Childhood 'poisoned' by modern life

[Enid]

junk food and no exercise is 'poisoning' childhood

Surely all these depressed/obese kids are an urban myth?

My take on it is that there have always been fat kids and stupid people, whats new?

Are the people that signed this letter living in a bubble of nostalgia?

We had a rainy day book too. My dad's old Eagle Annuals are full of rainy day ideas, too, so it's not a new thing.

However I love the implication that if it's not actually raining you will have no trouble entertaining yourself

MB, out of interest, what are you supposed to call the children if not boys and girls?

Organised by months enid?

there was one page that showed you how to make a tank out of a cotton reel, a match stick and an elastic band.

Sigh

Innocent days

and how to make dolls funature out of used matchboxes? There is a pyromaniac edge to this book now I think of it!

that was it that was it

I made that tank

god dd1 would love that book

Goodness only knows, Kathy, at that point I stopped listening the the woman!

I sometimes call them 'Ladies and gentlemen' because that is what I expect them to become!

Enid, yet again we are sisters at heart!

havent read all the thread

but think us as a society are to blame and because of societys faults we have inadvertently allowed this to happen

for example
we prefer our children to sit in front of a computer
because

1. they will learn more schoolwork and become brainier and educated
2. because we are worried for their safety and dont want to be worried about the nonces and other assorted arsewipes around the world

so our kids have become lazier

yes you may exercise with them and go for bike rides etc
but that is not the exercise we used to do as kids

what i can remember of myself I was never inside except when i felt hunger.

hopefully when parents and us as a society can stop pushing children to be academically brilliant
(they either are or they are not)

and start severly punishing nonces and other assorted paedos

and also realising that our children
are still only children

before you jump down my neck think about it

Dollshouse chest of drawers, with split pins as knobs, was deeply satisfying.
Never got the tank (or similar paddle boat from a different book) to work, though.

Yes, yes, those little brass pin thingies!

the cover of the book was , IIRC, pink

We had a book (not the Rainy Day one) that showed you how to make a canal boat out of a date box. How I begged my Mum to buy a box of dates (in those days the shops only had them at Christmas). Every year I begged her... and she wouldn't buy any. Never did get to make my canal boat.

I did make a Sindy 4-poster bed out of two cereal boxes and 4 lengths of wooden dowel (that you had to get your Dad to cut for you - God forbid Mum should come out of the kitchen and start doing manly and dangerous things like cutting dowel!)

yes pink in paperback, BUT i think blue grey in hardback (library version)

with a kind of oval ring of leaves on front

My best friend has a mother who used to keep egg boxes. My friend lived in the rosy world that contained such treasures as Copydex glue and sticky backed plastic. I didn't.

My mother was like yours Martha, which is why I have over compensated and have a making things box that would make Val Singleton weep tears of envy.

Yes Enid, spot on. A wreath of leaves. It was a puffin pareback i think

I was in the Puffin club as well!

lol

did you lurrve horses?

I just can't get very worked up about this. Feel like my kids have a nice mix of modern and old fashioned. We love screens but turn them off every once in a while and eat sweets and fruit and crisps and fish and play with plastic crap and make things and jump about and pet the cat and read books and play football and scoot and bike and visit park and oh you get the picture. I let them play in the yard on their own when it's car free. I let them walk round the corner on their own once we'd crossed the last road this morning. They seem to be having quite a nice childhood to me. YeBut some of them weren't and maybe a . s- there are lots of kids who aren't as lucky but I'm not sure it's modern life per se that is to blame for that. There were lots of kids having a shit, shit time when I was a kid too and even more so when my parents were kids. In fact they were two of the ones having a pretty rough time and my mother and father inlaw fared as badly if not worse. I really reject the idea that there was ever a golden age. Things were different and I'm sure some of the differences were good, yes. But some of them weren't.

I just can't get very worked up about this. Feel like my kids have a nice mix of modern and old fashioned. We love screens but turn them off every once in a while and eat sweets and fruit and crisps and fish and play with plastic crap and make things and jump about and pet the cat and read books and play football and scoot and bike and visit park and oh you get the picture. I let them play in the yard on their own when it's car free. I let them walk round the corner on their own once we'd crossed the last road this morning. They seem to be having quite a nice childhood to me. Yes- there are lots of kids who aren't as lucky but I'm not sure it's modern life per se that is to blame for that. There were lots of kids having a shit, shit time when I was a kid too and even more so when my parents were kids. In fact they were two of the ones having a pretty rough time and my mother and father inlaw fared as badly if not worse. I really reject the idea that there was ever a golden age. Things were different and I'm sure some of the differences were good, yes. But some of them weren't.

after singing oranges & lemons in the car on the way back from notquitecockney's (well within sound of bow bells ) at the weekend we decided to search out all of the bells

(I mean as a Future Project )

Enid, I was too working class to lurve horses , always seeing them as large creatures with too many teeth for safety.

Do you remember the 'How to make a Bagatelle Game'? You had to have wood and tacks and all sorts. I lusted after doing this, but never did.

"We used to go out all day on our bikes, take picnics, explore disused railway lines...and only come back at tea time. Ds1 has never been out of the house on his own - and he'll be 10 in March. I feel I am doing him no favours but at the same time I can't bring myself to allow him the same kind of freedom that I had as a child."

Such a good question Marthamoo. I'm the same - when I was primary school age we would go out and play in field and stream (10 minute walk and other side of a main road from our house) and a storm drain(!) for hours. Now I know that traffic is more dangerous than it was - more of it and faster - but the risks of harm by a stranger are no greater than they were then and yet I would still find it hard to let an 8yo go and play with a gang of kids, entirely unsupervised. Even in a traffic free area. And if anything went wrong, I would be blamed by the media and other parents as a neglectful parent.

We are lucky because we have a big enclosed garden with trees to fall out of, mud to dig and areas that are hidden from the house, so at least the girls (5 and nearly 4) can have some unsupervised time.

I agree with scummymummy

our life sounds like yours

only in the country

the only time that my kids get freedom is when we go camping. It is part of the reason that we all love it so much.

I don't think that an acceptance that things were once much worse for children means we shouldn't try to eradicate that things that we now know are damaging to children lives.

I think this is yet another example of the great and the good getting uppitty about what the great unwashed do with their kids.

When I was child I knew plenty of children (well some) who lived on processed food - I remember a friend of mine who had a tiny little Lyons cake in a box for her b'day and weren't allowed to play out or make a mess in the house. OK there weren't play stations and wall-to-wall TV for children and junk food wasn't so prevelant but it was there. Not in our house - you had to make your own entertainment (and god didn't I resent it sometimes ) and junk food was too expensive ( I longed for shop bought biscuits sometimes) - we spent ages outside and cut up endless egg boxes.

Mine play outside in the street (don't beleive that perverts lurk around every corner) and now they are older in the park as well. They play make-beleive games, war games and create dens and their own little communities. We go for long walks and investigate streams and catch tadpoles and all those wholesome old-fashioned things .They eat proper cooked food most of the time. They like Narnia and the Hobbit and I've just rediscovered all my old childhood books and am reading them to my 2 eldest But they also play on playstation and watch TV quite a bit. They eat MacDonalds and crisps sometimes. IME most children are hybrids like this - a bit of the old and the new.

I think the worst thing for children is stressed out anxious parents who can never let their kids just get on with it.