I gave my kids a summer like mine in the 1980s – every parent should try it

https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/gave-my-kids-summer-1980s-every-parent-should-try-3222527

by BerislavLopac • 2 years ago

31 20 2 years ago

inews.co.uk

since7• 2 years ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20240813062823/https://inews.co....

What a strange experience. I'm not sure exactly what this article was trying to convey, because the parent didn't seem to actually leave their kids to do their own thing for more than 20 minutes at a time before reverting back to television and devices. And rather than actually giving the kids the freedom we had when we were young, the author laments that this freedom can't exist (not sure why?). So this article really isn't about anything.

ahofmann• 2 years ago

This is an experiment over five days. I think it was very sensible not trying to abruptly change the whole day for a ten and a five year old. That would be very stressful for them. Also the article is about that kids today are in a very shitty situation: they can't roam, because you as a parent get judged or worse (like people call the police, when they see kids unsupervised), and the house is full of so called smart devices, that are highly addictive. We in the western world created an very unhealthy environment for children and we need to change that as soon as we can.

pjmlp2• 2 years ago

Meanwhile in rest of the World kids go alone to school....

I don't get that call the police culture.

butshouldyou• 2 years ago

It's worth noting that US suburban urban development leaves kids stuck with nowhere to go until they can drive for themselves.

Abouteo2• 2 years ago

Also paywall.

datavirtue2• 2 years ago

We most certainly do give kids the same or more freedom. The kids just choose to use devices with that freedom. Society is trying to reverse out of it the best way we know how. Schools are smothering phones so the teachers can get back a shred of dignity and the kids can get an education. Now, if we could just be done with this chrome book/laptop garbage.

pftburger• 2 years ago

Thought this was about phones. This is more or less how kids live in Germany today still

hyperman1• 2 years ago

I remember my teacher lamenting: You will be the first generation that has to pay some corporation for entertainment.

He was talking about how e.g. swimming in a river was replaced with a swimming pool. (This was before facebook etc were popular)

datavirtue2• 2 years ago

Damn. We used to visit Hocking Hills here in a Ohio when I was a kid (I'm still obsessed with the place and visit often). The trails are usually a long a creek and have several falls at the trail waypoints. Everyone would stop and swim, the waterfalls would be full of kids and whole families. I would refill my canteen from the creeks.

Swimming is banned now and there are no people playing in the water. You hike your ass into the valley and walk for miles over rough terrain in god-awful heat. The kids hate it.

When I was a kid I couldn't wait to get back there and sleep in a wet tent all week in a primitive camping area so I could go on these hikes.

jareklupinski• 2 years ago

it had to happen at some point, I guess; there's always been a finite amount of earth, and a historically expanding population

as the meme goes: born too late to swim freely on this planet, born too early to swim freely on other planets

_nalply• 2 years ago

Parenting is hard. A freshly-minted parent has so many good resolutions.

After eleven years of parenting we had five weeks of summer without holidays (holidays meaning staying at least three nights not at home). We just had some events like zoos, museums, hiking, rope parks, grocery shopping, household chores, and so on, and each week about two or three days of doing nothing at home. And in the last week I found a way to curb the excessive online time when being lazy. Alternate between being online and offline every hour and use something like a tomato timer and switch when it buzzes off. I also was not telling the kids what they can do when offline. They had to figure out themselves what to do when bored. After two days of this regime, my older son told me he liked it and was not in a hurry to go back online.

I keep thinking about this experience. Why is it so hard not to be online?

On the days we were not at home, we all had almost no online presence. More often than not I told my older son not to bring his cell phone along, and we parents also left our cell phones mostly in the bag, sometimes even in airplane mode.

But it is really hard.

That's what has changed when I was a child. Online presence is difficult to avoid. And that's what's making parenting difficult today.

Sometimes I have to look up things to organize a short trip while the boys aren't allowed to be online. I always feel guilty towards them that I can't stop being online and still don't allow them the same. There are a few applications which could be understood as not being online, like reading an ebook, but others don't, like playing Exponentile or being on Hacker News.

By the way, my wife and I are early retired because of some serious health issues, so we don't need to do business, but sometimes we are exhausted. I know all parents are exhausted sometimes, but perhaps we are more than others.

flembat• 2 years ago

I think you would have to take your kids to some remote area, with no traffic, no internet and very few people and tell them to 'go out and play'.

poulsbohemian• 2 years ago

This article is incomplete, yet the title alone was enough to trigger a trauma response in me. My new girlfriend is a school teacher, just like my mom was back in the 80s, and so offers a good comparison of how modern life is different than that era. Between teaching summer school, professional development days, and continuing education, the new GF got approximately one week of actual vacation this summer, whereas mom could get away for a number of weeks. My dad, who I am estranged from, never took any vacation ever because he cared more about his career than his family, and yet here I am wanting nothing more than to spend time with my kids (single dad), but have to do nothing but work to keep a roof over our heads in this economic climate.

So it's nice to talk about raising our kids in a simpler way, but it ignores that my parents had so much more disposable income and time. Yes my kids (teens) are left to figure it out on their own like kids of the past, but we're also in a far more competitive world today where a significant chunk of their summer vacation is put into activities that are "life prep" - and my family is significantly more relaxed in this regard than many high-achiever families.

teqsun• 2 years ago

Well, I'm glad so many HN commenters enjoyed a pleasant, bucolic childhood wandering freely, but my parents were raised with a similar amount of freedom, but instead had to contend with things like neighborhood perverts sexually harassing/assaulting them, various forms of violence, being attacked by packs of wild dogs, and one of their childhood friends got into the car of someone never identified and later found murdered in a stone quarry.

They had the misfortune of living in a low-income neighborhood, and I can understand why me and my siblings weren't given the same amount of freedom growing up.

If you have the fortune to be in a place where such freedom isn't so dangerous, congratulations, but I feel it's not necessarily the norm.

I gave my kids a summer like mine in the 1980s – every parent should try it

Related Stories