Reply to "I lived the happiest childhood a child could possibly know”

Forum Index » Elementary School-Aged Kids

Reply to ""I lived the happiest childhood a child could possibly know”"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Don't base your life around a book of fiction about the 1890s which was probably written with nostalgia and selective memory after the two world wars.

My grandparents lived then; while in some ways they had an simpler life, in many ways they did not. Kids often didn't graduate from high school and went to work in cities or on farms, there was a lot of death of siblings and parents from childhood diseases and bacterial infections.

I remember reading Caddie Woodlawn at 12 and longing for that life. It was a sweet story but it wasn't mine.[/quote]

As someone who reads a lot of books from the 1890s and earlier — it’s funny how OP’s sentiment is a constant.  Louisa May Alcott’s “good” parents are always worrying about how kids are growing up too fast and how the fast pace of modern life is bad for their nerves.  Someday maybe I’ll do a retelling of Little Women in the media of a parenting forum.[/quote]

Yeah, but what if they are right?  Maria Montessori had a theory that the more we build up civilization, the more we restrict the movement of children.  As cars and buses take over roads and communities, children have less freedom to run to the store and pick up a loaf of bread, carton of milk and stick of butter (70s Sesame Street reference). They also have less freedom to explore the outdoors, and to some extent the indoors (electricity, TVs, etc have taken over). Kids do fewer chores now and have less opportunity to see how the world works (where food comes from, clothing is made etc).  As the world gets more complicated, we are further removed from the very things kids need to see to understand how the world works and what is really important to keep the world going.
[/quote]

Can we keep the lofty quotations and sermonizing out of it, then? If it's about the children, and not about you? Not about you having "The Answer" which everyone else is missing? (Gotta include that last part.)

Post a thread stating that you know, I don't think my kids are getting as much unstructured time as they might need, and I'd like them to be more active. Does anyone have any strategies that worked, or resources? You aren't going to get the eye-rolling and snark you get from standing on the pulpit and shining a spotlight on your stage with the hokey parts.

Just, you know, talk about it. Without preaching. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics