kids

I had no idea that marriage was only supposed to be between two people who wanted to get between the sheets and make more people. What ever happened to marrying for love_ or to get on your partner__ health insurance policy, or for presents? No one was going to buy two people in their thirties a four-slice toaster if we just continued to live in sin.

Kids are real artists. They__ rather paint the outside of the box than being stuck inside.

When we apply the lessons we've struggled for our whole lives to learn to the lives of people we love, our love becomes judgment__hich is toxic. Our fear our daughters will fail leads us to fail them.

Being a kid has always been about being watched.

The best thing you can do for your kids is to show them God working in you on a daily basis.

Kids shouting and skidding in the playground with no idea what future Hells awaited them: boring jobs and ruinous mortgages and bad marriages and hair loss and hip replacements and lonely cups of coffee in an empty house and a colostomy bag at the hospital.

So, in "Melting Pot" the children (about a third of whom were kids of color) sang the line, "America was the new world and Europe was the old," in one stroke eradicating the narratives of indigenous persons for whom America was hardly new, and any nonwhite kids whose old worlds had been in Africa or Asia, not Europe.

And in "Elbow Room" the cast sings the glories of westward expansion in the United States, which involved the murder of native peoples and the violent conquest of half of Mexico. Among the lines in the song is one that intones, "There were plenty of fights / To win land right / But the West was meant to be / It was our Manifest Destiny?" Let it suffice to say that happily belting out a tune in which one merrily praises genocide is always easier for those whose ancestors weren't on the receiving end of the deal.

Sam Temple was taken by helicopter to a hospital in Los Angeles, where there were specialists there in burn injuries. He wasn__ consulted: he was found on his knees, obviously in shock, extensively burned. EMTs took over.Astrid Ellison was taken to a hospital in Santa Barbara, as was Diana Ladris.Other kids were shared out among half a dozen hospitals. Some specialized in plastic surgery, others in the effects of starvation.Over the next week all were seen by psychiatrists once their immediate physical injuries were addressed. Lots of psychiatrists. And when they weren__ being seen by psychiatrists, they were being seen by FBI agents, and California Highway Patrol investigators, and lawyers from the district attorney__ office.The consensus seemed to be that a number of the Perdido survivors, as they were now known, would be prosecuted for crimes ranging from simple assault to murder.First on that list was Sam Temple.

You shouldn't call then anything. They're poor unfortunate people who cannot help the way they look,

You mean you live down here?' Matilda asked.'I do', Miss Honey replied, but she said no more.Matilda had never once stopped to think about where Miss Honey might be living. She had always regarded her purely as a teacher, a person who turned up out of nowhere and taught at school and then went away again.

They look back and relixe that they learned much about Christian behavior an churchy experiences, but whatever they learned about Jesus didn't really change them. They never saw him so strikingly that he became their one, overriding hope and their greatest love. They were never convinced that Jesus is better - a zillion times better - than anything and everything else. Our goal must be for kids to catch this rock-their-world vision of Jesus.

I'm more interested in arousing enthusiasm in kids than in teaching the facts. The facts may change, but that enthusiasm for exploring the world will remain with them the rest of their lives.

The only person worth risking everything for is the one person that would never let you risk everything for.

Hi there," squeaked a precocious little voice, "you are speaking to Chloe Fusakawa, and I have just learned how to answer the phone.

If we throw blankets over our children's dreams, we darken their world and extinguish their desire to live.

For a kid in crisis, there is no "make it happen," only "survive today." Who am I to have the cojones to think my "critical questions" are the most important thing in this kid's life? I think of the times I was in crisis and failed to pay attention to the manila folders on my desk as an adult.

Other girls play with soft toys,_ I said, __nd you play with knives_