Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.
Some problems span almost all ages.
There's only one thing harder than living in a home with an adolescent - and that's being an adolescent. The moodiness, the volatility, the wholesale lack of impulse control, all would be close to clinical conditions if they occurred at another point in life. In adolescence, they're just part of the behavioral portfolio.
Like most kids, you don't want to do what your folks want you to do. You've got your own thing.
I'm concerned about my daughter because she will not believe in Santa Claus. No matter what I say to her, she just doesn't buy it, and she's 2. I refuse to give it up. I say, 'There is a Santa Claus,' and she says, 'Okay, Mommy. In pretend world, right?' She really doesn't believe.
My mornings start with mom coming into my bedroom and waking me up, or trying to wake me up, and then I go back to sleep. Then my mom wakes me up again and yells at me. Then she'll get me to wake up, and I'll get dressed and go to school. We go to school, and my teacher tells me that I didn't do the homework well enough. And that's that.
If - and it can be in a movie or in a department store - I hear someone arguing with their child, I break down and cry. Because it reflects how I was treated when I was little.
Mother: It's broccoli, dear. --- Child: I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it.
I was the straight-A student but sort of a little bit of debating my parents all the time, trying to find when they weren't logically correct.
I don't know what 15-year-old doesn't have a desire to separate themselves from their parents and prove their independence.
What children learn from punishment is that might makes right. When they are old and strong enough, they will try to get their ownback; thus many children punish their parents by acting in ways distressing to them.
I like sharing my family with my fans, but my son hates it. Like, I am literally blocked on all his social media.
When I was 12 years old, I was just horrible. My parents were ashamed to watch my matches. I would play on a court at the local club and they would watch from the balcony. They would scream, 'Be quiet' to me and I would scream back, 'Go and have a drink. Leave me alone.' Then we would drive home in a very quiet car. No one speaking to each other.
Toddlers can make you feel as if you have violated some archaic law in their personal Koran and you should die, infidel.
As a reader, I'm often put off by authors and story-lines without families or children and all of the angst and joy they bring with them.
I remember most clearly when a teenage Christopher spat in my face. He said, "I hate you". It's pretty hard to overlook that. I couldn't.
Fights with my father were really quite brutal. I would not live his vision. I would not become who he wanted me to be. Everything I did was criticized. I would spend three months drawing something and show him, and he would look up from his paper and just look back down. I got no approval from him for anything I did that was creative.
A lot of my YA novels are about family problems.
Anyone who grows up with parents who are very influential, there are cases where people run away from that if they have parents who are really lame.
It is an injustice that an old, broken, half-dead father should enjoy alone, in a corner of his hearth, possessions that would suffice for the advancement and maintenance of many children.
The reason kids like rock 'n roll is their parents don't.
My father was so against me becoming an actor.
It seemed like my father and I were always fighting. I know a lot of kids go through that with their families, but it was hard for me.
As I've gotten older, I've gotten more liberal, and my father is increasingly conservative. It's so shocking to me because I always thought we had the same politics. The day I realized we voted for different presidents, I practically fell out of my chair.
For me, 'The Goldbergs' was about surviving a crazy family - and believe me, the show is a sanitized version!
My daughter couldn't care less about me being famous. She finds it revolting and, like a lot of teenagers, is virtually allergic to me. That started at 12 and hasn't gone anywhere yet.