People over 35 should be DEAD...

Don't forget...before we went outside and found some friends, or went to our rooms and read a good book, undoubtedly we pestered our moms, saying, "Mo-o-m, there's nothing to do!" So she SENT us outside or to our rooms!

At least, that's the way it was around our house.

We just moved away from a neighborhood where there were three stay-at-home parent families clumped together (two on one side of the street, us immediately across from them), and we would get together all the time and hang out. Sozlet can't cross the street by herself yet (it was a busy-ish street), but if they had been next door, she would've been able to come and go as she wished. As it was, the kids spent a lot of time together.

We just moved to a neighborhood that's a ghost town during working hours. We have a couple of kids next door, but they're at daycare all day. I'm the only stay-at-home parent I know of. THAT's a gigantic shift, and one of the complications of the whole thing -- nobody wants women to be forced to stay home, and the way the economy has shifted, it's not economically feasible for many families for one parent to stay home.

That one cog changes many many things. Currently, I'd love for sozlet to go out the door and find some friends to play with, but unless it's after 5 or the weekend (when the families want to have their own quality time), they can't be found. So if I want her to see other kids, I have to enroll her in stuff, start driving her around, blahbedy blah. It's a vicious cycle.

It seems to me that a lot of the scheduling feeds on itself. E. g. if your child is the only one not scheduled (I see soz is making a similar point), he or she is going to be left out unless scheduled. And around and around we go. Plus, kids aren't left at home alone anywhere near as much as they used to be because of -
* bad people coming to the door and seeing no adult home, and grabbing the kid
* child services
* fears of all sorts of home emergencies, like a fire or gas leak
* parents being away at work or on business trips, etc. and unable to concentrate on things like listening to the umpteenth argument about "Mom, he's touching me again!" "Am not!" "Are too!" etc.

Our nephew is going to four (!) camps this summer - soccer, baseball, rocketry and the last one (I think he's there now) is a 3-week sleepaway camp. He has diverse interests so this fits the bill as well as possible. Plus, if he didn't go to camp, he'd have no one. And, I think a lot of these camps only run for a week or two, anyway, the schedule itself begets the schedule.

The world changes people :wink:

It just kills me to drive by big, beautiful, but unused ball fields on a nice summer day.

If there's game going on, then most likely it has been organized by adults.

Maybe in America ...

Letty, I could go for some tree-climbing myself! Or a good game of 1 2 3 Redlight!

I feel sorry for kids that are over-scheduled, especially in the summertime. But some parents can't always be there. Too bad. When I was a kid, you could buy a house with only one parent working. Now, unless you've got a really high-paying job, you can't really do that. In 1966, the cost of my family's brand new home was equal to a year of my dad's pay. You rarely see that anymore.
Around here, a starter-home price equals about 5 years the average annual pay. Costs have gone up at a much higher rate than pay, and most moms have to work if they want to raise their kids in a home of their own. You either leave your kids unattended all day or you structure each day so you know they're safe.
I'm glad, although I didn't have a choice, that I could not work while my kids were small, and I could play kickball and entertain the neighbor kids, and just yell out the door when dinner was ready!

Suzy, that was one of the reasons, but not the primary one, that I decided to go into teaching. It coincided so well with my children's schedule.

Of course, Region's thread is a tongue-in-cheek, but I do believe the current situation, at least in America, has gotten to the pop a pill for everything status. I think I just recently saw something on the news about prozac for dogs.

That was a good career choice, Letty!

I know it's tounge-in-cheek, but I felt I had to defend the other (good) side of regulations!

Prozac for dogs is just outrageous, for crying out loud. Sometimes, I think people have gotten stupider over the years. It's really just rampant consumerism, encouraged by manufacturers and happily accepted by Americans. There are sci-fi stories galore about this sort of... let's call it ... hypnotism. We're mindless shopper drones. People in this country spend, I think, billions on pet accessories. I love pets too, but it seems, well, stupid. Pardon me my rant, Letty, I'll blame PMS!

Where I spent my school years, there were brooks and woods and hills to play in, pits to ride minibikes in (or just to roll down the sand hills). We used to catch frogs then let them go (I miss frogs. haven't seen one in years and I'm almost dying to hold one)! We would occasionally clean out the brook, and my scottie dog would haul out the sticks for us!
My kids grew up in the 80's, and they had similar childhoods as I did, thankfully.
Know where I can get a frog?

Heh! Heh! I sure do, Suzy. In the pond in my back yard they sing a chorus in the evening that would rival Handel.

No toads, however. They will most certainly give you warts.

Lucky you!
My middle son just left. He fixed my computer so I'm now working at the speed of lightning! Yeeha!

was that suzy just now? something just flew by in a blur...

good post. kinda makes you sad too, dont it? (and hey, i'm from '71, imagine)

Re: People over 35 should be DEAD...


Hey - and parents, dont forget parents. If government and lawyers got all fussy, its cause parents got all hyperanxious and superambitious. Half the stuff mentioned in that list aint got nothin to do with the government or lawyers interfering - its us, people changed, parents changed.

Some of it still threw me, tho. I mean:


Kids dont do that anymore? Really?

Thats awful ...

my nephews can barely make it from the house to the car in the winter, without bitching about the cold

i can remeber many days playing till lunch, standing our frozen jeans over the heat vents, grabbing fresh pants and playing again till dark

spent hours outside in the summer too, and most of us rarely got sick and maybe one kind you knew had an allergy, now the one kid without one is the exception

You're right, you're right - a lot of people cant afford to not both work full-time. Too true.

But then again, many of those parents busily carting their kids around from music class to sports club arent exactly poor. Its also a question of standards. Houses are more expensive now, but theyre also much bigger. My mum grew up four kids and two parents in a downtown three-room, one-floor apartment. They were pretty poor. Now those apartments are typically shared by one couple, no kids (or by big Turkish families, of course ...).

When I end up cycling thru some of those new suburbs, those houses are huge. Not "old money" leafy luxury big, but endless rows of suburban two-under-a-roofs that just seem a size too big, two sizes bigger than their previous incarnation, unnatural. A lot of people now have so much more ... two cars, no exception in the suburbs (and we have good public transport). There is money for those music classes, sports clubs, sequence of summer camps. And when I hear from Anastasia how much money is spent on presents and stuff ... we used to live on that! And cm'on, who really needs professionally organised childrens birthday parties?! (Those havent arrived in Holland yet by the way - but I read about how every self-respecting middle-class London parent has to do 'em ...)

There is money because of both parents working (more than) full-time ... and they gotta, cause of having to afford all that. Its a vicious cycle, indeed, but its also a bit of a luxury problem. Perhaps people should start exchanging some of the ever increasing material possessions for some of the time they no longer seem to have ...

<end of rant>


Heh. I wanted to post it on my "what made you smile today" thread last week, but I forgot.

I was out on the terrace of cafe L.E., which is on a kind of square with a street crossing in the middle but some space on the sides and a cafe on each side. Buncha kids were there - I mean, like 23, 28 years old, coupla guys. Hip in this casually loser kinda way (or vice versa). They were playing handball, right there on the street by the edge of the terrace (it was morning, not many patrons around yet), whooping and joking with the passing cyclists, having a grand time ... and every time a car approached, one of 'em yelled out, "auto!", and they all jumped to the side to let the car pass by.

<big grin> I remember that! When we were playing outside, when I was eight or twelve, playing soccer with all the kids from the street, with the ever recurring "Auto!!" whenever a car came passing thru, all of us jumping to the curb ... <smiles>

this song by bob snider kinda sums up the whole attitude to outside play then and now

Parkette - Bob Snider

When I was a kid, I found a robin's egg and hid it
On a timber in an old abandoned shack
That was sitting in a field full of raspberry bushes
With a crab apple tree around the back
And a stream going by at the bottom of a hill
With a rock in the middle, and if you sat still
You could see the minnow swim, and from an overhanging limb
You could listen to the heat bugs trill.

And early every day all my friends and I would play
Digging holes and finding gold among the rocks
And looking for salamanders, and eating all the berries,
And rolling down the hill in a box.
Until one day they came with their machinery
And dozed down the shack and hacked up the greenery
And stuffed the stream into a concrete pipe and levelled the hill away.
Then they built a couple of mounds, just to make it look round,
And brought in loads of sod.

And they planted a row of trees, that came up to our knees
Without a speck of shade it looked so odd.
And there were no more dragonflies and no cray-fishin',
They called it a parkette after a politician,
And put up a sign saying "No Ball Playing,"
And nobody ever went there anymore.

in high school, after class, we'd toss frisbees in the street -- while students were streaming out of the building onto the narrow one way street.

(nimh, instead of "auto" we yelled "car!")

we hit a countless number of students, usually in the head, with errant throws. annoyed but never injured, no one ever threatened to sue.
it was simply an accepted part of the landscape...

heh heh!

Nimh, you have a point there, however, many people with two or more jobs and a home still can't afford to cart their kids from music lessons to sports clubs, etc. That's only a segment of the upper middle class, not really an accurate representation of the average two-parent working family. Many just enroll their kids at the YMCA or Boys Club for summer programming, much more affordable. I realize you're not American and I'm sure you don't fall for the hype that we all work hard in order to live luxuriously, because that's a point many never reach. Only the wealthy, foolish, or sometimes selfish and overachieving parents go to those lengths.
I agree wholeheartedly that some children's birthday parties are ridiculous extravaganzas nowadays. What do those children grow up to expect? I shudder to think of it. But it's the same with baby showers and bridal showers now. People do spend way too much. Keeping up with the Jones' and all that crap. But we've always worried about that family!

Sometimes I would seriously doubt that. But I do think it is expensive (for someone without 'OV') - Eindhoven-Amsterdam (return ticket): 28 euro's. I mean, I still believe that's expensive (for someone who only works on Saturdays).

What's the purpose of this thread - kid-bashing? :wink: I was born in '86, and I had (or: have, maybe) a beautiful youth: playing soccer on the streets, all kinds of (Dutch) street games ('verstoppertje', 'tikkertje', 'stand in de bal' (do you know that one nimh?)). We used to play with all kids in the street, the first one who had finished lunch (or dinner) went to the other kids to get them to play outside. Yes, I do live in a suburb, with big houses, lots of green, two cars and both parents working, but that didn't prevent me of having a pretty nice youth (without bitching about the weather; sun, rain, snow - it couldn't prevent us from playing in the streets ).