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I think kids should have a mentor and a role model, but that they shouldn't take one person's opinion to be what we call final assessment or judgment about how life is supposed to be.

As kids, our experiences shape our opinions of ourselves and the world around us, and that's who we become as adults.

I think children learn from example. I don't believe in raising them in an authoritative atmosphere.

As youngsters, my mother taught her children that while we might not be the smartest people around, we could be courteous, polite and considerate of others.

Children, I always think, are just putting on a performance of being naive and not understanding anything. I have worked with children in films, and they're treated as adults and they just drop the pretense of being children.

I raised my kids kind of old-fashioned - if you don't have something nice to say, then don't say it at all. I teach love, acceptance, and tolerance... I sometimes think that this generation is lacking in decency.

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

'What can your kids teach you?' Well, I believe something different about kids. We don't own them, they have their own knowledge. From the start you have to make the choice to listen.

Some of these kids just don't plain know how good they are: how smart and how much they have to say. You can tell them. You can shine that light on them, one human interaction at a time.

Children are far more interesting to work with than grownups. They're incredibly honest. They'll tell you exactly what they think.