comes from for sure.

When I told my parents, 'I'm going to be an actor,' they screamed and wept and freaked out.

I think we are defined as human beings through our families, no matter what kind of family - through our relationships with parents, brothers and sisters.

From nine years old, I lived with fear. I saw our neighbours disappearing. I was scared that I would come home from school and my parents would not be there.

I have two homes, like someone who leaves their hometown and/or parents and then establishes a life elsewhere. They might say that they're going home when they return to see old friends or parents, but then they go home as well when they go to where they live now. Sarajevo is home, Chicago is home.

Luckily, thanks to the way my parents taught me, I think I can handle the fame in the right manner.

I first picked up a guitar when I was ten years old, my parents surprised me with it for my tenth birthday. I started taking lessons when I was thirteen, but only for a few months, and then I just kept teaching myself.

My house was very strange. I didn't do things other kids did because my parents were very strict - I stayed at home, quiet in my room.

I think I was born because my parents had two boys and wanted to give it one more go and try for a girl... they got me instead.

I could never call myself an atheist, my parents could, quite happily. I always felt like there was a little bit more out there, and was always into observing the world from a slightly more spiritual, as opposed to scientific, perspective.

My parents are like religious atheists.

I look at my books the way parents look at their children. The fact that one becomes more successful than the others doesn't make me love the less successful one any less.

I'm from Boston, and I get easily overwhelmed in New York, so I go to Boston and stay with my parents for a few months at a time to write, or edit, or just to cry.

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.

My parents got me a $25 Kent steel-string acoustic guitar when I was around 12. The following Christmas, my parents bought me a Conora electric guitar. It looked almost like a Gretsch. It cost $59, and my mom still has it.

My parents tried to shield me from how famous they were when I was growing up on Long Island. I had no idea.

Kids need to open up to their parents. And parents should realize that when kids are pushing you away, that's the time to really step in.

The Internet has become a tool to pick on people and ruin someone's life. I don't think parents realize what's going on. Just because you're not at school doesn't mean kids aren't harassing you on the computer.

Acting was important, but it was not as important as getting an education, and I credit my parents with a lot of that.

My parents know how passionate I've always been about acting. I convinced them this was something that I was going to put my heart and soul into.

Always, as a child, I would go around the house, and if I found a word that I didn't know the meaning of, I would write it down and ask my parents to define it and try to memorise it.

I have never had other kids in the house... I had a huge collection of marbles, and they all had names, which I think concerned my parents. I used to go and sweep outside and talk to myself, and my mum's friends would be over and say, 'Do you realise she is talking to herself?'

While my seemingly compulsive school-hopping has raised some eyebrows among my peers and caused my parents understandable consternation, I do not regret it.

Boundaries move with time. It's like being the oldest child. Your parents don't know what to expect, but by the time the little sister comes along, it's like, 'Oh, staying out late with a boy - no big deal.'

My mom used to model when she was younger, before she went to law school, and I think she thought it was pretty cool. I think my parents saw that acting ultimately made me happy, even though it was a rough ride for a little bit.

My reasons for becoming a chef are somewhat of a cliche. I always loved to eat but it was watching my parents cook that really served as the impetus for my career choice.

A woman's body never really belongs to herself. As an infant, my body was my mother's, a detachable extension of her own, a digestive passage clamped and unclamped from her body. My parents would watch over it, watch over what went into and out of it, and as I grew up, I would be expected to carry on their watching by myself.

Both my parents are professors, and I never really saw people do any other jobs, so I didn't really know how to want a different kind of job.

It always seemed to be a constant that my parents were political.

I want parents out there to know that it's totally natural for kids to make believe and play games. It does not mean your child is going to be transgendered. And even if it were true, why is it such a horrible thing?

Once I started to grow up, I realised that my parents are normal people and they can make mistakes.

We had many books and pictures... my parents' way of life doubtless left a lasting impression on me. They created an atmosphere in which a certain kind of freedom could exist. This may well account for my seeking a related sense of liberty as I grew up.

Everyone's parents were famous actors at my school, pretty much! I think I went to school with Paris Hilton when I was three. That's what L.A. is, though - it's an industry town. You go to school with kids and you think, 'Well that's normal, they make movies.'

I'm from a big family, I have four younger siblings. My parents are still happily married together. I grew up moving around a lot, and my family was certainly not affluent.

My parents were both first-generation Irish Catholics raised in Brooklyn.

The reason why parents mistreat their children has less to do with character and temperament than with the fact that they were mistreated themselves and were not permitted to defend themselves.

Wherever I look, I see signs of the commandment to honor one's parents and nowhere of a commandment that calls for the respect of a child.

It's very hard for our parents who see us enter a world that they can't imagine.

My parents taught me service - not by saying, but by doing. That was my culture, the culture of my family.

My parents were both storytellers. They always spoke with metaphorical richness.

When I joined the freedom movement in Mississippi in my early 20s, it was to come to the aid of sharecroppers, like my parents, who had been thrown off the land they'd always known - the plantations - because they attempted to exercise their 'democratic' right to vote.

Create a garden, bring children to farms for field trips. I think it's important that parents and teachers get together to do one or two things they can accomplish well - a teaching garden, connecting with farms nearby, weave food into the curriculum.

I started off when I was seven years old doing musicals. I was in 'Les Miserables' and 'The Sound of Music,' and my mum's an actress. My parents divorced when I was young, and when she couldn't find a babysitter, I was in the wings, sleeping.

Becoming an adult means leaving the world of your parents and starting to make your way toward the future that you will share with your peers.

Childhood is a fundamental part of all human lives, parents or not, since that's how we all start out. And yet babies and young children are so mysterious and puzzling and even paradoxical.

Like most parents, I think, my children have been the source of some of my most intense joys and despairs, my deepest moral dilemmas and greatest moral achievements.

I can't remember exactly how old I was when my parents gave me my first camera, but it was a Canon, and I was certainly far too young to have such a good camera.

I think my parents had in mind that I would settle down at quite a young age, but I decided that being a housewife in a big country house wasn't for me. I wanted to leave the country, head for London and see what the world had to offer.

I get along great with my family. My parents are really proud of me and my brother, who's a chef here in New York. I don't see my parents often, but they're very supportive, especially as I get older.

When my parents met, my mother was a waitress and my father was a dockyard worker. They were part of that post-war better-yourself generation, so they both went to night school.

Can you believe approximately 17 percent of American children ages 2 to 19 years are obese? How about this fact: approximately 60 percent of overweight children ages 5 to 10 already have at least one risk factor for heart disease? We are all to blame for this - parents, schools, kids - all of us.

Rock gives children, on a silver platter, with all the public authority of the entertainment industry, everything their parents always used to tell them they had to wait for until they grew up and would understand later.

Kids can really get better quickly. Here's another thing I would like to say: Kids should never be coached by their parents, ever. They should be as natural as possible.

I told my parents I wanted to be an actress years before I wrapped my head around what my dad did for a living. It's not easy to explain the job of the television journalist, especially when a lot of my friends' dads had jobs that were a lot easier to explain, like a lawyer, a banker or a doctor.

I've wanted to act since I was little, but my parents told me I couldn't pursue it until after college. The understanding was that I was lucky enough to be able to go to college and that it's important to being successful in life.

Like so many aspiring writers who still have boxes of things they've written in their parents' houses, I filled notebooks with half-finished poems and stories and first paragraphs of novels that never got written.

I grew up in a Christian home with amazing parents.

I feel that each and every one of us as individuals has a responsibility to one another. None of us would be here without the help of someone else - whether it be guardians, teachers, parents, relatives, etc. - someone contributed to your well being as a person. We're all connected in so many different ways.

It's a sad moment, really, when parents first become a bit frightened of their children.

My parents never forced things on my brother and me: not our faith, not our sports, not our friends. Yet they taught us about surrounding ourselves with the right people: the kind of people we want to be.

I was a complete tomboy. I loved wandering out in storms or walking on the beaches in the dark. It was a very free upbringing, and I'm grateful to my parents for that.

I grew up in northwest London on a council estate. My parents are Irish immigrants who came over here when they were very young and worked in menial jobs all their lives, and I'm one of many siblings.

I had very literal parents and I wanted to survive with metaphor and art, and there was a real sense of shame around it.

Back in high school, I went on dates, but I was too focused on my career. My parents were like, 'It's nice to have a boyfriend, but it's even nicer to own your house when you're 21.'

My parents always instilled knowing that your beautiful, that your fearfully and wonderfully made, and that you know who you are.

My parents cultured me a lot and they introduced me to a lot of artists, a lot of their friends.

A lot of my fighting qualities I inherited from my parents. They set tremendous examples right through my life.

I researched children's rights, divorce law, and parental kidnapping. Millions of children and parents are touched by the inadequacy of the legal system to deal with the human heart.

Several paranoid suspicions occurred to me, the worst of which was that my whole identity was merely a patched-together set of behaviors designed to keep my parents joined to each other - the repertoire of tricks of a small but intelligent dog.

Grades can matter, especially for those students and parents who live for the next round of applications to graduate or professional schools. But there's a problem with the grade emphasis. Math or science graduates earn more than students majoring in the humanities.

On my parents' scale of values, the more Western something was, the more cultured it was considered.

Most of the time it's the parents who recognise me. They try to tell their kids, 'Look, it's Giselle,' and I say, 'No, no, no, don't ruin this for them,' because I'm usually standing there with my hair sideways and no make-up on. And the kid is saying, 'That is not Giselle. No way. That is some worn-out girl who really needs a bath.'

My parents didn't play golf.

My family kept its history to itself. On the plus side, I didn't have to hear nightmarish stories about the Holocaust, the pogroms, terrible illnesses, painful deaths. My elderly parents never even spoke about their ailments.

I kind of - I like my life, I feel I have lots of opportunities. And my parents actually having had such high expectations for me - I would say it's the greatest gift that anyone has ever given me. I complained a lot when I was little, but that's how I feel now. And that's why I tried to do the same with my two daughters.

I do think that maybe, even subconsciously, a lot of parents in the West are wondering, have we gone too far in the direction of coddling and protecting - you know, you see kids, sometimes that seem very rude and disrespectful. And the more important thing is they don't seem that happy.

I think the biggest difference is that I've noticed Western parents seem much more concerned about their children's psyches, their self-esteem, whereas tough immigrant parents assume strength rather than fragility in their children and therefore behave completely differently.

In Chinese culture, it wouldn't occur to kids to question or talk back to their parents. In American culture, kids in books, TV shows and movies constantly score points with their snappy back talk. Typically, it's the parents who need to be taught a life lesson - by their children.

The Chinese model calls for giving your kids very little choice - and I've come to see that you can go too far with that. On the other hand, I also believe that Western parents sometimes give their young kids too much choice.

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.

When I'm not the Tiger Mom, I'm a professor at Yale Law School, and if one thing is clear to me from years of teaching, it's that there are many ways to produce fabulous kids. I have amazing students, some of them have strict parents, others have lenient parents, and many come from family situations that defy easy description.

When I was little, my parents really only wanted me to be a scientist or a doctor, they had never even heard of law school. I think even these days if you were to tell your mother you want to be a fashion designer, or an artist or a writer, a lot of Asian parents would be alarmed because they don't think that's a secure career.

When I was younger, I just thought that my plans were probably going to be more exciting than my parents' plans or the establishment. I sort of got by on being a little bit of a rebel.

The building in the Bronx where I grew up was filled with mostly Holocaust survivors. My two best friends' parents both survived the camps. Everyone in my grandparents' building had tattoos. I'd go shopping with my grandparents, and the butcher, the baker, everybody in the whole neighborhood had tattoos.

We don't like what we don't know or understand. Parents don't like the thought of their kids embracing social media because they don't fully understand the benefits and dangers.

I remember when I was prosecutor we had truancy and curfew issues and we made a refrigerator magnet, and that was hot with parents. They loved putting it up on the wall and saying, you know, if you don't follow these rules, you could get prosecuted.

So many times, these kids know more about the technology than their parents. And so many times, we're putting kids in very adult situations and expecting them to behave like they're 40 years old. Well, that's just not going to happen.

When I was prosecutor we had truancy and curfew issues and we made a refrigerator magnet, and that was hot with parents. They loved putting it up on the wall and saying, you know, if you don't follow these rules, you could get prosecuted. Whether or not it actually happens, it changes a culture, and that's part of what we're trying to do here.

I grew up where my parents would literally shove me in the car rather than have to say hello to a neighbor.

My parents had very high expectations. They expected me to get straight A's from the time I was in kindergarten.

My parents told me I would become a doctor and then in my spare time I would become a concert pianist. So, both my day job and my spare time were sort of taken care of.

Until the age of five, my parents spoke to me in Chinese or a combination of Chinese and English, but they didn't force me to speak Mandarin. In retrospect, this was sad, because they believed that my chance of doing well in America hinged on my fluency in English. Later, as an adult, I wanted to learn Chinese.

My parents are aging and there are difficult issues. It's strange to have children at the beginning of life and parents nearing the end.

My parents pretty much realized that I would do whatever I wanted, and that was it, really.

I remember learning new words, trying to figure out what common things like cider, finding myself upset that my parents couldn't help me understand this new culture, that it was up to me to interpret for them as well as myself.

I'm obviously an American citizen. My parents are American citizens. But I'm not looked at as an American.

I'm quite an emotional person. I cry a lot. I do not like conflict, so if I have an argument with my parents, I'll often cry. I become too emotional.

I don't relate to that angst-y kid who hates their parents because they were horrible. It's just not my life and it's not the life of a lot of my friends.

I think it's really important for my daughter to see her parents being physically fit and for that to be a part of her life. The examples we set for her will stay with her the rest of her life.

My daughter's just going to be really hip! My goal is to be as eco-conscious as possible: There's so much out there for parents who want to do that. I plan to keep her eco-friendly as she gets older. I think we all sort of have to do it.

I was six when my parents divorced, and that was tough for me.

It was so surreal, having my parents hear the President and First Lady saying to me, 'Good to see you again! We're so proud of you. We watched you on the Grammys and were like, 'That's our girl!'

Whenever I have a play or opening or anything going on in my career, my parents always come up and see it.

With 'Selma,' I grew up in Alabama, 45 minutes away from Selma. I have gone to that commemorative march many times with my parents.

I always knew I would sing. I just didn't know if I would be successful or not. But I sang at school, I sang at parties, I sang at church. Everyone always asked me to sing. I'd be playing football with my friends, and my parents would ask me to sing for their guests. I was never very happy about that because I wanted to play football.

My parents signed me up for classical guitar lessons, which made for two years of the most depressing Wednesday evenings.

To believe that your husband, wife, parents, kids, boss, job, bank account, or body is even partly responsible for your emotions, to think that there are bullets 'out there' that you have to contend with, that there are stressful life events to overcome, is to miss something vital.

The sweetest thing we ever had was, like, animal crackers in the pantry. I think my parents sort of passively made sure that we didn't have a lot of junk food at our disposal, and I think that helped me and all my siblings growing up with how to approach nutrition and eating right.

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.

As a child, I always enjoyed - my parents used to have these little cocktail parties - and I always loved trying to get the adults to tell me things they weren't supposed to say. And in many ways, that's what my job is today, it's getting people to tell me things that they probably are otherwise not supposed to say.

The most important role models should and could be parents and teachers. But that said, once you're a teenager you've probably gotten as much of an example from your parents as you're going to.

Kids with Down syndrome are, by and large, quite affectionate and relatively guileless, and frequently, the attachments to them grow and deepen. And the meaning that parents find in it grows and deepens.

I'm still craving approval from my parents. It took a lot of success for me to realize it was never coming. It's just not in their nature.

My parents just neglected me, I wasn't abused or anything.

When a lot of things are going the wrong way for a country, for a people, when you can't really think of anything worse than a war, you always try to take life on the brighter side and that's how I grew up with my parents.

My parents, especially my mother, were no influence on me whatsoever.

I used to stay up at night and sneak into the TV room, past my parents, who were asleep, to watch Saturday Night's 'Main Event.' That's how I started watching SNL. On accident.

Both my parents are Catholic and staunch believers. I'm not a Catholic now, but I still carry part of it with me.

During my childhood in Cyprus, the British talked about the Cypriots as if the Cypriots were outsiders in their own country. And even though I was born in Cyprus, my parents were American, and so I was an outsider in the land of my birth.

My parents had no interest in spending a lot of time with me. They were busy doing what they were doing, but they were not obnoxious. They were fabulous.

As I got older, I never considered that tons of people were watching me on television every week. I give a nod to my parents for keeping me as normal as I could be in an un-normal adult world.