Congratulations to our generation

Parent Cafe
1

<p>I was sent this email and thought I would share it with ya’ll. I loved it and hope you do too!</p>

<p>First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they
carried us. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes. </p>

<p>Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored
lead-based paints. </p>

<p>We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we
rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took
hitchhiking. </p>

<p>As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat. </p>

<p>We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this. </p>

<p>We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren’t overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING ! </p>

<p>We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K. </p>

<p>We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem. </p>

<p>We did not have Playstations, Nintendo’s, X-boxes, no video games at all,
no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms…WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them! </p>

<p>We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever. </p>

<p>We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes. </p>

<p>We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them! </p>

<p>Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t
had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! </p>

<p>The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They
actually sided with the law! </p>

<p>This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers
and inventors ever! </p>

<p>The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. </p>

<p>We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned
HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL! </p>

<p>And YOU are one of them! CONGRATULATIONS!</p>

2

<p>I think that sums up my childhood to a T. You might add that in college we drank some, took some drugs, had some fairly random sex, protested, and still became good hardworking republicans–and democrats.</p>

3

<p>You do realize that all of those factors that you outlined may have contributed to the higher rates of chronic disease seen today among the middle-aged and elderly, right? Either way, rock on :slight_smile: .</p>

4

<p>and Liberterians.</p>

5

<p>You might add ate hot dogs, olives and grapes under the age of three and slept in baby beds that our heads could get caught in.</p>

<p>Add Independents to the list!</p>

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<p>…And some of us actually had to work to make money while we were in college. <em>gasp</em></p>

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<p>And we worked during the summer to “save money for college” even if half of it went into that first car–which was typically old ($500 avg cost) and not bought as a birthday gift by our parents.</p>

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<p>My 1st car cost $50. A lovely LTD II in fashionable brown. Tires were as bald as most guys in their fifties. Held my breath every time it rained. </p>

<p>Even worked at the dining hall of all places…</p>

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<p>Oh! Deprived childhood! :(</p>

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<p>Yup, we survived all that. Unfortunately, thousands of our classmates and playmates did not. There are reasons, thousands of reasons, why no one does those things any more. The knowledge that these things were not a good idea was often bought at a very high price. We are just the lucky ones who didn’t have to pay it.</p>

11

<p>I loved that piece when I first read it and I love it again here. But . . . why did our generation become the most lenient parents ever ??</p>

12

<p>“lenient”. Maybe in some ways but the stereotype is a hovering parent never littling the kids out of sight and schedules jampacked with “activities” supervised by other adults.</p>

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<p>Coureur, too true. Unfortunately bad things happen now also, even with all of the safeguards that have been implemented and warnings that have been dispensed. I posted this just because I remember a more innocent (?) carefree time when I could run free and had not a care in the world. I wish my kids could experience that, unfortunately for them, I am always checking on them by calling their cell phones! I never got a chance to ask my mother if she was worried every evening in the summer when I didn’t come home until I was hungry. She died, despite the seat belt and airbags.</p>

14

<p>Two different things. Anxious and protective of child safety, which is part of the reason for overscheduling structured activities, but lacking in backbone and more interested in being “friends” during the teen years.</p>

15

<p>As a member of the generation going through school now, the op’s really offensive.</p>

<p>You are aware that many of the things you complain about (the frivolous lawsuits, helicopter parenting) are done by “your” generation, not by the kids who the things happen to be affecting?</p>

16

<p>Dude, it was just a lighthearted post…where does it say the kids of this generation are to blame anyway?</p>

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<p>I realize it doesn’t say we’re to blame, but it is denigrating us as a collective for our supposed “softness”, while commending those who created the circumstances that caused it.</p>

18

<p>Well, you’ve certainly proven we’re thin-skinned:p</p>

<p>And as coureur pointed out, there’s a reason we do those things. So who cares, really?</p>

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<p>Here are some facts pertaining to my early life that are sure to astound the younger generation:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>I wasn’t breastfed. I wasn’t even formula fed: I was a “Carnation baby,” raised on condensed cow’s milk from the day of my birth.</p></li>
<li><p>My parents raised four kids in a one-bathroom house.</p></li>
<li><p>At the age of six, I shot my cousin point blank on the spine with his own bb gun.</p></li>
<li><p>For my ninth birthday, I was given an adult-sized bicycle, with coaster brakes, although I was the shortest boy in my class at school, and couldn’t even reach the pedals (or apply the brakes) when I was sitting on the seat. </p></li>
<li><p>My friends all agreed that my parents were over-protective. Yet when I was sixteen, they let me spend eight weeks in England with another 16-year-old, a month of which we spent traveling on rail passes, staying at youth hostels and B & B’s, without adult supervision.</p></li>
<li><p>Perhaps most amazingly to people on CC, my safety school was in the Ivy League.</p></li>
</ol>

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<p>Ahhh, so Penn and Cornell ARE good for something!</p>