BS: Where did the children go?

Subject: RE: BS: Where did the children go?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 07 Sep 02 - 08:46 AM

Of course if you've just been kicked there it might be a bit different.

Subject: RE: BS: Where did the children go?
From: GUEST,Visiting Sue
Date: 07 Sep 02 - 02:31 PM

I'm just checking out Mudcat and loved this discussion. I've spent the last few years living with my sister and her kids, a girl 12 and a boy 9. I've always tried to expose them to good music. It's OK if they listen to crap with their friends. I just hate it when the ONLY music kids are familiar with is pop crap designed to sell them advertiser's dreams. They're pretty sharp. I've told them what advertisers are up to. Kids don't have filters and they look to us to develop them. These two are pretty sharp and open-minded and both have a great sense of music. They can also sing along to a lot of pop songs. But they're critical and aware to a reasonable extent that there are huge industries out there who are experts at manipulating them into buying images and therefore buying products. So far, they're pretty cool kids.

It's the same as junk food. If you give them interesting, nutritious home made food, they develop broader tastes and don't have as much room in their stomachs for junk food. Forbid them to have junk food and they just want it more.

Subject: RE: BS: Where did the children go?
From: C-flat
Date: 07 Sep 02 - 07:45 PM

Nice of you to drop by Sue. I've also enjoyed the interesting comments here too, which is why I keep coming back to Mudcat for my daily fix.
Thanks to everyone for their input, I think the answer is in there, mixed in with the usual dose of good humour and common sense that prevails on this site.
C-flat.

Subject: RE: BS: Where did the children go?
From: lady penelope
Date: 08 Sep 02 - 09:57 AM

I think kids are pretty intelligent and will make apropriate desicions most of the time ( well everyone makes mistakes sometimes...) so long as they have enough information.

In Britain, especially, you have a pop culture which uses sex to sell anything and everything, mostly with no objections from parents. At the same time you have large groups of parents insisting that their children willnot learn about sex or repoduction as this will aid the loss of their innocense. Then they wonder why Britain has one of the highest under age pregnancy rates in the world!

If I was a kid, I'd be confused!

Other than that I don't think things have really changed from when I was a kid to now. Kids are now interested in stuff that wasn't even invented when I was a kid ( i.e. home computers etc. ) this of course means that they're going to spend less time outdoors, even if their parents periodically throw them outside.

For kids that live in cities like London, traffic is a problem. When I was a kid, we mostly played at the bottom of our street ( especially during term time ) every day. At the weekend you'd go up the park ( I lived round the corner from Hampstead Heath, a rather large park ) play round the ponds, on the swings in the woods etc.

But now there is nowhere to play in the street. There are cars parked solidly up and down both sides of the street ( it's not a very wide street, three small cars across ) and the frequency of cars driving down the street would make it impossible to play anything. The street I live in now has room enough, but the speed at which people drive down the road would make it suicidal for anyone to attempt running around daft . This means that the only places left to play are generally a reasonable distance away. It becomes inconvinient to go play, except for at weekends. Which kids still do, but it becomes much more of a supervised outing than the romp it was when I was young. Sigh! I think I was able to be much more independant when I was young than a lot kids are these days, I think that's sad.

TTFN M'Lady P.

Subject: RE: BS: Where did the children go?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 08 Sep 02 - 02:48 PM

Very true Lady P, I would roam all over my village when I was growing up... Bratling is lucky if she's allowed to the corner shop alone.... it isn't that I fear the paedophile or the pervert, it's the mad boy racers, one of whom not so long ago collided with another car and mounted the pavement, taking out the enitre bay window of the house on the corner. I don't want her to be run over on the pavement.

LTS