I received this e-mail today and it got me thinking. Have we failed our children? Should we go back to how we were brought up? It certainly didn't harm us, and we seem to be better balanced, and healthier, than so many of the children today.
This is the e-mail. Apologies for the length of it.
If you lived as a child in the 40's, 50's or 60's, it's hard to believe that we have lived as long as we have...
At Easter time, we had our dyed Easter eggs in a nest on the counter and they sat out at room temperature for the week after Easter. We would peel one whenever we felt like it. I Can't Believe We Made It"!
We licked the beaters and didn't have anyone telling us we were going to become deathly ill from eating batter with raw eggs in it!
As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat.
Our baby cribs were covered with bright coloured lead-based paint. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, cabinets, and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets.
We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then rode down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times we learned to solve the problem.
We would leave home in the morning and could play all day as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day; no cell phones.
We played dodge ball and sometimes the ball would really hurt. We got cut, broke bones and broke teeth, but there were no law suits from these accidents. They were accidents. No one was to blame, but us. Remember accidents?
We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it.
We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank sugar soda but we were never overweight ... we were always outside playing games, we shared soda with four friends, from one bottle and no one died from this.
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X-Boxes, video games, 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, surround sound, personal cell phones, Personal Computers, Internet chat rooms ... we had friends. We went outside and found them.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's home and knocked on the door, or rung the bell and just walked in and talked to them. Imagine such a thing. Without asking a parent! By our-selves! Out there in the cold, cruel world! Without a guardian. How did we do it?
We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes. Nor did the worms live inside us forever.
Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment.
Some students weren't as smart as others so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade .... horrors. Tests were not adjusted for any reason.
Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected. No one to hide behind. The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law. Imagine that!
This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors. The past 50 years has been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all. We had the luck to grow up as kids, before lawyers and government regulated our lives for our own good. ******************************************************************* 03-26-05, 09:32 AM frankvan We need another great depression followed by a new World War. It's beginning to look like we might get them both. Wink
03-26-05, 01:08 PM clarebear The world has changed. It sounds great on paper but the reality is that we have learned so much from our mistakes and we as a society now know better. I could do a search on several paragraphs and post the statistics of child deaths from them. That isn't even necessary. We know. Many children die each year as a result of not wearing their seatbelt. Lead kills- that is a fact. Children have overdosed on medicines and many have suffered brain injuries from not wearing their helmets. Children can't just leave and come home when the streetlights come on. Too many children are being molested and are ending up dead. I do remember plenty of overweight kids when I was younger. I think parents are afraid of letting their children outside alone and this has probably attributed to some of the overweight issues kids have. Kids do need more exercise but letting a child run unattended in the neighborhood could just be deadly. We have learned from many of our mistakes. We need to correct the ones we are still making but that takes time. It is a sick world now. It is sad but true. It was nice to read the email you posted. It sure was a simpler time but we need to protect our kids. The world sure is a different place. I don't think we have failed our children. I think we are protecting them.
03-26-05, 10:28 PM jusork Well, we still aren't that whiney and relying upon as the rant e-mail seems to suggest, even if we are slightly closer to them than you guys were. Rants are always somewhat exaggerated though. It's a fact. Wink
03-27-05, 07:24 PM Kelleygirl My parents lived through the Great Depression and World War 11; tough times so they had to be even tougher and they were. And they wanted their children to have it better than they did so my generation did have it easier and didn't have to deal with such lean times. And soooooo, we, in return, wanted things even better for our children. And now, I'm afraid that we have created the "me" generation who --for the most part --- not all --- have been pampered and spoiled and live only in present tense. Not saving their money for a possession --- they want it NOW and they seem to have very little consideration for each other -- compassion and values are things of the past. We may have failed our children by being too good to them! I hear what Frank's saying --- maybe a new shot of reality is what is needed -- back to the basics --- and with the middle class slipping out of sight unfortunately this reality may not be too far away.
03-27-05, 11:59 PM honilov Yeah, we are failing our kids with too many playstations, nintendo 64, X-Boxes, video games, 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, personal cell phones, personal Computers that are not monitored, and internet chat rooms. Parents need to quit letting technology raise their kids.
03-28-05, 05:43 AM Jenny Roberts I grew up in the 1960's and everything on the email applied to me. It never did us any harm. I was a happy child with lots of friends and always had something to do. I had a good, high class education in a normal mainstream primary school. Nowadays, kids are cossetted and wrapped in cotton wool. They are always picking up illnesses and viruses. A few germs never hurt anyone. Kids need to play more outdoors like we did. The world of technology, although it has brought the world a lot further forward, has a lot to answer for in terms of lost childhoods.
04-06-05, 08:12 PM MrSensitive Certainly, we could wrap our kids in bubble-wrap, keep them indoors, placated by the Wiggles and Scooby-Doo, but what kind of life IS that? Kids have always been victims of rape, kidnapping and accidents. Kids have burned themselves playing with fire. Kids have smashed their heads into windshields. Some survived in health while others became brain-damaged. But are we over-cautious? Or are we over-litigous? Have we set ourselves up for "panic-mode" everytime something offsets our comfort level? And worse- are we transferring these feelings and actions onto our offspring, sanitizing their world to the point where everything is dirty, unsafe and illegal?
Life is risk. Death is slumber. Today's children are anesthetized without the use of drugs. It's no wonder they seek stimulation through any means not spelled out to them as dirty, unsafe and illegal.
Yes, we have failed our children. We are not the first generation to do so. The "me" generation failed theirs, just as the "Us" generation failed theirs. And the hippie culture failed their kids.
These days, we have such a sense of inadequacy that society has relegated child-rearing to the government.
They too shall fail our children.
And as we fail, so may we learn. The pendulum swings wildly and erratically. Mankind became civilized without a handbook. History will repeat itself and again, kids will ride without bike helmets, climb trees and share a soda pop.
Everything old will be new again.
All we have to do is kill all the lawyers.....
Mr(child's play)Sensitive
05-29-05, 10:38 AM Xanadu Thank you all for your comments.
Clarebear I agree with a couple of your points; that children die each year as a result of not wearing their seatbelt and that lead kills or leaves permanent damage if ingested. I wasn't suggesting we follow the e-mail word for word, but with the exception of the above mentioned, I do think that we are failing today's children. We are protecting them from life itself and teaching them that it is always someone else to blame (and sue!). Mr Sensitive put it better than I can.
I don't blame the children, it is the parents at fault. Some just want to [over] protect their children because that is a natural thing to want to do for someone you love. That I can understand. What I don't agree with are the parents who don't want responsibilty themselves and are teaching their children to think the same way. I think this recent story says it all. The mother of three sisters who gave birth aged 12, 14 and 16 has blamed schools for not teaching sex education properly!!! Excuse me??? Confused
05-29-05, 08:01 PM FredPuli People like the mother blaming the education system for the pregnancy of her three young girls have always existed throughout history. Denying, or not thinking, that something is your fault is human nature. All that changes is the scapegoat.Say to such an inadequate 'Whose fault is it ? ' the stupid woman will try to think of an answer. She could have blamed the girls, or the fathers of the babies, or the parents of the fathers or 'Society' or the atomic bomb, witches in a coven, the weather...anything. (All the girls could have had an abortion; this is C21 England, not 1970s Irish Republic) Of course, years ago the press wasn't on her doorstep demanding an answer, so she was not driven to think of one.The case would not have made a headline. We do not expect her to say 'It is all my fault; I'm a terrible mother !' in any case, do we?
It is a fiction, a belief in some rosy past, that children were safer years ago. There were just as many sexual perverts abducting and kiling children then as now. Such as there were were far more likely to avoid capture; no DNA testing, no computer records, no instant collation of evidence on computer, no CCTV cameras in public places and so on. The typical child was more likely to die young, in any case,from disease. The only reason that children can't play safely in the High Street outside here now is that then they'd have only risked a collision with a horse and cart !
That we have a 'compensation culture' is itself a myth in the UK. The number of claims for personal injury here is going down, not up.What has changed is the perception.That is a product of out times, of the media and of greedy insurers trying to rack up premiums for no good reason. We have case law going back well into the C19 concerning poor infant plaintiffs suing railway companies, factory owners, landowners and most everyone else; which are like our current ones in every essential respect. Some cases would pass muster as headline makers now; what would you make of a woman suing because she saw a snail in a soda bottle and which was poured into her drink (She never drank the drink; she sued for shock) ?That was a leading case and it was in 1932.(It went all the way to our highest court on a legal point; when it got back to trial eventually the judge found that there wasn't a snail in the bottle in the first place ! )
The world is a much safer place.However it seems to be human nature to find something to worry about. When there was a real war, or real tuberculosis in our towns, or real destitution and real risks of injury at work or even on the railways everyday, when life expectation was much shorter for many, then we had something to worry about. Yet then those were not causes of mass worry because they were accepted as part of life, which went on. Now we have the luxury of finding matters of no or rare risk to concern us.
05-29-05, 09:34 PM newnickname One difference I do notice is the amount of toys the average kid has these days.
It's not over-protectiveness that's making children lazy and unimaginative - it's consumerism. It's the constant pressure to buy stuff, too, that leads to kids playing with their gadgets inside, when they should be outside, running around and yelling at each other pointlessly. But if they did abandon their Nintendos en masse, it would be a severe blow to the economy.
There is some factual basis to the broad idea in the e-mail: Parents and Play in the UK
06-15-05, 06:39 PM mike74 I find it interesting that my parents raised me and my brothers, and lil sister old fassionly! I was born in 74 and was 20 in 94 So I guess I grew up 80's 90's. But the funny thing is when my parents got around other parents they would always ask my parents what is their trick? My Mom or Dad would ask What do you mean? They would ask "How do you get your kids to be so well mannored?"
These parents are the ones like my neighbor...(For further refference about my neighbors go to the home and Garden section BAD Neighbors kids) Anyways their kids are kinda unrully... like my buddies growing up! Their parents gave them what they wanted on a whim and put their friendship with their children above putting parenting above their friendship! And yes in the case with my neighbor the parents sided with the kids rather then the cops! Anyways The Mom of the 3 girls should not have had any kids!!!!! You may not like this but its truth..... IF your not going to raise the kids you have.... you dont need to be having any!!!! YOu should have all your sexual organs removed before sexual intercourse!!! The government is not suppost to raise kids they are not the ones that had intercourse! And yes I agree totaly with the aboved mentioned that parents do not teach Responsibility or even take it any more! Thats a big problem in child rearing!!!! YOu've gotta be responsible as well as willing to teach it.... Because pure and simple it is your responsibility to teach your children how to function in life and being responsible for theirself and there actions!!!!!!!
06-15-05, 07:10 PM frankvan
quote: YOu should have all your sexual organs removed before sexual intercourse!!!
Wouldn't that prove difficult?? Roll Eyes
06-15-05, 08:31 PM mike74 Precisely my point! Big Grin
06-16-05, 12:01 AM DvdGStwrt Technically you don't have to have all the organs removed to render a person sterile. For men the surgery is a vasectomy where the tubes between the testes and the penis are cut. For women Tubal ligation is a surgery that blocks the fallopian tubes this is also called “tube tying”.
Renders them sterile but they can still have fun trying Wink
06-16-05, 12:17 PM mike74 Yeh those two options leave to much of a chance for them to have kids Eek!!
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