My Hunch Is That If We Allow

All Life Events Are Formative. All Contribute To What We Become, Year By Year, As We Go On Growing. As My Friend The Poet Kenneth Koch Once Said, You Aren't Just The Age You Are. You Are All The Ages You Ever Have Been!

We Live In A World In Which We Need To Share Responsibility. It's Easy To Say "it's Not My Child, Not My Community, Not My World, Not My Problem." Then There Are Those Who See The Need And Respond. I Consider Those People My Heroes.

Children Who Have Learned To Be Comfortably Dependent Can Become Not Only Comfortably Independent But Also Comfortable With Having People Depend On Them. They Can Lean, Stand, And Be Leaned Upon, Because They Know What A Good Feeling It Can Be To Feel Needed.

Very Frankly, I Am Opposed To People Being Programmed By Others. My Whole Approach In Broadcasting Has Always Been 'you Are An Important Person Just The Way You Are. You Can Make Healthy Decisions.' Maybe I'm Going On Too Long, But I Just Feel That Anything That Allows A Person To Be More Active In The Control Of His Or Her Life, In A Healthy Way, Is Important.

It Is One Of The Paradoxes Of Parenting, And Often A Painful Paradox, That Even As Our Children Need Us For Love And Trust, They Also Need Us For Honest Differing. It's Not Only Over Limits And Rules...[but Also] About What We Represent In The Way Of Culture, Traditions, And Values. We Owe It To Our Children To Let Them Know What We Believe, And If They Differ With Us, We Owe It To Them To Be Honest Adversaries, For It Is Through This Honest Confrontation That Children Can Grow Into Adults Who Have A Firm Sense Of Their Place In The Sequence Of The Generations.