Monday, January 10, 2005

Talked to Krystal on Saturday while watching Beth and Brandon make great music (offside: buy the album, see Beth's link) at Rembrandt's Coffee House (which I would link to if the webpage had anything other than a logo on it at the present time ;-)

Reminiscing about childhood made us wonder about how different we grew up from the way we are raising our kids here.

Starting at about four or five years, I would go out with other kids from the block, and we would run all over for hours. My mother would have no idea where I was.

We would go to the playgrounds, or walk half an hour to the old castle mount (especially in the fall when there would be piles of leaves to jump in, and beech nuts to eat; and in the winter, when the mount made great sledding grounds.) In the fall, we would be out for hours throwing sticks at the prickly orbs hanging in the huge horse chestnuts trees outside, and race each other like crazy for ones the wind just knocked loose. In the spring, we took nets and went stickleback and tadpole fishing in the pond half a mile away. We built "club houses" in the little copses that counted as forests. From the time school was out until dusk, we would be outside.

My kids don't have that. For one thing, there is little 'wild' around our house. And honestly, I would be way too scared to just have them gone for hours like that unsupervised at a young age. I still worry when my thirteen year old takes off on his bike to the library, for crying out loud. My parents left me alone for two hours in the evening at the age of five (babysitting my three year old sister, LOL.) That thought would never have occurred to me.

What is it that is different? Was the world really safer then? Or was there just less fear mongering?

posted by Birgit
0 comments at 3:24 PM