Girls grow up scarred by caution and enter adulthood eager to shake free of their parents' worst nightmares. They still know to be wary of strangers. What they don't know is whether they have more to fear from their friends.
My parents didn't know anything about collegiate scholarships, so they had accepted the national team training stipend, the monthly stipend that I received after making the national team, so I was ineligible for NCAA eligibility anyway.
But the best thing Washington can do for education is realize that our role is limited. Washington must keep its promises, but let those who know our childrens' names- parents, teachers and school board members- make education decisions.
I thought it was unfair to ask school kids to integrate first. The parents should lead the way, not send out the children as advance troops.
If I didn't already sense that I was different, I certainly was reminded, whether by my parents or by the other school kids. Not just reminded. Told... I was made to believe it wasn't right. If I went a little bit too off - slap! It was Dad's upbringing and it was Victorian, and that's the way he was.
I did school plays, and then, at the age of 18, I applied to drama school in London, and I got in. I've been very lucky that no one so far has stopped me from being able to live my dream - the industry or my parents.
I was born in St. Lucia on January 23, 1915. My parents, who were both school teachers, had immigrated there from Antigua about a dozen years before.
Both my parents were actors. I was schooled to think that acting was an important social service, that it was something that human beings need.
Every schoolteacher will tell you that there is no substitute for engaged parents in the education of a child.
My 'act' was schoolwork. I was your basic, garden-variety, ambitious, upwardly mobile, hard-working Jewish boy from Brooklyn. I was bound to go beyond my parents. It was simply the way things were.
My earliest memory is my parents forgetting my fourth birthday. My dad looked up from reading the paper and went, 'Oh my God!' So we went out, and I chose a red scooter.
If parents are the fixed stars in the child's universe, the vaguely understood, distant but constant celestial spheres, siblings are the dazzling, sometimes scorching comets whizzing nearby.
My parents screened 'Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory' for my 6th birthday, and I became fascinated by the idea of living in a candy land with chocolate rivers and lollipop trees.
The only group in America that deserves to scrutinize what we are doing... are parents.
I had very strict parents. My two brothers were power and freedom. I was powerlessness and seclusion.
My parents didn't do office hours, and they did not do vacations, so if you had a problem, you could always come around. I watched them and thought, 'OK, this is what you are supposed to do.' I was very engaged in my local primary school and when I went to secondary school and to university. And one thing led to another, and here I am.
Secondary school parents tell me that they are frustrated, that their teachers ignore them, their children don't give them much feedback because they are adolescents, they feel kind of out of the loop.
Secretary Clinton is tough, smart, and understands better than any candidate the challenges that parents are talking about around dinner tables and keeping families up at night.
Knowing what I know now, if I could have chosen parents, I would have chosen exactly the ones God selected for me.
I think happiness comes from self-acceptance. We all try different things, and we find some comfortable sense of who we are. We look at our parents and learn and grow and move on. We change.
