Today, I give my daughter what I really didn't have as a kid: all the silly, dumb, extravagant, frilly, nonfunctional toys I can force on her. She probably wants an encyclopedia.
How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can't scare him--he has known a fear beyond every other.
Did you know a child is orphaned by AIDS every 15 seconds. Millions of children are going it alone. Missing their childhood. Missing their mother. Missing their father. AIDS is devastating families around the globe. Children are missing your support. Unite for children. Unite against AIDS.
Growing up in a very poor orphanage in Ukraine, there wasn't much food.
The sad thing is I don't think I've seen 'Jurassic Park.' Not that it's not an amazing movie, I literally didn't watch film or TV until I was 23 or something.
When I was a kid we were so poor, if I hadn't been a boy I wouldn't have had anything to play with.
How often is the soul of man - especially in childhood - deprived because he is not allowed to come in contact with nature.
In this great country of ours, it is inexcusable that so many children grow up in poverty and despair. The well-being of our children must be the national priority and the responsibility of every individual.
It's natural to want your kids to have all the things you didn't have.
Being poor with three small children is terrifying. You can't make any plans. You know you're not going on holiday, ever. There's no way you could ever afford driving lessons or a car. And the guilt I used to feel: they had holes in their shoes, and at one point, I had to send them to school wearing Wellingtons when the sun was shining.
There was an undercurrent of poverty throughout my childhood. We lived with my grandmother in her two-bedroom flat, and I slept with my parents. We had cheap holidays, I had to save for my bike and get a paper round as soon as I was old enough.
Like David Copperfield, I was born amidst poverty and grew up in poverty. I did not own shoes. I did not bathe in water from a tap. I did no know about forks and spoons.
I was just a regular kid in poverty, struggling.
I would always sneak in the refrigerator and eat seconds, and underneath my bed - you know, I had my own bedroom - it was littered with Twinkie wrappers and Jolly Rancher wrappers. And I would sneak-eat, because I was denied food, not because I was hungry, but because my mom and dad did the best they could in 1970 and '71 and '72.
The idea that a child doesn't have the opportunity to be a child is devastating.
Childhood, after all, is the first precious coin that poverty steals from a child.
If you sit kids down, hour after hour, doing low-grade clerical work, don't be surprised if they start to fidget. Children are not, for the most part, suffering from a psychological condition, they're suffering from childhood.
I didn't get to go to school functions growing up. I didn't get to go to dances. I was never invited to a party ever. Until I got to college and threw a party, I had never even been to one.
I grew up so poor in Austria that we never took a vacation with my family.
I try to give my kids everything I never had.
I grew up on Section 8 housing, food stamps, welfare, and dealing with social services. I never had a Christmas. I never had a birthday.
Central Park is the grandiose symbol of the front yard each child in New York hasn't got.
I don't want to go all Michael Jackson on you, but I never really had a childhood.
An entire content of children growing up without any prospect but poverty.
I never got to play as a child. All my spare time was spent working on my family's smallholding.
