To think we’ve normalised overstimulation and under-discipline?

Sounds an idyllic life but unfortunately I have to work and my kids have to go to after school clubs (and they enjoy them).

well thats good news!!

Interestingly I was very bored as a child too (all my memories are about just… looking for something to do) but I didn’t manage to find a creative solution to keep myself busy. I was just bored and very resentful of it

I used to read trashy novels set in American high schools and be so jealous of the cheerleading team, swim team, school newspaper club etc they described- we had nothing at my school, maybe after school netball for a few terms and if you were lucky in the 80s you might get to go to dance school on Saturday mornings. That was it.

I'm mid 60's. I think the overriding sense of how I felt as a child was bored. Bored at school if I'd finished my sums and Janice on the next table was still cranking her way through them. Bored visiting grandparents and having to behave nicely and listen to the radiogram (the only good thing was the Sound of Music LP). Going for a very boring walk into the hills. Bored at home - but woe betide me if I complained about it because there would be some task assigned, tidying the garage or weeding in the garden, or helping with the washing (in an old fashioned twin tub).

TV was boring because there were 2 channels (and ITV wasn't encouraged because it had adverts!). The TV was on for a specific programme, then it was switched off again.

But I think that being bored also helped my creativity. My siblings and I invented games to play, we spent hours with a pin pricking out holes to make stamps for our pretend postoffice. And the same making workbooks for our pretend school - always more time in the preparation than in playing the actual event. We made up plays to perform. We made 'perfume' from the roses in the garden.

My Mum worked in a hospital, so she was working and mothering and being a wife and a community activist - I have no doubt she felt exhausted and burnt out. But some elements were more straight forward. Kids out to play on the street and not needing supervision; fewer choices for everything and lower expectations; simpler food - everyone ate the same thing at the same time, and the menu plan for each week would be roughly similar (roast on Sunday, cold meat and salad on a Monday, some kind of shepherd's pie or casserole on a Tuesday [all from left overs of the Sunday roast], maccaroni cheese, or chaluflower cheese (or pasta and tomato sauce) on Wednesday, sausages on Thursday, fish on Friday... In those days maccaroni cheese was a complete dish not a side.

There were no 'guidelines' about eating 5 a day, or 30 different plant based foods every week. So if all we ate throughout the winter was turnip, cabbage, carrot and apple, then Mum didn't panic that she had stunted our growth or given us a less than optimal diet.

Yes, I think this is very true.
There’s also a certain sort of self discipline demanded of both children and adults due to the fact that a certain type of misplaced joke or comment can destroy you- there’s no forgiveness in a world of internet shaming. (Thinking of the recent case of the Marlborough teacher who killed himself after being sacked for inappropriate comments without even being told exactly what he had said. Obviously this sucks for teachers, but also what sort of environment does it create for kids to grow up in when they see this happening?)

Too much of everything, everywhere, all the time… hard to escape it

When you pass, presumably

This is so true

I'm burnt out because I have two disabled DC who massively struggle with school and I'm trying to hold down a job at the same time.
Yes I do have too much screen time, but also if we didn't live in this digital age I would have had to give up my job 2 years ago so you know swings and roundabouts

NAH
It's mother's load ,init

I think there is actually more discipline for kids now than 50+ years ago because children and tweens now spend all their time around adults rather than having long periods of being basically unsupervised.
A free-range post-war child could be doing almost anything for several hours a day and then only had to act 'disciplined' indoors, whereas today's kids need to have their manners on all the time as they will probably get picked up on it if they start to slip - from tiredness, overstimulation, siblings or whatever.

Parents have long been exhausted, especially working parents. It passes.

before phones people would turn on the radio in the car home from work and the tv when they got in.

but before cable and satellite there was only a limited number of channels, and before remote controls you actually had to get up and go over to the tv to change channels. You couldn't sit on the sofa endlessly flipping through channels, never giving your full attention to anything. And tv programmes were designed for people with longer attention spans.

I think it's definitely true for children/current parenting trends.

And I think probably true for a lot of adults too.

I think there is a point around doom scrolling, but it’s not a simple point- we are over stimulated and there is nowhere for the excess cortisol and adrenaline to go. It’s not as simple as lack of discipline.

people have always been stimulated- before phones people would turn on the radio in the car home from work and the tv when they got in. But that was seen as a relaxation, not a stimulation. And as a poster said above, it wasn’t multiple media’s competing for attention

I agree to an extent.

I think that such easy access to how to do certain things is diving the 'i must do all these things ' mentality.

In the 80s career women were at least celebrated for not cooking and putting in a microwave dinner (probably because advertiser's were trying to sell them to us).

Now we should all whip up home cooked meals and send in GBBO standard cakes for the kids bake stall.

People 'make memories ' endlessly rather than just doing stuff. Must have seasonal experiences and home decor to match.

And social media gives people FOMO in a way they probably didn't experience it before.

In my experience, genuinely busy and tired people don't have the time or inclination to talk about how busy and tired they actually are.

I don't think they judge people by hobbies any more. More about showing interest in the subject and grades, plus maybe volunteering/paid work in the sixth form

People will complain about burn out & over stimulation but will still have 6 hours a day screen time.

Even the username is failing to acknowledge that.

@Wordsmithery @HonoriaBulstrode I'm with you. We stopped the treadmill. Everyone does one thing now and that's it. I do worry that they're going to have very empty personal statements compared to people who have been juggling multiple hobbies since infancy, but I'm hoping on balance that having had time to relax, be bored and find their own creative outputs will do them good.

Yanbu but imo the full picture is more nuanced than people just lacking discipline or being too loose.

Most people live inside constant notifications, infinite content, blurred work/home boundaries, social pressure to be reachable, productive and self-optimising. Technology has massively increased output potential and expectations have sky rocketed. There's a huge mismatch between environment and biology. It's not what we were built for.

Plus I don't think it comes naturally to everyone to scrutinise their lives. We get swept up in the 'norm' and are so busy trying to stay afloat there isn't the capacity to review the day to day and think 'hang on is all this really necessary, or even good for us?'. The idea of putting in effort to make routines and stuff sounds like more work, which is understandably off putting for many. Discipline in that moment might feel more like a punishment or chore than something which could be helpful in the long run.

Then in the midst of all of that the addictive smartphones offer decompressive escapism in the form of doomscrolling and venting. Maybe you picked up the phone to pay a bill but then 35 minutes later you're answering some random thread on Mumsnet...for example. Ahem.

I think we are overstimulated. At the same time when it comes to burnout and the workplace, I don’t think that’s why. I think that technology has let work bleed over into personal time, and on top of that we’re expected to work as if we don’t have personal obligations, as if we’re all white collar men in the 1950s who have wives at home to do all that.

And I worry about kids schedules, with wraparound care, endless extra curricular activities, loads of screen time. When do they get the chance to just BE, and learn to entertain themselves in a calm environment?

But I'm getting old, and old-fashioned,

I'm getting old too and I agree. Children don't need to be constantly entertained or have their time filled with scheduled activities. Give them the means to entertain themselves and leave them to it.

I wonder if one of the reasons for the lack of resilience in young people is that they spend so little time inside their own minds, really exploring and discovering who they are, rather than who social media tells them they should be.