Lately as I have gotten older, I have wondered to myself the question "Did I miss something?" It seems that in today's age in society and culture, something appears to be missing from childhoods as we witness the present. There have been so many organizations, so many demads made on kids, that I often feel the kids are missing out on the adventures that I had.
The public school I went to, had no swings, no park like slides and playground equipment. Instead we had soft balls and baseball bats, a basket ball to be used on the blacktop paved basketball court, a soccer ball in the winter that usualy ended up a snowball. That was our playground; but we had fun just the same. We weren't expected to act like adulst, rather we were encouraged to act like kids growing up. As we got older we were expected to move into the next phase of being a kid, to being a teenager.
Yes education was the focus of our being so called "trained for the future", but the idea of growing up came as a natural process, and it was expected of us. We moved within the frame work, or as I like to say, "we functioned with in the perameters assigned for that specific period in life."
As I look at some of the kids today, they are being hearded like cattle into minature adults, expecting to act like an adult. They are being forced, coerced, manipulated into consepts the adults believe to be "society". Kids having to make choices as to what sex they are because some fool in society demands it to be so. Kids expecting to make moral judgements calls that even the oldest and wisest adults have problems with. The question of gender neutrality when every kid knows that if you have a penis you're a boy and if you have a vagina you're a girl. The desire of parents to accept gender neutrality, is nothing short of child abuse as the child becomes mentally stigmatized, wondering what the hell is going on.
Life is too short and too pressious to be forcing kids into some quick fix form of adulthood that's stuck only the mind of some adult who has read something or has a degree of some sort making them the expert in the life of kids. The picture above, are kids haveing fun and making an adventure of sorts in the lives they are living. I am sure there is someone somewhere who would be horrified and take away the bicycle and trailer away from the kids saying they need to have helmets, and that such as act was dangerous. I am sure that if my dad saw this he would smile and just say "Boys will be boys" and leave it at the.
When did we forget that life is often a giant leap of faith? When did we forget that in our childhood, we were more daring, more adventurous, and more willing to take a chance? Kids are resiliant as they make adventures into the world about them. But we forget our youth, we forget our place in life, as we claim we're not going to let kids make the same mistakes we did. But were they really mistakes? I say no. The choices we made in life created the characters we are today. The adventures with friends were just that, adventures in life.
When we were growing up, our world went from the house, to the neighbourhood, to the different ways to school, to joining up with the world of our best friends. Our world became larger. It appears though that now, a kid is confined to the house playing video games and such, not knowing their neighbourhoods. If they live a kilometer from school they are expected to take the bus, while parents wait for the bus to arrive home in some cases and watching their kids get on the bus. Parents lined up at the fence of the school yard waiting to pick up their kids. Kids on one hand are being sheltered is seems, while on the other hand expected to make adult choices that they should never have to make until they are well into their teens.
In some cases, schools have become endoctrination centers or camps, where more endocitriation goes on than teaching kids how to live. The imagination of children is shuned by many educators, expecting these minature adults, become adults. The games experiences must be appropriate. Playing cowboys and Indians is not a good game to play. Cops and robbers is not good either. And you dare not repeat what your parents say at school as that could be deemed offensive and the child could be placed in some sort of foster home because the state believes that the parents are not good parents. Our kids become pauns in divorse cases. Kids are removed from their parents because their parents spanked a child as a form of discipline.
I firmly believe that kids should be allowed to be kids. Let their imaginations flow. Guide the child and make the child a smaller you. Let the boys be boys and girls be girls to play their own games and to live life in the adventures that are theirs and not the parents or some adult in society who thinks they are experts on how children to act.
Let the kids grow up. They will discover their path soon enough. Be willing to answer questions that they have for that is when they want to know and are ready to learn something they're not sure about.
And I know all you people out there will say: "What the hell does he know? He isn't married and has no kids of his own." It's called observation and wondering.
