The truths are universal: Every kid knows fear. Every kid knows family and friendship. Loss, love, laughter. Everything else is just detail.
Any child who has lost a parent probably knows every single photograph in existence of that parent.
The abduction of a child is a tragedy. No one can fully understand or appreciate what a parent goes through at such a time, unless they have faced a similar tragedy. Every parent responds differently. Each parent copes with this nightmare in the best way he or she knows how.
Raising children is a spur-of-the-moment, seat-of-the-pants sort of deal, as any parent knows, particularly after an adult child says that his most searing memory consists of an offhand comment in the car on the way to second grade that the parent cannot even dimly recall.
Growing up in Southern California, it's all car culture. When I was a kid, I knew every single model of every single car dealer; I knew every style of every year.
I want to create this magical moment when a kid is sitting on a parent's lap and they're reading a story together where both the kid and the parent learn.
A parent knows better than any book or "expert" what their kid really needs.
It's difficult to parent one kid, let alone five! It's insane. It's this strange, overwhelming mess that I would not trade for anything. I think it's more difficult in New York City. It's not like we can hop in the minivan and go somewhere. I don't own a car. It's chaos anywhere. Being a parent is difficult. Being a son and a daughter is difficult. It's a human relationship.
No matter what I do, how much money I make, where I live, or what kind of car I drive, the stuff I skateboard on is the same stuff that every other kid in L.A., every kid in the country, everybody in the world is skateboarding on.
If a parent knows that their kid is suddenly becoming infatuated with ISIS, they face a very difficult choice, which is, you know, do I - what do I do?
I don't think America knows what a gay parent looks like. I am the gay parent. America has watched me parent my children on TV for six years. They know what kind of parent I am.
As every parent knows, not every moment is going to be super exciting.
When I was a kid, we called every teacher, every parent - anyone over the age of 20, it seemed - 'Mr. or Mrs. so-and-so.'
A parent does not do everything for their kid. A parent that does everything for their kid produces a kid with no self-confidence. If our parents fixed everything for us and did not allow us to do anything on our own, or intervened every single time, we would all grow up to be completely dependent. The reason we grow up to be healthy adults is because our parents played this game of giving us responsibility, disciplining us when necessary, letting us try, letting us fail.
The traditional paradigm of parenting has been very hierarchical, the parent knows best and very top down. Conscious parenting topples [this paradigm] on its head and creates this mutuality, this circularity where both parent and child serve each other and where in fact, perhaps, the child could be even more of a guru for the parent .... teaching the parent how the parent needs to grow, teaching the parent how to enter the present moment like only children know how to do.
And if you're a parent who thinks you're okay because your kid doesn't have a phone or iPod yet, and/or you've used all the parent controls to filter out explicit material, you're not okay. The filters are tissue paper and your kid without a phone is on a school bus or in a locker room or at a public park with phone-equipped kids every day. And they're like all kids in exploring - by whatever means available to them - exactly what their parents are treating as too embarrassing or taboo to talk about.