Posted on 08/05/2013 4:40:05 AM PDT by Kaslin
You can drive through residential neighborhoods and never see a single child out playing. We should worry about what this means for the future.
There are still kids in those neighborhoods to be sure; you can see them at the schools getting dropped off by their moms. Few kids seem to walk to school anymore. My old elementary school got rid of the bike racks and turned the enclosure into a garden.
Maybe its the phenomena of helicopter parenting. Its not the cool helicoptering of Wagner and Ride of the Valkyries but the lame kind of Barney and songs about feelings.
These kids do nothing without their parents hovering over them in fact, you hear of college kids referring to their parents as their best friends. Gag me.
I went back to my hometown on the San Francisco Peninsula over the Fourth of July. When I grew up there in the Seventies, before Silicon Valley, it was solidly middle class. We werent poor, but we werent rich. It was a big deal when my parents got a second car; everyone had a station wagon, invariably American made.
Kids were everywhere. We played games on the street baseball, tag, army. We left in the morning and came home for dinner. There was a big woods behind our house and wed disappear into it all day, returning with cuts, scrapes and the occasional gopher snake.
But today, nothing. The neighborhood has changed the Fords and Dodges are now BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes, and minivans replaced the wagons. I know there are kids there, but you never see them. Where are they? Lurking inside the million dollar houses? Doing what?
I went walking in those woods again. There was no sign anyone else does. A wonderland is just outside these kids backdoors and they never visit.
My own kids come to me and talk about playdates, as if childhood is supposed to be a set of pre-planned enrichment experiences instead of improvised entertainment. Cant they just go over to their friends house and see if Kayden or Ashleigh or whoever can come out and play?
No, Im told, its too dangerous in our affluent neighborhood. And if you look at the Meghans Law site for any neighborhood youll believe it. All these little flags pop up, each some form of registered sex offender. So, instead of driving these degenerates away, we conform and constrict our lives to accommodate their presence.
I asked a cop friend I served with in the Army if this was just paranoia. He said he wouldnt let his kids play on the front yard unless he was out there with his Remington 870. That answered that.
So kids cluster in their houses, playing video games, watching the tube, waiting for mom to walk them to the park or go on some pre-planned activity. And they do homework little kids come home weighed down with more homework than I ever had as a high schooler.
The school seems good it honored our warriors and I havent detected much lefty propaganda. However, the school did send home a supply list that I am not kidding included Multicultural Crayons. I guess you need that in case your art project requires just the right shade of White Hispanic.
All the parents think their kids are special, and if they cant be special through achievement, I notice many are special because of some alleged issue or problem. It seems to me that a lot of the problems boys get labeled with relate to them acting like rowdy, rambunctious boys. Drugging out an exuberant lad can be a lot easier than dealing with him.
The kids experiences are so limited, though thats certainly a function of us parents being busier than our parents ever were. We used to take two-three week family vacations, camping across the country. But thats just not in the cards for most families today.
By age six I was shooting guns; I now have to find someplace probably 50 miles away to train my kids on the basic firearms skills all American citizens must know. Oh, and today parents will ask, Do you have guns in the house? as if that would even be a question. None have ever asked me that I guess they just assume it but if they did Id look at them funny and say, Of course. Im an American.
My kids have a Nerf arsenal that would make Charlton Heston proud. Some parents dont let their kid play with war toys, meaning the burden of defending wimpy special snowflakes like their brats will eventually fall to the next generation of Schlichters, as it has for the last few generations.
Thats my real worry will Americans of the future be able to compete, both in the boardroom and on the battlefield? I think at least some of them will.
Since 9/11, Ive had a chance to serve with many young people. Call them Millennials or whatever, but they have faced every challenge and earned the right to be mentioned in the same breath as the heroes of World War II, Korea and Vietnam.
Maybe I see the cream of the crop military standards are so high that only about a quarter of young people can qualify physically, morally and academically to enlist. And maybe these young warriors self-select as those who arent satisfied to stay safe in a tight, comfortable, smothering cocoon.
But its a hard world, full of hard people and hard realities. Are we doing our kids a favor by protecting them instead of letting them learn that on their own? I dont know the answer. Regardless, these kids are still missing something that many of us older folks had. Even correcting for the inevitable nostalgia that clouds our vision back into the past childhood wasnt perfect for anyone it makes me sad. Id just like to see kids playing outside again.
Lol - the dog obsession is nuts up here, too. When we have a gathering of several couples, all of the talk is about pets! Cats, dogs....it’s nuts. Hardly any mention of their children. All about the various moods and cute little antics of the stupid pets! It really isn’t healthy, and it’s turned me anti-pet.
Exactly. There are so few moms at home any more that most neighborhoods are full of empty houses that are only occupied in the evenings and on weekends.
When neighborhoods were full of moms and kids, it was much safer for kids to be out running around, because the moms knew the people belonged in the neighborhood during the day and could recognize strangers.
And you’re right about how kids’ lives are organized every minute of the day, too. Ever since the “experts” decided they knew how kids learn and what they should know when, kids have lost the freedom to explore, create, and learn on their own. Real learning is largely invisible to the outsider. It irritates me that every toy or game these days has to be educational. Fun is educational, but kids aren’t allowed to have unstructured fun today.
If you want to see that America you have to go to the Mexican neighborhoods, plenty of kids running around and a lot of street vendors and general small scale commerce. Suburbia is much more isolating. Probably not popular to say, but generally true.
My daughter rather play outside. She has a Nintendo DS and a Wii. They might get played with twice a month. Most of the neighborhood kids play outside too. My daughter, who is going into second grade, knows she cannot play in the front though without her friends or myself or my husband out there. Unfortunately, you never know if there’s a Sicko lurking. We tell her we trust her, but we don’t trust others (she knows what we mean).
She also walks to and from school, with me or with other neighborhood kids. I’m sorry if I wont let her walk alone. Again, you hear of too many kids disappearing on their way to school.
There are 2 kids in the neighborhood that rarely play outside. Their parents let them stay inside to be on their video games, ipads, other expensive gadgets instead of encouraging them to play outside. Incidentally, those are the only kids that are FAT.
My brother and his wife lived in Beverly Hills for awhile in the 70’s. I went out there to visit them. The first thing I noticed was that there were no kids outside. I asked him why and he said parents arrange to have kids visit one another. He said that everybody was afraid of kidnapping.
I was born five days before D-Day, on a tiny farm in SC. From the time I was able to carry in one stick of firewood at a time I had chores to do. Right now I am waiting for “Pedro” the tree service operator who lives within shouting distance to come by and give me a price to remove a big RED Oak that is at least four feet thick. It is leaning and I don’t want to take a chance on it falling and doing a lot of damage. I look at that tree and remember when I and my older brother cut one about the same size with a two man crosscut saw. The saw was five and one half feet long and when you hit the center of the log there was only room for a very short stroke. I could not have been more than eleven and he was no more than fourteen. We felled the tree, cut it up in firewood lengths and hauled it back to the house with a groundsled pulled by a mule. We were working unsupervised, the only other person there most of the time was my mother who was in the house two hundred yards from the tree. My father was miles away at work. Of course we didn’t do it in one day. It took many Saturdays and evenings after school to cut up all that and haul it home. That is the kind of work I was involved in from the time my age was two digits and even before. When I allowed my grandson to use my machete at age ten his father freaked out. Things certainly are different now.
“I shared a room with my brother, who I idolized as a kid. He was a great big brother who let me hang around with him and his friends. He was an all-state middle linebacker in high school, but still made time to invest in me. Over 40 years later, we are still best buddies, and I cherish the memories of sharing a room with him. I laugh when I see people with 3 kids think they have to move so each of their kids can have their own room.”
How fortunate you are!
God bless you for your hard work through the years, Rip. I only pray that I can grow to be as strong an American as I do not doubt you were.
Yes I am!
“Things certainly are different now.”
Back in the ‘30s, my grandparents used to visit kinfolks in the countryside beyond Fort Worth. My uncle was ten years old. Someone lent him an ancient blackpowder 12-gauge shotgun and a few precious shells and suggested he go hunt for jackrabbits. “Now, Sammy, go out a-ways and don’t aim that towards the house”. His happiest memories were waiting hours until some curious old jack stood atop his mound for a look around. BOOM!
“When neighborhoods were full of moms and kids...”
Those were the days! Growing up in the 70’s, there was a mom in every house who would either give you something to eat or yell at you if needed. In the evenings, my folks would sit on their front stoop smoking and relaxing with a beer while we played TV Tag or rode our big wheels and bikes. Eventually neighbors would come over to have a smoke with my parents while their kids would join in the games. Only once..in 1971 did our folks call us in on a beautiful summer evening. Apparently a teen girl was found murdered right up the road. They think a neighbor boy did it, but it was never proven and the family moved away. However, things returned to normal and we blithely played and swam the summers away.
Good point....but, as usual, it always come back to GOV’T.
The same group of jack-offs who’ll let brood-mare welfare mommy have 30 kids w/out a 2nd thought.
Though, I think most of those same kids (making the ‘call-ins), couldn’t live the ‘system life’ before asking to be returned to their parents/home.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.