Just a little Rant.

Unless outside with an organisation, people won't allow their offspring out to play due to the misconception of strangers kidnapping, trafficking, physical abuse being round every corner.

My grandchildren have a more fulfilled life than I had. They've travelled to various countries. They're taught by kind and understanding teachers. I was caned over a period of three years. I would never wish to go back to those days.

Lots of comments and quotes here from people whose grandchildren seem.to have very cushy and nicer lives.

What about the Mental Health Crisis amongst young people. Nobody has seemed to mention that.
Plus all the trans gender nonsense.

And last but not least AI. Which will really cut a lot of Middle Class smugness down to size

You can always refer to Great Britain because unlike what most people like to think the Great simply makes the distinction between us and little Britain i.e Brittany.

I do think there’s just a tad of rose coloured spec’s when looking back.

I’m a little younger than some at 67 and had my last three children are still in their twenties and we have just one grandchild from our oldest daughter who is 11.

He swims, belongs to a football club, dances and is a scout.

He’s also has two games consoles and limited screen time.

I think there’s always been poor and better parenting.

I think children have so many more opportunities than many had back in the day.

I think it’s a different world we live in now, not worse or better.

WithNobsOnIt

Lots of comments and quotes here from people whose grandchildren seem.to have very cushy and nicer lives.

What about the Mental Health Crisis amongst young people. Nobody has seemed to mention that.
Plus all the trans gender nonsense.

And last but not least AI. Which will really cut a lot of Middle Class smugness down to size

I think all you’re doing by referring to “trans gender nonsense” is insulting some people.

Some of the reasons behind our mental health “crisis” is due to lockdown, some is due to far more conditions being recognised and partially due to lack of services.

I have a daughter in her mid twenties with borderline personality disorder, after 10 years of waiting for help from the NHS despite being on “a list” we got both a diagnosis and a treatment plan privately and she has therapy once a week, privately, which she pays for, as she manages to hold down a full time management role in the CS.

Different times. I worry about traffic which is the greatest hindrance to playing out. My younger grandchildren are 7, 8, 10 and almost 11
They’re all away now, both families and another family of great friends. The parents chose a family all inclusive, loads of free activities for the children, buffet meals so they get to serve themselves. Cheaper than centre parks

At home, they all do after school activities that suit individual chikdfen, art, sport, swimming, drama

They aren’t wealthy but their incomes go in the children. They’re also active families, park run, long walks as well as crashing out in front of the tv or the dreaded and limited screens

I worry about Trumps malign influence but surely he can’t live forever (tho he might have sold his soul to the devil )

Iam64

Different times. I worry about traffic which is the greatest hindrance to playing out. My younger grandchildren are 7, 8, 10 and almost 11
They’re all away now, both families and another family of great friends. The parents chose a family all inclusive, loads of free activities for the children, buffet meals so they get to serve themselves. Cheaper than centre parks

At home, they all do after school activities that suit individual chikdfen, art, sport, swimming, drama

They aren’t wealthy but their incomes go in the children. They’re also active families, park run, long walks as well as crashing out in front of the tv or the dreaded and limited screens

I worry about Trumps malign influence but surely he can’t live forever (tho he might have sold his soul to the devil )

I absolutely agree about traffic and also, sadly, groups of teenagers can be an absolute menace to younger children.

When I was 11 and 12 in the 1950s I used to worry constantly about World War 3.

Absolutely!

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?

I don’t listen to DJs, but I do listen to radio 4 is on all day.
I assume that most of the presenters had a good education and went onto good universities.
You can hear just as many grammatical and pronunciation bloopers on there as you would hear on Radio 1,2, etc.

WithNobsOnIt I am saddened to read from your post that my GC belonging to Cubs and Scouts seems to mean that I have " middle class smugness".

WithNobsOnIt

Lots of comments and quotes here from people whose grandchildren seem.to have very cushy and nicer lives.

What about the Mental Health Crisis amongst young people. Nobody has seemed to mention that.
Plus all the trans gender nonsense.

And last but not least AI. Which will really cut a lot of Middle Class smugness down to size

Let me educate you in how middle class the scout movement is.
I volunteer 2 full days a week as do several other volunteers to raise money for disadvantaged children whose parents don’t have the money to send their children on field trips.

Ah yes, ‘the good old days’ when we used to imprison gay people, openly discriminate against people based on race, religion, disability and so on. Times of state sanctioned cruelty when babies were removed from unmarried mothers and in the worst cases, sold by the nuns.
I hate this type of post because it is SO ungrateful for all the benefits and freedoms which we have enjoyed, as Boomers.😡

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion even if it is things that other people do not agree with. That is what a Democracy is. Are you saying that I am SO ungrateful for living in the Decades that I think were the best?

Fairlandia those are the things I think about when I'm nostalgic for the good old days - and also the huge advances in medicine.
The scourge of heart attacks especially in youngish, seemingly fit men in the 70's 80's and 90's, I & several cousins & friends lost our fathers to this.Not that we've eliminated this, but the prevention & treatments have decreased it drastically.
But I'm still glad I grew up in the 60's.

My childhood was much like that of the OP. Yes there were bad things like the cold, no bathroom or inside loo. I also had to cope with a violet father when it was no sooner a word than a blow.

However we still had tremendous freedom compared with todays kids. Our playground was the street where we created out own social world. We learned the rules of the game, fairness and fitting into the group. We learned to use out imaginations and to be semi independent and self reliant. We fell into and out of friendship with little or no input from our parents.

I feel really sorry for todays kids. They are ferried around like parcels from artificially organised play dates to so called activities. Many early teen youngsters have never ridden public transport or made a shop purchase themselves. At age 11 I was travelling across the city to see my grandmother or look around the shops in my spare time. I had a job at 14 where I learned to serve customers, handle money and keep the shop tidy.

Chil;dren now may have many advantages in the material sense but they have far less freedom than we had in the 50s and 60s. So they are far less prepared for the harshness of the world of work.

Love it - ferried around like parcels. Brilliant !

I can remember when my parents had to pay £ 5 a week over 19 weeks to my secondary school, so I could go for a week in Dieppe with the school, as family foreign holidays were way out of our budget in 1980.
Nowadays 12 year olds would laugh at such a basic education related holiday, but to many of us at school, this was the first time we'd been abroad. Also, all of us really enjoyed it, even if we stressed the teachers a bir with our antics in the dorms.

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

Of course we have ‘recollections of how things have changed’ - 1966 to 2026 is 60 years! easily two generations, empirically a generation is 25 years.

That life was better in the ‘good old days’ denies time and population growth, technology, education, transport, etc etc
in a shrinking world.
My daughters are aghast when I describe my childhood, life
limitations, £sd. Realistically, with a burgeoning population
how could that continue.
I would not want to return to those apparently ‘Halcyon Days’
as realistically described by posters above, with honest recall. I’m thankful to be born and live in a first world civilised country with a temperate climate and freedom of choice.
I cannot be fretting for my grandchildren or perceive their future as an albatross around MY neck - we all have out time.

That we hark back to idealised childhoods is usually because we don’t feel we have much of a future, which as a child we knew we had (and thought we would live forever)

It has been a long damp dreary Autumn Winter Spring Wazzam, we will all feel better when summer arrives, sun
on our faces, count our blessings, put away the whip and top, not applying a selective memory and wallowing, what good does it do.
SaxonGrace has the last word/sentence.

When I was growing up in the sixties and seventies we had plenty of 'other' kinds of people in my neighbourhood, inclding a woman who dressed like a man, a man who thought he was a cowboy and dressed as such, even changing his name. We had an openly gay couple well known to my family who were active and respected in the community.
I had a cousin who liked to wear frocks as an adult.
These things which seem to 'plague' our society are not new and most communities were not making their lives a misery.

As for my GC they are very privileged and have comfortable lives and a good education. I don't worry about them very much at all. My GD spends time with her dad outdoors all the time, building dens, making stuff out of what's around, and knowing how to respect animals and wildlife. I sometimes think she misses out on 'normal' stuff other kids too.

Wazzam

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion even if it is things that other people do not agree with. That is what a Democracy is. Are you saying that I am SO ungrateful for living in the Decades that I think were the best?

Wazzam - perhaps you believe your decades were the best
from your priviliged position of being able to do just that,
although you put forward no debatable argument to say
how and why you believe they were the best, unlike other posters with almost total recall of life as it really was.

We speak of what we know - even Historians can be wrong.
We lived it, it is behind us, what we cannot change we are obliged to accept.
These days will never return.
My hurt is for acres of solar panels on prime arable land.

I try not to think of how free we were as chilren, out all day with dogs and ponies, home at dusk, a mother who had no
idea where we were or who we were with.
This is not possible now, we know this.
However it doesn’t mean those days were better ?!

plus ca change plus c’est la meme chose

I remember being slapped at home and having a ruler across my knuckles in school. My GC are horrified to hear this!

Chocolatelovinggran

I remember being slapped at home and having a ruler across my knuckles in school. My GC are horrified to hear this!

Yes, corporal punishment was still used into the eighties when I was at school, and while not as bad as previous decades, I can think of one teacher who would be in prison these days. You could be hit with either a gym shoe or a cane for such trivial things as climbing over a low wall or laughing in class. Glad the practice ended before I left school as it was abused.

Cumbrianmale
The teacher who hit me round the head so hard my glasses flew off did eventually go to prison for assault on a child.