Aibu to think that actually, children haven't changed at all?

[Pyjamaramadrama]

I was having a conversation with some women the other day about games we used to play at school. Skipping etc. and they all started saying how kids today aren't interested in proper games, only mobile phones, iPads and computer games.

I was also having a conversation the other day with a childcare worker regarding an incident where a child had deliberately hurt another child. She was saying how 'kids today', aren't the same and how they aren't like 5 and 6 year olds anymore.

I find these opinions really sad as I actually don't think that children have changed at all.

From my experience of my 6 year old, he's always been just as happy to play traditional games as I ever was. Yes ok, there are more gadgets, more tv channels, but ultimately I don't provide him with lots of gadgets, and he's quite happy to draw, plays shops, read a book, play in the park, he makes things, digs for treasure, and I'm sure that he's no exception.

It seems that some people are almost putting children down as mini unsociable teenagers whereas I believe most children would still opt for a picnic in the park or an afternoon making cakes than a day with the iPad.

Don't get me wrong, ds likes TV, he knows his way around a computer and a tablet and he has his own nintendo ds, but he can take it or leave it and would rather be doing something imaginative or active if I engage him with it.

YANBU. Ds1 is now at an age that I can clearly remember being and nothing has changed as far as I can see.

He and his friends play complicated games in the park after school involving sticks and mud and secret passwords. It could just as easily be 1934 or 1984 as 2014. The main difference is that there's an adult somewhere about whereas in the past they'd have been left to their own devices aged 8.

I don't know whether children don't play out as much these days.

I remember an ex police officer who's worked for the force his whole career saying that things aren't any more dangerous these days, but we hear about it much more now due to the media, so people get frightened.

I know that I was playing out at ds age, I don't allow him to but we live on a main road as opposed to the cul de sac where I grew up. And there aren't many other children around here.

Yes, we're the same - it's 90% flats round here so most people don't have secure outdoor space that small children can play in unattended.

We're lucky in that there's a big park right next to the school so everyone goes there after picking up time and the children get an hour or so running riot with their friends. I think it'll still be a couple of years before I'd let ds1 go on his own though as there are too many busy roads to cross to get home.

My almost 7 year old plays the same as I did (I'm 40), she makes up very complicated and intricate scenarios based on her favourite TV shows (hers is Wolfblood, mine was Dr Who), she reads, goes out on her bike, plays in the street with her friends, does her homework, watches TV. My 9 year old is the same with perhaps more art type hobbies.

They love a go on the iPad/hudl etc, but they do that in the same time frame that I used to watch Crossroads and other various TV shows with my Mum.

Children have changed in a way. They are now much more able to deal with technology than I ever was. My toddler can happily magic ate around our kindle (and she's barely allowed it!)

But no, I think you're right, generally kids still prefer outside play with imaginative games socialising with each other. I think it's their general nature isn't it.

I suppose all kids childhoods seem different in many ways to their parents. The Walkman I had in the 80's was poles apart from anything my parents had in the 50's.

But I agree that children are generally the same in 2014 as they were in 1944. If they're allowed to be that is.

I had a chat with some of the children at school about this once. They all said they would like to spend more time doing fun things with their families - and these were teenagers! Many of them felt that their parents worked long hours and didn't spend enough time with them. I think most children enjoy interacting with friends and family, playing games etc.

I agree with you.

The younger ones are all doing the same things I did as a kid, just with a tablet/ds as well, sometimes, but certainly not in preference.

For the younger ones, I think the main difference is that most kids don't have as much opportunity to 'play out' as they used to. Partly I think due to the 'fear factor' but just as much the increased amount of traffic and having two working parents (so being in afterschool care more than we were).

For the older kids/teens 'social media'. Not all kids/teens are 'addicted to it' or 'allowed unlimited access' but it's 'the thing' for most of them and I think it is making their lives very, very difficult. For the most part we could go home and leave school and any problems there, now for many/most older kids/teens that pressure and bullying can be 24/7. It's difficult.

pointlessfan I was listening to the radio the other day and the bloke they had on was talking about a survey that had been done early on this year, across the county with a huge number of teens from all kinds of backgrounds, and he said that the top response to 'if you could change oe thing in your life' was to spend more time as a family.

Then the top answer, by a long shot, to the 'thing' they valued the most (totally open, they could have put anything at all) was 'Time spent with my Mum and/or Dad'.

Then friends.
Then technology way down the list.

Children are more sexualised and far ruder than in my day. I wouldn't have dared back chat and I would have been horrified had I witnessed behaviour that I see daily when I was at school

I agree with you, OP. The school my older children (now aged 21, 19 and 17) were happiest at, in their lives, was the one without technology. DD3 is at a school without a single computer or bit of IT. All 3 older children are fully conversant with IT now -in fact DS is doing an Msc in Nanoengineering, DD1 is a student medic, DD2 is the most luddite with technology but is a classicist so moderately to be expected, and DD3 can find Meg and Mog on Youtube without trouble, so hardly being held back by it. No regrets about "depriving" them of all that throughout their primary years.

Can you elaborate dilligaf?

Ds certainly isn't 'sexualised', and I don't believe that any of his classmates are.

I do see lots of bad behaviour being tolerated by parents but that was the case when I was growing up in the 80's, and my parents who are in their 60's could tell done stories about the things they got up to.

On the other hand I see lots of kind, lovely behaviour from children and teenagers.

I think what hasn't changed is how each generation thinks the next generation is feckless and useless. The cycle will continue.

I don't think children have changed, but the society they're growing up in has. They don't have the same freedom to play outside, they're exposed to more technology, and there's a lot more self entitled and 'living in a bubble' people around, and some of these are parents and it is affecting the way they parent their children.
But yes, most children I know still like playing chasing and making up imaginery games and going to the park to collect conkers and forming secret societies with passwords and badges and all of the stuff we did as children. They just have a lot of other distractions that we didn't have.

Children may not have changed at all but childhood certainly has. Very few younger children are allowed out to play and when children do go out they have to stick much, much closer to home than was usual for my generation. Lots more traffic now too - if ds1 wanted to ride his bike up and down the road like I used to he'd likely be run over.

However much your kids like nothing better than to play out with their friend/sticks/mud/childhood idyll of your choice the fact is most kids spend much, much longer in doors than they used to attached to a screen.

You're probably right barbarian, but it annoys me when people say 'oh kids are this, only interested in this or that', when in actual fact it's the choices provided for them by adults.

We live in Germany and in a small village but closely connected to a good sized town (pop. 50,000) and 20 minutes by car from a major city.

Kids here ride their bikes everywhere and are almost always completely unsupervised. Kids in PRE-SCHOOL i.e. 4 and 5 year olds take themselves to and from pre-school alone in all weathers (they just need an annual letter from their parents saying they are allowed). I am from London and also lived in the US for more than a decade before moving here and it took some getting used to, but I love how the kids are still having freedoms that we can't/won't give them in the UK and US. it is very safe but there is also less hysteria here generally about children and childhood. So it depends on the society you live in what kind of childhood you experience despite all the new technology.

The thing is though, people in general have changed. Adults have changed, eating habits are different, our entertainment habits are different, our reliance on technology is incredibly different to, say, 50 years ago. So how can people be surprised if kids are different too?!

I don't have kids myself (yet...) but my 4-year-old cousin (who I'm really close to) just seems the same as kids were when I was little! Same silly questions, same love of making stuff up (as in pretend play), and she certainly loves being outside. Only real difference is that she knows how to take selfies (hah) and wants a tablet from Santa. Which, given the modern world, is hardly surprising...

DD is ages 6 and loves to play on her trampoline and swings and ride her bike in the street. We live in a cul de sac so not much traffic.

She has a fantastic imagination and will play for hours with her toys and her friends.

She also loves the ipad, but I don't let her play on my mini one very often and I never let her on the computer as it is my work tool and I cant afford for her to break it again. She is getting on well at school, we do Mathletics on the ipad.

She likes music but never watches music videos and is not into boy bands.

Some children are sexualised and it is the parents fault. A local girl is going out wearing thick black eyeliner, sweeping out into her face and bright lipstick. She is 10yo. She is attracting attention from grown men which is making her mum uncomfortable!. If I were her mum I wouldn't allow it, but her mum thinks its ok.

I encourage my 6yo DD to be a 6yo child, not to be anything other than that

Dilligaf
I think you might have had a more sheltered schooling than I did. I am in my 40's I witnessed things been thrown at teachers not just back chat - the cane didn't seem to deter some people. The first pregnancy was in what would now be Yr 9 so around 13-14 yo.

I played Connect 4 with my two last night. They were surprised I beat them until I pointed out that I used to play it at their age too.

I think a lot of it is down to parents and how they handle that difficult balance between allowing your kids to engage with modern life and changing attitudes while also holding on to all the good things about past childhoods. If children are allowed spend hours and hours every day watching Nickelodeon and DVDs and playing on computers, and are not encouraged to read anything beyond commercialised comics and badly written, blingy type books then they're not going to get much opportunity to use their imaginations the way we had to because all of that stuff wasn't available to us.
It's probably a harder job nowadays to ensure your children have a well balanced childhood, and some parents manage it better than others.

I kind of agree yes - its the environment around them and the availability of devices and entertainment that has changed, not the children.

Mine are happy as larry if you take them to the woods and let them build dens. Even my 7 year old who would play minecraft all day if you let him, gets really excited about that.
You can't shield them from technology though, and I don't want to because it has its place. However I will steer them towards more imaginative play if I can.

Of course they haven't changed. One generation of technology can't outdo millions of years of evolution.

I think it's weird that there's a general attitude that children are more "neglected" now because their parents work. When my mother was little, babies were left to cry for hours, cuts/bruises were totally ignored, children were told to stop crying and stop being a baby if they cried and a total blind eye was turned to abuse by many. Domestic violence wasn't talked about, and was positively expected in some circles, and it was very difficult for people to leave abusive marriages. Smacking was considered normal, and of course many took it too far. If you were a girl, you might have great freedom at a young age but by the teen years you quickly learned just how limited your prospects were. By no means was it a sepia-coloured paradise of family harmony.

You want me to link the newspaper stories about Snapchat and 12/13 year olds sending intimate pictures to each other? There have been articles and features for weeks now about 'revenge porn', and Snapchat hackers collating images, often produced by children themselves

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/children-young-11-victims-revenge-4348660

www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/snapchat-sexting-and-the-predators-of-kik-the-apps-your-children-need-to-stay-away-from/story-fni0cx4q-1226945745347?nk=2992a7a898cf8ed66d41e7b068925d6f

I would not have had an inkling about sex at that age. Children are more sexualised because sex is everywhere, from Mylie Cyrus, to accessing internet porn, to rap song lyrics, - that is a reflection on society - not the child.

As I got older I am well aware there were one or two that were sexually active at 12/13 - but they were generally known to the authorities anyway. It wasn't normal to have the open conversations about sex and sexual behaviour, nor see it under your nose on the street or on the television.