Hayden Panettiere

Youth is such a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.

Growing up on the plantation there in Mississippi, I would work Monday through Saturday noon. I’d go to town on Saturday afternoons, sit on the street corner, and I’d sing and play.

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.

Kids instinctively know – although they will argue to the contrary – that they really are not mature enough to make good decisions on some important issues.

I was shy when I was a kid, I was very shy, but now I think I’ve improved a lot. I can speak OK with the media and with the people. My English is still bad but I feel a little bit better now than before.

I think every kid needs to get a taste of what it’s like to do that real hard work.

The problem is when that fun stuff becomes the habit. And I think that’s what’s happened in our culture. Fast food has become the everyday meal.

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

I was planning to go into law or politics. I was well known for my public speaking. I went to an all-girl boarding school with uniforms. It was very posh for someone like me who came from a world where my parents showed beagles and sold dog products out of a yellow caravan.

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.

We can aim to create a culture, where kids ask for healthy options instead of resisting them.

I was a regular hand when I was 7. I picked cotton. I drove tractors. Children grew up not thinking that this is what they must do. We thought this was the thing to do to help your family.

And let’s be clear: It’s not enough just to limit ads for foods that aren’t healthy. It’s also going to be critical to increase marketing for foods that are healthy.

Children had rather be making of Tools and Instruments of Play; Shaping, Drawing, Framing, and Building, &c. than getting some Rules of Propriety of Speech by Heart: And those also would follow with more Judgment, and less Trouble and Time.

We weren’t wealthy but we definitely weren’t poor. We were incredibly rich because there was a wonderful community in Shepherd’s Bush, where I grew up. All my friends were into villainy and crime.