Posted on 06/18/2015 4:59:59 AM PDT by Enlightened1
With all of the ridiculous new regulations, coddling, and societal mores that seem to be the norm these days, it’s a miracle those of us over 30 survived our childhoods.
Teach your children to be independent this summer.
We didn’t get trophies just for showing up. We were forced, yes, forced – to do actual work and no one called protective services. And we gained something from all of this.
Our independence.
Do you really think that children who are terrified by someone pointing his finger and saying “bang” are going to lead the revolution against tyranny? No, they will cower in their tiny apartments, hoping that if they behave well enough, they’ll continue to be fed.
Do you think our ancestors who fought in the revolutionary war were afraid to climb a tree or get dirty?
Those of us who grew up this way (and who raise our children to be fearless) are the resistance against a coddled, helmeted, non-offending society that aims for a dependent populace. In a country that was built on rugged self-reliance, we are now the minority.
Nurture the rebellion this summer. Boot them outside. Get your kids away from their TVs, laptops, and video games. Get sweaty and dirty. Do things that makes the wind blow through your hair. Go off in search of the best climbing tree you can find. Shoot guns. Learn to use a bow and arrow. Play outside all day long and catch fireflies after dark. Do things that the coddled world considers too dangerous and watch your children blossom.
Teach your kids what freedom feels like.
(Excerpt) Read more at activistpost.com ...
1) Riding in the back of an open pick-up truck with a bunch of other kids
2) Leaving the house after breakfast and not returning until the streetlights came on, at which point, you raced home, ASAP so you didn’t get in trouble
3) Eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the school cafeteria
4) Riding your bike without a helmet
5) Riding your bike with a buddy on the handlebars, and neither of you wearing helmets
6) Drinking water from the hose in the yard
7) Swimming in creeks, rivers, ponds, and lakes (or what they now call *cough* "wild swimming")
8) Climbing trees (One park cut the lower branches from a tree on the playground in case some stalwart child dared to climb them)
9) Having snowball fights (and accidentally hitting someone you shouldn’t)
10) Sledding without enough protective equipment to play a game in the NFL
11) Carrying a pocket knife to school (or having a fishing tackle box with sharp things on school property)
12) Camping
13) Throwing rocks at snakes in the river
14) Playing politically incorrect games like Cowboys and Indians
15) Playing Cops and Robbers with *gasp* toy guns
16) Pretending to shoot each other with sticks we imagined were guns
17) Shooting an actual gun or a bow (with *gasp* sharp arrows) at a can on a log, accompanied by our parents who gave us pointers to improve our aim. Heck, there was even a marksmanship club at my high school
18) Saying the words “gun” or “bang” or “pow pow” (there's actually a freakin’ CODE about “playing with invisible guns”)
19) Working for your pocket money well before your teen years
20) Taking that money to the store and buying as much penny candy as you could afford, then eating it in one sitting
21) Eating pop rocks candy and drinking soda, just to prove we were exempt from that urban legend that said our stomachs would explode
22) Getting so dirty that your mom washed you off with the hose in the yard before letting you come into the house to have a shower
23) Writing lines for being a jerk at school, either on the board or on paper
24) Playing “dangerous” games like dodgeball, kickball, tag, whiffle ball, and red rover (The Health Department of New York issued a warning about the “significant risk of injury” from these games) Walking to school alone
25) Come on, be honest. Tell us what crazy stuff you did as a child.
One year we had the urge to try it. So...we soaped our own windows. The screens, too.
The next morning mom asked, "who did that?" We raised our hands.
Do you know how hard it is to get Ivory soap out of screens? Lesson learned. ;-)
My dad teaching me to hunt and shoot before 8.
LOL :)
“war”... Built forts in the woods and shot BB guns at each other... No safety glasses... You will NOT shoot your eye out if you’re a good aim! lol
Right that’s was normal back then.
Today they would SWAT team you and CPS would take your child away.
I think we all did that.
Thank goodness we did not lose an eye.
bump
I did everyone except sledding. The guy has a good memory.
-PJ
Our moms let us eat candy cigarettes!
I did everything on that list, except sledding. Not much snow in Houston. (And I did a lot more than listed).
I remember a roll of scotch tape and a....cat!
Firing off unsupervised fireworks in the city limits
No bike helmets.
I’m guilty. Of every one of them. And more. I’ll add 3 more items to the list.
26 ) Experimenting with cutting golf balls in half on the kid notion that the inside was either poisonous or highly explosive.
27) Playing with chemistry sets
28) Flying model rockets to see just how high we could get a single-stage vehicle. Whooooooshhh!
Re #22. Shower? We never saw a shower let alone a hose until I was fourteen in 1954. We only had a tub. But fortunately we had indoor plumbing with a toilet.
I think we all did that.
Thank goodness we did not lose an eye.
I didn’t. But the kid next to me did when we did that. And, the kid with the other BB gun was over a hundred feet away.
I took a Colt 1903 .380 automatic to middle school to make a leather holster for it. Kept it in my locker until class and then the teacher kept it for me in her desk till I was done. My high school friends and I always had our Marlin 60’s or Ruger 10/22’s in our trucks and would stop at the road by the school and shoot pop cans from cafeteria. This was in the 80’s.
...and lighting a box of caps on fire to see if it would explode!
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