Just a little Rant.

My GC are actually pretty active outside of screens. They belong to Scouts, learn musical instruments play in bands with lots of gigs, go on hill walks, do art, go to town with their friends.

I remember that my play would involve an imagination, eg., an upended box would be my castle which I'd stand on and wave my plastic sword. When I tired of that, the box would be turned into a room for my dolls. I'd decorate the room with bits of cloth for makeshift curtains and stick pictures of outside scenes I'd cut out of magazines to the walls of the box to make windows.

I get the feeling that the screen now does all that for children?

I saw my GD’s friend’s two week old baby boy on Saturday and all I could think was ,not how beautiful he was, he is, but what sort of a world has he been born into and what will the future be like for him and his contemporaries be like.

Too many be likes there!!

Wazzam

Just a little Rant.
I am now in the Twilight years of my life and am sitting here reflecting on my life, but I do get very worried about the future that this Country of ours holds for my Children and Grandchildren. I honestly do not think we can call ourselves 'Great' Britain anymore. I know that today, people will call it 'progress' but in the 60's/70's/early 80's when I was raised we never had Social Media and you never heard of so much crime as there is now especially amoung the younger Generation. In the 60's, on School Holidays, l left our House to play out with my mates and apart from popping home for Lunch and Dinner and when my Mum or Dad used to call us home for bed I was hardly ever at Home. I used to be in the Church Choir, played Conkers/ Marbles, made slides with snowball fights in the winter, had Great Neighbours, climbed trees, made 'Dens' and generally found things to do. Not like the current Generation of pre/early teens who enjoy staying at Home bored or outside being anti-social (but appreciate not everyone is like that).
Anyone else have recollections of how things have changed

My grandmother used to say she was worried about what the future held for her grandchildren! She lived through 2 World Wars and had a hard life. That’s not to diminish the challenges eg use of social media. However there were many problems in the years I grew up! And my grandchildren don’t spend all their time causing anti social behaviour or stuck on their screens. They see friends, go to sports activities, know how to behave in public, and those old enough to be employed have jobs. Too easy to be nostalgic for the “good old days” in my view.

My grandchildren have had a much much better childhood than I had, through no one’s fault, my family were lovely and looked after me very well, but as a only child just after the war living on a main street , I wasn’t out and about all the time climbing trees I was either playing by myself in our little town garden or indoors immersed in a book or stamp collecting, playing with my dolls and helping my Nan cook I didn’t go to any group stuff like brownies because I was far too shy
My seven grandkids all had siblings and were out and about from a young age belonged to sports groups, cubs, air scouts (yes the girls as well) went on holidays, flew places and had lots more freedom and opportunities
Now at between 20 and 28 all seven have very good careers and have travelled extensively and I mean extensively and are all great sports people both gym, football and a couple of really good runners
Yes they use their screens but no different to me with my books

Different times, different ways

Another thing - my eldest (daughter), aged about 4 or 5, walked by herself to School. It was just down the road. I had a baby at home and it was so difficult. I shudder to think about it now 😳

Wazzam Although I am sure your childhood was fairly typical at the time, mine was very different.

It is all too easy to idealise the past and to edit out the downside especially as one gets older. For instance there was plenty of anti-social behaviour going on round where I grew up. Mind you I grew up during the 1950s and 60s in a place where the only trees around were pollarded and grew out of the pavement, so different time and different place.

Lots of sweeping statements there. Our children/grandchild did many of those things.

My GC ( between all of them) climb trees, have snowball fights, play on the beach, belong to Cubs and Scouts, sing in choirs and play in bands and orchestras.
They have swimming lessons, rugby coaching, ballet and gymnastic classes.
I'm sure there are children such as you describe, but there are plenty of the others, too.

It wasn’t all great though….the good old days. We froze in winter due to no central heating, would be covered in overcoats to keep warm, we had no indoor bathroom when we were young children, we didn’t get much choice at the table because money was short so we lived off cheap cuts and small portions.
And we played out because our parents didn’t want us under their feet and would tell us to clear off after teatime, there wasn’t much parental involvement in our younger years. Also there were pedos prowling around. I recall us being warned about an old man who would lure children down the back alley to see his kittens and a friend of mine took time off school when a man gave her a lift and the pulled over to put her on his lap. Not sure what happened about him, our parents remained tight lipped. And let’s not forget the Moors Murderers.

My grandchildren have a great life. Lots of sport, loads of friends and money - much more than we ever had. They meet friends for lunch in cafes, they go to concerts, they go to the beach,parties etc. The ones at uni have part time jobs which pay them a lot and they buy loads of clothes with their earnings. The younger ones also go out a lot. They don’t watch tv though they do play computer games. They don’t wander the streets, however, like we did, because it wouldn’t be safe now . Too many weirdos and crims.

But of course there were good times too, sorry to sound so dire. But our GCs have so much better lives imho notwithstanding political shenanigans that do give me cause to worry about their futures.

My life exactly growing up Wazzam word by word except I wasn't in a choir.
Lovely times and lovely memories.

My little rant is how cringe-making it is to listen to DJ'S and many TV presenters ruining our English language. Grammatical errors, dropped t's, dropped h's, mumbling and generally sloppy speech. Am I being old fashioned and unreasonable?

charliebb

My little rant is how cringe-making it is to listen to DJ'S and many TV presenters ruining our English language. Grammatical errors, dropped t's, dropped h's, mumbling and generally sloppy speech. Am I being old fashioned and unreasonable?

What irritates me most is that they are being paid for it. So many announcers and presenters can’t even read a screen fluently. It’s their job FGS!

I think things happened just as much then as now but we just didn't hear about it. Also with the increase in population probably I think the ratio is about the same. We had tv and my grandparents didn't like us watching it as we should have been playing out as they did, so social media has taken its place. The news spreads father and faster nowadays. Whatever the future brings unless old aggressive men stop running country's nothing will change.

I had a very different childhood from my DGD as we had no screens (I’m not sure we even had a television when I was her age) or social media. My parents certainly couldn’t have afforded to send me to all the various activities she goes to, if they even existed. However, having said that, she still enjoys the same sort of things that I did, playing with dolls, reading, playing board games, drawing and making things.

This series is on R4 every day this week, listening to the views of young teenage girls - About The Girls.

(To anyone saying What about the boys?, there was a TV series about them a couple of years ago.)

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002v0z7?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

We were ill much more often than AC or GC: all children got measles, mumps, chickenpox and whooping cough as well as colds and flu. And we were cold all the time in the winter, with chilblains and boils.
But me and my sisters, we were lucky to grow up in the countryside. We had such freedom to explore in the woods and fields and streams with other local children. Yes, we had some scary times but I truly believe we grew into resilient adults, less risk-averse than our GC, certainly.

Children these days don't seem to know how to cope with boredom and require permanent entertainment. I know they don't have as much freedom as we had to go out and explore, build dens, etc. but it's such a shame. My youngest grandson is almost 15 but luckily seems to have plenty of outside interests but still enjoys his screen time

I wouldn’t wish my childhood in inner London in the early 50s on anyone, my sister has often said if we had been born thirty years later we would have been in care and our mother probably jailed. SE London was bomb damaged, our playgrounds were blitzed houses, we took ourselves to school at a very young age, sure you could leave your front door unlocked, no one had anything worth stealing. Our grandchildren do and will face challenges just as we did and I’m pretty sure most will overcome them, no point in fretting about their future we won’t be here to see it.

For Sandye, and that "unless old aggressive men stop running country's nothing will change." (countries). The likes of Hitler, Stalin and Mao weren't that old when they got started (& they killed or had bumped off around 150mill between them). Neither were Saddam, Pol Pot, Idi Amin and the leaders of the Rwandan genocidal war. Etc. Putin IS 73, but he's been a murderer for quite a long time now.

A different perspective - us older people may have forgotten how we felt in our respective isolations during the several lockdowns we faced during the covid pandemic. That's because we all have enough experience behind us to know for sure that sooner or later there'd be light at the end of the tunnel. Many of our gcs unfortunately were thrown into a very confusing and destabilising situation - repeatedly - as their life infrastructure (school) lurched from one different pattern to another. Many had to try to log in to school on ipads whilst one or maybe two parents were sharing the dining table with their own laptops. This was chaos for many children and teens at a time in their lives when they were trying to form relationships they could rely on. For many, their mobiles were their lifelines. Hardly surprising then, that they find it hard to separate themselves from them. Give the kids a break I say, especially as we've allowed AI to completely remove the prospect of decent jobs for them in the future.