Michael Jackson Wants Kids' Day

By Stephen M. Silverman

Thursday January 31, 2002 12:00 PM EST

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Mother's Day apparently isn't enough to satisfy Michael Jackson. The Gloved One, 43, has told Vibe magazine that children should be celebrated in an annual holiday of their own, too. Such a special day "would mean a lot. It really would. World peace. I hope that our next generation will get to see a peaceful world, not the way things are going now." Jackson has two children after a short-lived marriage to Debbie Rowe, who was a nurse for one of his doctors. Son Prince Michael Jackson Jr. was born in Beverly Hills in 1997, 14 months before the arrival of daughter Paris Michael Katherine Jackson. Their father told Vibe that he chills out by holding water-balloon fights involving slings and cannons in a fort on his Neverland Valley ranch in California. "Because I am this big kid, and now I get to see the world through the eyes of the really young ones. I learn more from them than they learn from me," he said. The Children's Day idea was an outgrowth of Jackson's involvement with the charity Heal the Kids. Rabbi Schmuley Boteach, a cofounder of the group, told Reuters that he made "significant efforts" to pitch the idea to U.S. lawmakers such as Sen. Joe Lieberman, but it never caught on. The charity is now on hiatus, he said.