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Have you ever read Bill Bryson's The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir (http://www.amazon.com/Life-Times-Thunderbolt-Kid-Memoir/dp/076791936X http
by dangoldin 18y ago
Have you ever read Bill Bryson's The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir (http://www.amazon.com/Life-Times-Thunderbolt-Kid-Memoir/dp/076791936X http://www.amazon.com/Life-Times-Thunderbolt-Kid-Memoir/dp/0...)?
He talks a good amount of growing up in Des Moines, Iowa where all the kids used to just go out Saturday morning to a nearby field, meet new kids, and spend the entire day there before coming back home to dinner. Right now it seems the kids are too focused on their tvs and computers to go out and actually partake in the backyard baseball games.
- wallflower 18y agoI agree. I'm scared that societal norms and pressures discourage unscheduled time and/or letting kids do something on their own. Based on my own observations, I think that what the kids spend their time doing is largely a function of the parent's need to have them do something. I fondly recall spending escapist afternoons digging into the dirt underneath a bush with my Star Wars action figures and creating my own world.
- dangoldin 18y agoI've been thinking about the same thing. It seems a lot of the younger kids now have so many extracurricular activities that they do not have enough time for themselves. I don't think it's as much parents are trying to just get the kids to do something so the kids won't be around as the parents trying to improve their kids education and life. There are numerous articles describing how even pre schools are becoming more and more competitive. In such a world what can you do as a parent?