I hadn’t learned to read by third grade, which wasn’t unusual for some kids. I knew something was wrong because I couldn’t see or understand the words the way the other kids did. I wasn’t the least bit bothered – until I was sent back to the second-grade classroom for reading help after school.
Music. It has always showed me that I could do what the other kids couldn’t do. So I will keep playing and singing and entertaining, as long as the good Lord lets me. That is my life.
I grew up on the tennis court with lots of other kids. There were like 40 kids all afternoon and I was one of the youngest ones, so I always had to chase everybody to keep up.
I feel like I had as normal a childhood as anyone, but it had a certain focus. Maybe other kids focused on sports.
I used to go to surf camp in the summers, and I remember going to the beach and thinking my style was so different from all of the other kids.
A military childhood in the 1950s was very much informed by WWII. My brothers and I often heard stories from our dad – and from other kids – about things that had happened to their dads. We constantly played war games and, nearly every Saturday, saw a different WWII movie at the post theater.
I was made fun of by a lot of other kids in such a way that I didn’t feel like I was human.
Being gay, you’re kind of forced to ask, I suppose, very existential questions from a very, very early age. Your identity becomes so important to you because you’re trying to understand it, and, I think, from the age of, like, 9, you’re being forced to ask questions… that other kids maybe don’t have to ask.
My son, he is the reason I got involved. It’s been a joy to be around him and teach him the stuff that I know, and to the other kids as well. When he started playing I wanted to be involved in his hockey career. It’s a lot of fun for both of us.
Here’s the thing: If you don’t want your kids to read a book, fine. You can tell them not to read a book, and maybe they will and maybe they won’t. But you can’t say what other kids can read.
I don’t want to be followed by random men I don’t know. It can also be hard to deal with other kids who are jealous or mean. I can’t post a picture on Instagram without being criticized.
Other kids would sneak out of the house to go to parties and do untoward things. I was sneaking out to do standup downtown. It paid off.
When the other kids started calling me nicknames, I knew everything was all right. I have a pretty big mouth, so they hit on that and began calling me Gatemouth or Satchelmouth, and that Satchelmouth has stuck to me all my life, except that now it’s been made into ‘Satchmo’ – ‘Satchmo’ Armstrong.
Kids don’t talk like adults, but kids on the spectrum don’t necessarily fall into the same patterns of speaking or have the same interests as other kids their age.
The idea of kids helping other kids is such a great way to introduce children to being involved in charitable causes and volunteer work, setting them on the path to doing good for others throughout their lives.
Because I never attended elementary schools of any kind, I missed most of the books that were popular with other kids my age. There was an exception, however, which was ‘Harry Potter.’ My grandmother gave me the first book when I was about 13, and I read it, then read all the rest.
I appreciate the power of a White House bully pulpit – but kids listen and learn primarily from other kids. If your son’s friend tells him that the apple is better than the fries, he’s more likely to listen.
For a few years, we lived with our grandmother in Kingston, and I remember watching the other kids with their mums and just feeling really jealous. I didn’t fully understand what my mum was doing for us. I just knew that she was gone. My grandma was amazing, but everybody wants their mum at that age.
People would call me Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan or whatever popular martial artist there was at that time. I also remember the other kids at the lunch table freaking out when I brought in Korean food.
I want other kids to see the joy in reading and literacy and how, if you read about things, they become so much closer, and if you’re willing to put in the effort and time and passion, you can really understand them.
What I remember as a child is that other kids didn’t care about suffering. I always did.
When I came to Los Angeles, it was the first time that I ever felt like I belong somewhere. Not because it was wacky, but because people here understood what I felt like to perform, and there were other kids my age who wanted to do it. I didn’t get looked at as God, you freak.
I promised my daughter I’d name my first restaurant after her, but now the other kids are like, ‘Dad, what about us?’ I’m gonna have to open four restaurants!
When I was a kid, both my mom and my dad worked night shifts, so we would spend a lot of time at my grandfather’s house. He taught at UCLA and was just really into history. Before bed, when other kids heard fairy tales, he would tell us about the American founding fathers and the beginning of democracy.
I weighed 84 pounds when I was 14. I was an easy target for the other kids.
I kind of picked up the game at an early age. The way that other kids would learn what a fork or a spoon is.
As a child, I lived with being punier than other boys in class. The only consolation was my parents’ empathy – they encouraged constant trips to the local drugstore for chocolate milk shakes to fatten me up. The shakes made me happy, but still, all through grammar school, other kids shoved me around.
We lived on isolated farms and ranches, far from anybody, and when I was young I knew very few other kids, so I lived to a great extent in my imagination.
Even the other kids who people made fun of made fun of me. That’s where I stood on the school food chain.
I didn’t get bullied any more than anybody else. I think I got bullied more for being poor than being gay. But no more than any other kid. And I’m sure that I did my fair share of picking on other kids, too. We’re all humans.
Growing up I was always stronger than all the other kids. I wasn’t allowed to play with the other girls because they were too weak. And I had to be careful with boys because I’d always be hitting them and I’d get into trouble for hurting them.
Making movies was more a reaction to not being chosen for sports. Other kids were out there playing at whatever; I was off making something blow up and filming it, or making a mould of my sister’s head using alginating plaster.
Millions of Mexicans leave their kids in order to take care of other kids. That’s a very painful thing.
While other kids were out playing and doing healthy things, I read an ancient judo book with a neck hold that was fatal to so many people, they finally dropped it from judo.
It’s important for kids to know they can be themselves, and that it’s OK to have dreams and goals they love and that may not be cool or popular to other kids.
As I grow older, it’s getting more and more important to me. I’m becoming conscious and learning to celebrate where I’m from and my roots. I think I rejected it to an extent when I was young, because it was different, and you want to fit in and look like other kids.
What I remember most about working on ‘Sesame Street’ is having fun in the green room with the other kids while waiting for my time to go on camera to work with the puppets.
When I was three, I didn’t play with other kids very much; I was kind of isolated. I got used to be being bullied and having to think my way out of situations in the same way that other kids would fight their way out. Then I discovered a piano, and it became my playmate.
Honestly, I had no idea I was different from other kids until I started kindergarten. To my family, I was just Lizzie.
The idea there were kids out there who didn’t love to read and write just as much as I did struck me. So I went around schools and tried to make other kids love to read and write.
Before playing football, I didn’t fit in anywhere. My parents didn’t have a lot of money, which they spent on our education to send us to Catholic private school in Oakland, mostly black. The other kids had more money than I did. I started school early; I was young. So I’d come back to my hood and read.
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 have so much drive and passion for this industry and the creative arts, and I want other kids to have that kind of drive, and to have a fire in their belly for whatever industry that they want to get into.
I didn’t know what gay was. There was no such thing when I was growing up. I knew I had crushes on boys, but I didn’t think there was anything wrong with that until I started to hear about it from the other kids in school.
My message to kids who bully other kids is: You know it’s wrong! What’s really going on? Try not to make somebody else’s life miserable because you are.
We hung out on the streets, played stickball, and did all of the things that other kids did.
I spent a lot of time star-gazing, writing, and learning languages when the other kids were doing cooler things in Detroit.
This may sound strange, but at a very early age, at around 3, I was aware that I was smarter than the other kids.
I was lousy in school. Real screwed-up. A moron. I was antisocial and didn’t bother with the other kids. A really bad student. I didn’t have any brains. I didn’t know what I was doing there. That’s why I became an actor.
