Sort of true eh?

[DAND]

First, many of us survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then, after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with brightly colored lead-based paints.

We had no child-proof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking.


As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pickup on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and no one actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, bread and butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendos, X-boxes; no video games at all, no 500 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no Surround-Sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no internet or internet chat rooms. WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms, and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out many eyes, nor did the worms live in us forever.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!

Little league had tryouts and not EVERYONE made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to DEAL with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it ALL!

 

[Ravenspirit]

All true but in the current age we are raising a group of "every one in the group must particiapte" and you will be rewarded.

Imagine it....a baseball league for kids who dont keep score. And I dont mean T Ball, I mean a league for 12 - 14 yr olds. After all, WE dont want to hurt their FEELINGS if they lose. Do you know what my kids school does every year that completely pisses me off? They send my wife and I "happiness" coasters at the beginning of the year to "celebrate our childrens coming acheivements in the new year." They havent even done anything yet but "hey, they are doing a great job!"

Its no wonder other cultures are MAKING things and we are SERVICING things in the economy. After all...in order to MAKE something you have to do more than FEEL about it....

 

[cthulhu77]

But then, the rulers that be throw up their hands at generation X-ers..."how come they are so lackluster? They have no motivation?"
All that mollycoddling makes me ill. I had a blast as a kid racing around with a bb gun (you'll put your eye out !) playing "german soldier"...fishing in the creeks...climbing trees to get the best apples, not the windfalls.
I was over at a friend's house last week, and their kid was plastered to the tv... overweight and eating an entire bag of cheetos.
I am sure they will be complaining about him in ten years, when he is doing nothing, and caring about nothing.

On the brighter side, two days ago I stopped by to visit my best friend, and as I got out of my truck, I heard an "Uncle Greg" from above...her daughters had climbed the 40 foot pine tree in the front yard and were chucking cones on me within seconds...giggling the entire time. (Hey, I don't think I could have gotten that far up the tree...they have my respect) Not all of the kids are "youth gone computer".
greg

 

[shrap]

Great post Dand, brought back a lot of good memories..... and a few painful ones too, lol.

 

[Wilomn]

I know what you mean about the no score keeping crap. Both of my kids have played soccer since they were 5. When they're that age it's cool to not keep score, they are developed enough, most of them anyway, to actually compete and I think the social interaction is more important than the competive spirit it will engender.

Parents can make a difference. I rarely speak out about how a coach does his job with one of my kids, believe it or not I have a reputation for being a quiet guy, unless he's just a total idiot. My poor daughter was stuck with the same coach for two years, he was a board member and got first picks for his team and my daughter is an all star player. This guy couldn't coach his way out of a wet paper bag. Personally I like the guy and I was quite happy for my daughter when I told her that she could skip soccer if she was picked by him agian and didn't want to lose every game she played due to his poor coaching. It was also due to the fact that his daughter was a prima donna spoiled rotten bitch in the making that would play hard for maybe 2 or 3 minutes out of every game and just watch the ball the rest of the time because she was the coach's daughter. She also, for those of you who know soccer, ALWAYS played forward.

Parents have to speak up. If you play, play to win. Not to hurt someone but to the best of your ability. NOT eveyone wins. It's such bull**** to play so no one loses.

Lead by example.

I made a mistake yesterday with someone I'm doing business with, not reptile related, that made me look like a total ass. My son was with me, asked me what had happened and I told him about my stupidity. I was mad at myself buy had to smile at the situation because it was a good learning example for him.

Nambipambie kids will be a serious detriment to all of us in the not to distant future.

On a personal note, when I was 8 we lived on a very steep hill. I had a bitchin western flyer bicycle and learned that downhill was conducive to roadrash. Several times. Here I am, hale and hearty. I am soooooo glad I had the chances I did and have passed them on to my kids as best as I can.

 

[Sasheena]

They used to call us the melting pot... I think it's still true but with a completely new connotation...

Take a person
Remove their spine...
watch them melt!

I teach the "youth" of today, and sometimes I'm utterly apalled at what I see... especially at the whole "you can't do this or somebody will be offended" ... Well jeepers creepers, what committee got together and decided that being offended isn't a part of life? These kids, OUR kids, are growing up devoid of any sense of personal acheivement or responsibility. They don't have to DO anything to get praise, and nobody can say or do anything that could cause them to feel slightly down....

We get kids who graduate from 8th grade, yet when they are tested, they have a reading level below 1st grade, can't add 1 + 1, and can't construct a simple sentence. (written OR spoken).... yet these students graduate with good grades and no notation that they have even the slightest problem.

Sometimes people get upset at the school system (high schools in specific) and want to know why we seem so inefficient. A CEO of an award-winning ice cream company was talking to a bunch of teachers and glowing in his awards and in how he was able to acheive so much, and there was so little of the problems seen in education, if only teachers could follow his model, their salaries would be increased, and the finished product would be immeasureably better. .... One of the teachers responded.... "Your blueberry ice cream is the best, so when you receive a batch of blueberries to make the ice cream, you probably inspect them, don't you?" Of course, he responded... "So if you inspect them, what do you do with the bruised, or the bitter, or the dirty, or the ones with bugs on them? Do you wheel them in along with all the best blueberries and make your prize winning ice cream? or do you reject them and mark them "return to sender"? Because WE can't do that! We have no control over the quality of the student we get when they come here to our school, we're only told that we have to have this award-winning product after four years regardless of the raw material."

The thing is that too many of the feeder schools have an overall attitude (luckily counter-acted by many loveing caring teachers who go against their administration as much as possible) that it is psychologically damaging to fail students, so they pass them on and we get them.

Well DAMN... to me the psychological damage comes then.... here they are, dumped into a system they're not ready for, told to perform or they will fail, and then they fail.

TEACH the kids the repercussions of their actions. I don't know any thing about little league or younger age sports, but that's fine. I see the older kids and the result of NOT teaching them all the important values.

We're in trouble.

Sometimes I think that the terrorists are really dumb... ALL they have to do is sit back and wait a bit, and this country is going to destroy itself.... we're all going to be a big melting pot full of spineless sludge from which there is no salvation.... we'll be the poor ones in the long run, because we're taking all the good stuff and deleting it from our kids.

And yes, I remember walking to the creek with the neighbor kids, catching lizards, wading barefoot in the creek, and all the other horrors out there.

Perhaps there will someday be a revolution in responsibility, but if there isn't, I just hope that it waits until I'm gone before the current trend producees the entire race of bottom feeders that people seem to want to create.

 

[mmfrankford]

Brings back memories...
I grew up out in a rural area. Me, my sister, and our neighborhood friends.
(Not much of a neighborhood. A couple houses off Rt 41 in Miami county.) Anyway our parents didn't really know where we were half the time. So the rule was be back before sundown. Sometimes we would be nearly 3 or 4 miles away at a stream.
And germs were never a problem... People today are soooo germ phobic.
On a lighter note. I loved catching crawdads, toads, and garter snakes as a kid, and then showing them with pride to my mom. Who had a dislike of our recent captures, but always tried to compliment us anyways.