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........If I had kids, I'm not sure I'd want them to have that kind of childhood. We were often in danger but didn't think about it. This was the time, though, that many kids saw their brothers turn 18 and get shipped off to Vietnam. We sat and watched tv, listening to Walter Cronkite announce that JFK had been assassinated; not too many years later, his brother. I guess our parents wanted us to be toughened up.
It wasn't so much JFK but the Munich Olympics.....and moving overseas the next year where my siblings and I, I was 12, got our lessons in being diplomat.
If taken hostage, our lives are forfeit. The country will not be sacrificed for our ransom. If it were my Father taken hostage and they say "Do this or he's dead!", our response is....
......"Go ahead! We've already picked the wine for the wake!".
This upbringing is what made the movie I watched the other night, "Stockholm" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6474040/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
so counter personal to me (and hence, I totally dismissed it as a work of fiction to enjoy it). In it,
Spoiler
The leading lady is talking to the PM about him strong arming against the bank robbers, potentially sacrificing their lives for the good of the population of the nation......and she doesn't want to hear that, they play the line of is that how you will tell her children that she is dead.........
........and having been taught that way, I quite understand his position.
HENCE, "If I had kids" has really never been on the table (mind you, there is always the "Baby Boom" curse) because this is the kind of life where it is not wise to have children.
Now, one other thing. With what I know, who I am, it does produce one heck of a potential conflict. In my view point, there are 3 kinds of people in the innocent/victim world. There are the innocent who have not been touched by crime, there are the victims who have been and had their innocence ripped away, and there are those who willingly involve themselves in it, be it the criminals or the enforcers......and then those in the gray areas in between.
Once someone becomes a victim, they may want to be innocent again most desperately, to return to that state.......and, of course, they can't.
Me, I know how bad the world is; do I believe that everyone should know, be taken out of their bliss which makes them such an easy target?
No. I believe that childhood is sacred and should be held on to for as long as one can. Hence, if I had children, I would be in conflict.
"Fortunately", that is not my decision that I have to make.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Xenah
I just spent a good amount of time reading about Dean Corll. Unimaginably Pure Evil!
I'm glad my kids are grown. After reading that, I'd never let them out of my sight.
Sorry you had to read about that.
Me, A and B. A: In my world as an enforcer of some kind, that is my world, that is what I do, that's what I am good at. My Mom would call the consumption of such accounts without reason "mind pollution" but she understood in my case of being a professional. In that case, the last time I researched it, it was the question of what turned him to killing and I think it was he was aging and could no longer be a kid among the kids so to maintain his position, he turned.
Long story short of it, it is knowing far too much about this world. To backtrack to what might say to children when they say "they can tell who is and who isn't", I refer to Doctor Who: The Ribos Operation:
ROMANA: But he had such an honest face.
DOCTOR: Romana, you can't be a successful crook with a dishonest face, can you.
B: One thing I have been able to do in the past at least once is read a true crime book for someone who's murdered children, different case, were described in the book. I read, reviewed the book for them to report back how much their children were sensationalized and fortunately, I was able to give them a "decent" report.
Last edited by TamaraSavannah; 11-05-2021 at 09:53 AM..
When we were really little, we played in our own yards doing things like making mud pies or swinging on the back yard swing, hiding between cornstalks in the garden, looking for toads and turtles, playing with dolls on the back porch.
But when we were old enough for school, my neighborhood was lucky to have a wonderful family in which the boys were like boy scouts. I mean the two boys were wholesome and kind. They would actually come out and organize games for the rest of us. One game was "I want a beckon." It would go on for hours with these two leading a line of kids who were calling out, "I want a beckon..." If we got a wave or thumbs up from a kid hiding somewhere it meant we could run off and hide too.
(I think that's how it went.) It was a great loss for our little neighborhood when this wonderful family with their two boys and the adorable little girl pulled up roots and moved to Vermont. I saw them again once and one of the boys did come eventually come back and marry the girl who had lived next door to him.
Well I was an only child until I was seven and there were no other children my age nearby in suburban Sydney. I was not told to disappear although I was encouraged to use our pool. Which I often did not want to do by myself. I was not allowed to have a bicycle as it was thought too dangerous. If anyone came over to play it was arranged, as in these days.
I cannot say if it caused me long term damage. I envied my school friends who were from large families but I did have a couple of cousins who we would get together with.
Literally being outside too much of course is the reason for my skin cancer problems. We had to be outside a lot at school, for lunch and sport and marching practice (very popular after lunch in those days) My parents took me to the beach and we went on hot weather holidays. Now I pay the price!
But I will never know if I would have been a different person if I had had a different upbringing.
Kids are starting to "reappear" now that people are being vaccinated.
I am so happy to see them reappearing in their school uniforms. Community sport has just recommenced here and again it is a great sight seeing the ovals all busy with sport.
We are designing kids out of the picture. In newer subdivisions, places where young families can afford to buy, there is no room for kids to play, at least not like we did. There might be a pocket park crammed in on some blocks but I never see kids playing. Kids can't ride their bikes on their own. They invest their idle play time on computer or internet games. Some kids are managed by parents with sports or dance or whatever they get assigned to.
Play time can be dangerous or fraught with misadventures but they are mostly harmless and learning episodes. My daughter learned not to climb in the car trunk and lower the lid and not to tie her wagon to the bike and haul her friend around the block and down the big hill. Minor disasters. I had my own and survived and you probably did too.
We were told the same thing and, even in Alaska, spent most of our time outside. However, looking back we were very lucky. We could have died several times. Skating on a thawing gravel pit, falling in the local creek, being stomped on by a moose or bear, and so on. BUT, most of us survived as did our Mom. Four kids in a 900 sq. foot house does make life difficult.
Things can happen but I feel it's very important for children to play and do things independently. As a child growing up in the 1960's and early 1970's I had to fight for that. Simply put, I preferred to get places under my own power and had to fight every step of the way. When I wanted to ride or walk across on empty golf course during the winter, my mother would ask "what if there's someone lurking in the trees." This happened as late as when I was 14 but I am getting ahead of myself.
My cycling was, at first, restricted to a four-road, dead end neighborhood, bounded by a secondary road on one end and no other access. The other end was the golf course I just mentioned. By the end of third grade, my bicycle travel radius was the subject of much contention. At the beginning of fourth grade, fall of 1966 it was roughly 1/2 mile alone, 1 mile with other people my age. That spring even that restriction had to disappear because I was included in pick-up baseball games approximately 1 mile from my house. That caused some controversy.
Night bicycle riding became an issue in my first year of high school, 1971-2. My parents would not allow it, except with special permission. That fall, 1972-3, with my father's developing cancer recurrence and ultimate death, I got what I wanted; unrestricted day and night bicycle travel. I did not want "Mommy" driving me places. The purpose was to attend night activities at the High School and YM-YWHA (now the JCC).
When my wife and I were raising our sons about 10-15 years ago, ours were about the only ones that used their bicycles as transportation. My sons were not going to spend their adolescent lives behind a computer screen.
CPS doesn't make parenting easy, even in fighting bullying.
During the spring of 2008, I placed my older son on the stairs to lecture him about the fact that his roughhousing with my younger son (they were 12 and 11 at the time, so you can imagine) went a bit far. In October 2008, when he was interviewed by the school psychologist about some issues with his younger brother, the psychologist asked him "if his parents ever did anything that frightened him." He responded that I "put" him on the stairs for the lecture months earlier, which I did. The report said I "pushed" him on the stairs, a critical difference. My son tried to correct the wording on the spot but the psychologist wouldn't let him.
The school psychologist immediately filed a report with Child Protective Services, triggering an "emergency visit". When my wife and I went to see the superintendent after we report was labeled "unfounded" he said he wished more parents would instruct their children on bullying. I said "some encouragement" and "not if it gets a CPS report." Again as a lawyer I risked professional discipline.
Again, society doesn't make it easy to do the right thing by your children. Not when CPS is needlessly involved.
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