When I was little, I knew that I was not adopted, but I actually imagined and hoped that I was - and that my real parents were going to come get me.
I was an adopted child of my grandparents, and I don't know how I can ever express my gratitude for that, because my parents would have been a mess, you know.
My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
I still miss my parents every day; I adored them. And when you have no children, friends are even more important to you.
Losing my parents really set me adrift in more ways than one. It's not just losing them. It's losing the possibility of family.
I was an adventurer, and I got married a few times. I kept trying to find a relationship as good as my parents'.
I guess not being able to hear just made me adventurous and daring. And in most cases, that didn't make my parents very happy with me.
My parents emphasized experiential learning - in my family, being adventurous was a sign of maturity.
There are uses to adversity, and they don't reveal themselves until tested. Whether it's serious illness, financial hardship, or the simple constraint of parents who speak limited English, difficulty can tap unexpected strengths.
As a mom, I know it is my responsibility, and no one else's, to raise my kids. But we have to ask ourselves, what does it mean when so many parents are finding their best efforts undermined by an avalanche of advertisements aimed at our kids.
Gradually, football has seen its appeal slip at the most basic levels. Pediatricians are advising parents not to let young children play organized football too early in life.
I was a loner as a child and happiest at home, launching toy rockets and aeroplanes. When I started causing trouble in my third year at grammar school, Mum was really surprised. My parents sent me to a child psychologist, who suggested I might have Asperger's syndrome.
Kids with Down syndrome are, by and large, quite affectionate and relatively guileless, and frequently, the attachments to them grow and deepen. And the meaning that parents find in it grows and deepens.
Being Latin parents makes us extremely expressive with our affections.
There are pockets of liberal, affluent America where parents don't want their kids vaccinated.
There is only room in the lifeboat of your life for one, and you always choose yourself, and turn your parents into whatever it takes to keep you afloat.
In two-parent households, women have increasingly entered the workplace, and in single-parent households, there is even more of a need for the adults to work. That means parents do not fully control their own schedule and have to scramble to find high-quality after-school options.
Parents need a full continuum of care and support from birth to kindergarten that is affordable and accessible - that means full day and full year. And let's not forget that even in elementary school, working parents need access to the same kind of quality, affordable after-school programs!
I honestly felt no envy or resentment, only astonishment at how much of a world there was out there and how much of it others already knew. The agenda for self-cultivation that had been set for my classmates by their teachers and parents was something I'd have to develop for myself.
Occasionally I've seen children become heavy-handed and insensitive when dealing with their aging parents, and it only caused resentment and hard feelings.