Well I suppose I was, in as much as I had excellent parents. But I think compared to today's standards my upbringing was strict.
Our house wasn't a democracy and you couldn't call it an autocracy either, as both parents took a role in every decision to do with their children.
But they definitely ruled the roost, it would just not have occurred to us children to answer back/disobey our Parents in the manner I have heard and seen so many children doing in the last 20 or so years.
They were in charge and made that evident from the 'get go' Of course we weren't Angels, I did say we wouldn't answer back etc in the 'Manner' that they seem to do these days.
I never said a Damn or a Bloody or a Bugger in front of my parents until I was married , and even then got told off !
When I look around me and see teenagers and early twenty something or others, I get the feeling that they just aren't as mature as we were at similar ages. Of course I mustn't generalise, and there are I'm sure many exceptions.
Is it due to an over protective attitude that seems to prevail these days? Blimey ! Sis and I used to disappear for hours at a time exploring the surrounding countryside, only returning when our bellies told us it was time for tea. Our parents didn't worry or at least didn't appear to do so. Is the world so much a more dangerous place than it used to be, that children don't seem to have the freedom we had ? There were dangers then too, but it was only by interaction with others outside our home that we became aware of and got to recognise these dangers.
There's the question of cleanliness too, look on any supermarket shelf in the toiletries and house cleaners aisles, and it's anti bacterial scrubs and wipes and the same for surface cleaners.
Yet I've seen women come out of the toilets in a supermarket and not wash their hands before leaving, yep the same women who are buying the anti bacterial products ..........The mind Boggles ! Kids being brought up in a house where everything is spotlessly sterilised, I can envisage not taught to wash their hands after the toilet and not washing them before a meal.
Thank god my kids liked making mud pies and digging for worms, to me that's normal kid behaviour.
I suppose the upshot of this post is it seems the kids are in charge of the parents in some areas, and definitely spoilt, yet in others they are denied the freedom to be 'just kids'
2 comments:
Hi Jen!
My childhood was a bit like that too. We left the BIG city (Rhymes with Hell) and moved to a small holding in N Yorkshire when I was 6. We had the run of the moors, the beck that ran through a gorge filled with broken legs and twisted ankles. There is a public footpath that runs alongside the beck, nowadays, it's all been made 'safe' for all but the most infirm, but when we were kids, it was a sheep track. And even sheep sometimes slipped off it. We rescued quite a few over the years, but some were beyond anything.
By Eck Tony, My dad hailed from Yorkshire, Tankersley Nr, Barnsley. His Dialect used to amuse us as kids and I still use much of it myself, people around here don't know what I'm on about lol.
Keep tha’ sneck aat of it", stop Faffing, and stop Skrikin’ I use regularly.
Mum hailed from St Helens in Lancashire, so War of the Roses in our house :0)
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