Posted on 07/17/2014 6:00:58 AM PDT by EBH
Had a mentor/grind tell me once that when his daughters said “I’m bored”...He’d say...”you’re boring.” Kinda puts the ball in their court. Play dating is weird...and means parents are taking too much responsibility for their children. LET THEM FIGURE OUT HOW TO PLAY!
Grind s/b FRIEND
THe problem these days is like this:
My sons are 8 and 6. The other kids in the neighborhood are girls who are 10 and 8. There aren’t other kids for them to play with. I don’t mind them playing with girls per se, but they need boys to play with too.
We have to arrange for boys to come to the house to play or we go to them in their neighborhoods who have similar circumstances. There just isn’t a neighborhood full of children anymore.
It’s not like it was in the 1960’s and early 1970’s where practically every house in the neighborhood had kids and a stay at home mom.
Now the kids are shuffled off to daycare in the summer, and the houses that do have kids, no-one is home during the day.
It’s not the same world.
If I remember back, it's a direct consequence of kids lives being so full with scheduled stuff and parents work schedules that time had to be blocked out for play. It's creepy. Kids used to go out and play. They'd invent games, have building projects, race on their bicycles, climb and occasionally fall out of trees. They had fun! Playdates are about impressing people. Playing is about having fun and trying new things and relating to people in an honest way.
Isn't part of the world's problems today that most grownups under age 50 (or so) never learned how to play?
It sure isn’t. Have you checked the database lately to see all the pedophiles listed in your neighborhood?
I don’t think not having other similar kids around is unusual...probably more a factor of smaller families (people used to play with their siblings more?) and as you said both parents working...yes times have changed ...
How high tech! I'd just walk down the street to their house and call for them to come out.
During summer my Mom basically kicked me out of the house and didn’t expect me back until Dinner, and that’s how it was for most of the kids in the neighborhood, we usually congregated at the nearby ball field, and improvised from there.
When my kids pulled this line we'd say "Boredom equals choredom" and give them a job.
Consider if they are not in school, they are in some sort of daycare or daycamp all summer long. Structure, structure, structure...where or when do the learn to think for themselves? And what are they learning in these camps anyway?
I like to ask the question to other parents, “Who’s childhood would you rather have, your’s or your kids?” After some thought the answer is usually (not always) “mine.”
This whole article reads like an over reaction to a non-existent problem.
When I wanted to play with a kid, I’d show up at his house and hope his Mom had just finished baking something.
Good one “choredom”....
I ALWAYS had a book to read...NEVER bored in my life
Bingo gator. But I am in agreement that times have changed considerably since I our own childhood in the 50’s and 60’s.
Within two blocks of my parents home there were at least 50 kids of varying ages and we all rode the schoolbus together in the mornings. When we needed a couple players for our softball game on the diamond that we scratched-out ourselves in an adjacent field, we went door to door to ask for players.
After the game which could go on for hours, we went on a treasure hunt for pop bottles to cash in at the market. We bought some fresh hamburger so we could have an impromptu barbecue and nobody told us it was too dangerous and nobody got burned or died of food poisoning. That is the California I remember fondly. Long summers with tall dry grass that allowed cardboard races down the banks of a nearby dry creek.
The only instructions from Mom in the morning was ‘stay off Willow Pass Road’ as it was the busiest street in our little corner of the world. She didn’t say watch out for Mr. So and So, the pedophile, or remember to put on your sunsreeen, or remember to hydrate when the temperature topped 100 numerous times in summer.
When I was a kid “play” was a long stick (pole vault) and a creek or a garbage can lid (shield) and a pocket full of hickory nuts (ammo).
It has ever been thus, but in my day there were so many kids around that the pervs had fewer opportunities to catch one alone, and the older kids looked out for the younger ones. When good people abandon public spaces, those spaces are taken over by bad people.
And we’d always turn up at somebody’s house for lunch. Every mom accepted the fact that she’d occasionally have a mob to feed.
When I was growing up in Toronto, if my friends weren’t around I’d hop on my bike and ride to the city pool at High Park if it was hot, or to the local library if the weather was crappy. Both are still free.
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