All I Want For Crepemas Is Youth

[MrsSchadenfreude]

Phew

That's partly socioeconomic, though. My father was at boarding school during WW2...

My mother, of course, was in pre-independence India. Which I find even weirder.

I was ridiculously over-protected as a child, but that I think was partly because we went to a quite distant primary school and also because my father spends his life convinced that Terrible Danger lurks in every nook and cranny (electric equipment left plugged in overnight, gas pilot lights left on overnight, anything placed on a central heating boiler, crossing the road, walking past fishermen, dogs, etc etc).

I wasn't allowed to cross the road independently till I was 10 (though read Jane Eyre at six).

I walked home from the bus aged five and went on the bus on my own at five too..... I had far more freedom than ds but do try to let the reigns go a bit unlike some other mothers I know! Ds made his first cup of tea aged about 2 and nearly gave Dp a heart attack in the process..... :)

I am preparing for the onslaught of work tomorrow and some 'difficult' conversations.

I think it's the difference between what we think we (or our children) are capable of and what we are actually capable of when the chips are down or when we're allowed to grow or take some reponsibility. I do know two very nervous young adults from different families who were both too protected. In the end, one gave up his chance of uni in the UK and I feel it would have been the making of him because he'd have blossomed away from his overbearing mother.

Oh yes, I walked to and from school on my own at 5.
DD wouldn't get the bus (direct from the end of our road to the end of hers) at 11

BD, gird your loins!

I am going for a hearing test at Specsavers, much to my family's amusement. They couldn't fit me in for an eye test!

We also had enormous freedom as kids. My DM worked at the time we were at primary, and I know my sister and I took the train 2 stops to and from school aged 7and 5. We used to put pennies on the rails and wait for the express train to flatten them while we were waiting. Have recently scandalised DM and dnieces talking about this, when DM expressed horror that her teenage gc's were being 'abandoned' of an afternoon after school. That stopped her in her tracks, so it did.

The 70s here were a whole different country. We were obviously aware of violent atrocities every single day. You become a slightly different person as a result I think. Perhaps our parenting was at tad more gung-ho. It certainly meant I was a lot more adult/streetwise and practically capable than dd was going off to uni last year.

Cremo - we spent many happy hours roaming with the local children "down the beck". A lot of this involved swinging out over the beck on a "tarzee" - bit of wood or tyre suspended from an overhanging branch. No safety measures for us!

I can't ever remember my DM taking or collecting me from school - I just went with all the other kids. I remember taking my DSis in her pushchair into town when she was a toddler (so I would be 6/7). She got out in M&S, fell over and cut her lip: they took us into the stockrooms and gave DSis a book to quieten her down. We had a canal at the end of our street, we were always up there fishing and, of course, occasionally fell in - someone just pulled us out!

DH and one of his school friends were reminiscing about going up on the moors to play - friend's DM hung a sheet out of the window when it was time to come home for dinner. They also once let a fire get out of control on the moors, but found a phone box and rang the Fire Brigade to come and put it out.

I think the thing is that obviously things did happen, but there wasn't 24 hour news coverage so people didn't fixate on things. I do think that it might depend on where you live: when we moved up here the DC suddenly had more freedom. Also you must remember that during my childhood people rarely had phones, so our parents mostly trusted the wider community, and, of course, people tended to mostly stay where they were born so everyone knew everyone else.

BD, good luck with tomorrow.

I grew up near the river and a group of us used to go there and swim most days in the summer. My cousin was the eldest and she can have been no older than 10. We were told not to go out of our depth, to mind the boats and not swim over to the island. Which we did, as someone had tied a rope to a tree, and you could swing out over the river and drop into it. We used to go home when it was getting dark, or we were hungry. Occasionally my mother and her friend used to wander down mid afternoon with some weak lemon squash in a tupperware container (which lent its own peculiar taste to the drink) and some Rich Tea biscuits, or some fruit from the garden. Apart from that, we wouldn't see an adult all day.

It was very convenient having the river close by in my teens as well. We all had bikes, so would go out for a "bike ride" with the latest boyfriend, which meant cycling along the towpath to a certain secluded spot, where we would stay snogging and more for hours.

Very of all of you. I was kept firmly in the house till I was in my teens.

Id have loved to give the freedom I had to dd, but the world has changed. Friends of ours did give an awful lot of freedom to their only daughter, as they thoroughly believed in bringing her up in the same way as they had enjoyed. I have to say she is a wonderful girl, with no hang ups , can cook a three course dinner, teach music ( plays fiddle) , is intuitive to others feelings, is an all rounder academically and drove herself to university in a clapped out car she bought after working the summer in America as a nanny.
I haven't met to many 18 year olds like that tbh.

That's impressive, Crem.

I am a bit Yesterday morning we had two power cuts: one in the early hours and the other just after 9.30. Normal service resumed after about 40 minutes, although I rang their fault line and was told that it would probably be lunchtime before power came back. I have just had a phone call from Northern Power Grid to check if everything was OK, and to apologise! Wow, just wow. Even if they are only ringing randoms I think that's pretty good customer service.

DDiL has just been to collect their washing: there were three of DS's shirts there. I offered to iron them, but she said no, thank you, but thanks for doing the washing. I wonder if she has read the thread.

My df was sent to boarding school at the start of WW1 (yes, WW1) - to be a chorister at St Paul's, at the age of 6. In WW2, as he was already based in West Africa for work, he was in the King's African Rifles and variously in North Africa and Burma. He had an assortment of extremely nasty experiences which were mainly not talked about, but he had screaming night terrors every night for the rest of his life. Looking back, it must have been a bit trying for my mother, as I also had night terrors and both I and my brother had regular episodes of sleep-walking. She probably never had an undisturbed night. When df became demented, he used to get up in the night to fight the Japanese. And wee on the floor.

As for the way I was patented, let's just say that when I read 1984 (aged about 12), I thought George Orwell must have known people like my parents. The Thought Police were continually active in our house. Other opinions were Not Acceptable.

"patented"??? Well, I probably was mixed up in a lab. It would explain a lot. "parented" - just leave that alone, autocorrect.

Gosh Stropps - this is where you would hopefully get some sort of counselling now.

Hatty, my df took a dim view of psychiatrists - or "trick cyclists", as he called them. He'd have been more likely to saw his own leg off than accept counselling. He was very much of the opinion that one should just shut up and get on with things. Hence him virtually blowing a gasket when his dd insisted on seeking psychiatric treatment. I don't think his views and attitudes were uncommon among his contemporaries.

Stropps, may I send you a FB friend request? You might recognise my dog!

Herbs, sorry if I was a bit huffy - I do envy people who've had less "eventful" lives than me. "May you live in interesting times" is indeed a curse.

My DD and her cousins are not 'entitled' or lacking in responsibility. They are better than their grandparents in almost every conceivable situation, not only in a crisis.

MI - I seem to have skated over your second paragraph about entitlement earlier on - I didn't mean the broad entitlements you describe - health care and equal rights for women etc which I think are basic rights, although it's true the older generation probably didn't take them for granted. I think they're entitled in that they feel the world owes them and they cannot even clean a toilet - well maybe I'm referencing my own DC's here. I'm honestly not sure they could step up like our grandparents' generation could.

My ds is not entitled and is not averse to taking responsibility. My dd is a sad and confused mess.

I am loving Walking the Himalayas on Channel 4 by the way - fascinating stuff.

(but even my dd could perfectly well clean a loo if she had to - I didn't bother to clean the loos in my parents' house either )

I'm a bit huffy about loos at the moment Stropps as DS leaves a mess and I yelled at the girls as well suggesting that it was a skill they might like to learn - they were not enthused!