Freedom, Failure, Success and Responsibility

'Freedom, failure, success and responsibility' - I saw the below item today on Facebook and thought I would post it; to remind us that children need to work out how to deal with these things during their childhood.  As much as we want to protect them and keep them wrapped up in cotton wool, we must remember that enabling them to deal with a variety of social situations will protect them more in the long run and will help them become well rounded individuals.

I am towards the end of this era (I really am!) and thankfully we did have the original NES and video games - (Oh, how I loved the Sega Mega-drive too).  I have great memories of my friends mum supplying us throughout the day with bacon butties whilst we played games for hours at a time. Whoever wrote the below was spot on about most of it. I used to go out playing with my friends in the nearby woods all day long, making camps and things. During the summertime we'd come home at the end of the day when the street lights started to come on. I'm so glad I had such a free childhood. Often we would play in the garden whilst my mum baked in the kitchen looking out on us, but generally we were allowed to run free and explore our village and surrounding area. I feel that we learnt from our mistakes and were always given explanations why we should or should not do certain things.

I remember getting in to trouble as a teenager. My friend who was in trouble with me - her mum grounded her for a month. I remember my mum telling me how disappointed she was with me and that there was no point in being grounded as it wouldn't do anything. At the time (and now), I felt so awful to have cast myself in a bad light towards my mum that I made sure to act differently from then on.  I learnt a lot from that lesson which was incredibly short and which my mum did not make a big deal out of.  As long as I can follow from her example, hopefully I'll be on the right path with my gorgeous Eve.  

Of course you have to take this with a pinch of salt (the health and safety aspects are a positive and welcomed change now I'm sure) and look through the romanticised nostalgia....

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL BORN IN 1930's, 1940's, 50's, 60's, 70's and Early 80's !!! First, you survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while theycarried us. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a tin, and didn't get tested for diabetes. Then after that trauma, your baby cots were covered with bright colored lead-based paints. You had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when you rode your bikes, you had no helmets, not to mention, the risks you took hitchhiking .. As children, you would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a van - loose - was always great fun. You drank water from the garden hosepipe and NOT from a bottle. You shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this. You ate cakes, white bread and real butter and drank pop with sugar in it, but you weren't overweight because...... YOU WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!! You 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 you all day. And you were OK. You would spend hours building your go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out you forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, you learned to solve the problem . You did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no text messaging, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........YOU HAD FRIENDS and you went outside and found them! You fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents you played with worms(well most boys did) and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever. You made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although you were told it would happen, you did not poke out any eyes. You rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them! Local teams 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 you out if you 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. You had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and you learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL! And YOU are one of them! CONGRATULATIONS! You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good. And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.