This is the third newsletter I've read in the last couple of days speculating on the changes in how GenZ kids entertain themselves versus how GenX kids did. I've even started on a newsletter of my own.
We are starting to see the first generation in human history that grew up inside become parents themselves. At least the GenX parents had some tribal memory of what it is like to play outside and without supervision. The next generation of parents will have never had that experience. I fear for what is coming.
Yeah it's funny, I've been sent a couple of pieces by people who read this piece and then saw pieces on basically the same topic. I guess something is in the air...
It's s struggle with my own kids to try to give them something approximating the old ways, in part because there isn't the same default network of kids just mousing about on their own.
I think you can get in trouble for giving kids freedom too as the Worst Mother in the World discovered when she let her son take the subway on his own.
I got my first Red Bus Rover - an all-day bus ticket for children - when I was 10 and I took my 8-year-old next-door neighbour all around London for the day. No cell phones back then!
I started hitchhiking when I was 10! When I was 14 I had checked a hundred kilometers to attend a music festival for a weekend. From where I stand now that looks totally bonkers but also totally awesome!
In mid 60’s at grade 5 my parents would tell me when Saturday supper - 6 pm - was ready and for the day, hit the Vancouver bus to the library, YMCA, and then a movie with a lunch meal at the White Lunch on Granville. Home at 6 and happy parents. Never a worry and felt totally safe…….why? It was safe.
This checks all the boxes for me. I started hitchhiking at 10. From the beginning of my schooling I would come home from school, toss my school stuff in my bedroom, walk out into our suburban neighborhood and be gone until supper time. Most of the time I was hanging out harmlessly with friends, playing pick up baseball Etc but some of the times I was getting drunk and smashing windows. My mother had a decent sized brass handbell that she would ring when it was suppertime. You could hear it up to about a kilometer away. The whole neighborhood knew when my sisters and I had to go home for supper!
Yup! For real! The first few years was just hitchhiking home from school which was about 3 km or hitchhiking into town (Sydney NS) which was about 5 km. Lots of kids did it. This would have been in the 70s.
No hitchhiking at 10 for me but my mum made fun of me — called me a 'little baby' – when I was 10 because I wouldn't go to the doctor (a couple of miles on the bus) on my own.
Mid-Boomer but also with now 20 something kids. (Yes, I did collect CPP and the Child Tax Benefit for about 6 months.)
We homeschooled our boys largely because school seemed to have moved away from teaching towards becoming a peer group petrie dish with a dollop of "the Current Thing". Also because with the internet kids could explore, quite deeply, what they were actually interested in.
Our boys like to party, to a degree, but the younger one needs his licence for work so no drinking and driving. (Graduated licence, one drink and you're out.) The younger has a decent trades job, his own ancient BMW - which he bought - a delightful girlfriend and bunch of hockey bros/Magic players for friends. The older runs a BMW diagnostics shop in our garage, fixes college kids' cars, enjoys beating his father hollow arguing everything from law to history. Boredom paid off.
I don't think "vandalism" has ever occurred to either of them, but we did cut down and they carried back to the house, a 14 foot Christmas tree, in the snow.
My own view is that a lot of the "behavior" which occurred in my youth, and apparently yours, was mainly about a lack of opportunity to behave better. Our objective raising our boys was to give them plenty of opportunity to do well. We'll see how that turns out but, so far, they seem to have taken the opportunities offered.
This is the third newsletter I've read in the last couple of days speculating on the changes in how GenZ kids entertain themselves versus how GenX kids did. I've even started on a newsletter of my own.
We are starting to see the first generation in human history that grew up inside become parents themselves. At least the GenX parents had some tribal memory of what it is like to play outside and without supervision. The next generation of parents will have never had that experience. I fear for what is coming.
Yeah it's funny, I've been sent a couple of pieces by people who read this piece and then saw pieces on basically the same topic. I guess something is in the air...
It's s struggle with my own kids to try to give them something approximating the old ways, in part because there isn't the same default network of kids just mousing about on their own.
I think you can get in trouble for giving kids freedom too as the Worst Mother in the World discovered when she let her son take the subway on his own.
And this dude who got his life ruined by the social workers https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/a-dad-in-b-c-let-his-kids-ride-the-bus-alone-and-it-sparked/article_6d2dd982-3ccc-542b-a47b-e40290395f0a.html
It's outrageous.
I got my first Red Bus Rover - an all-day bus ticket for children - when I was 10 and I took my 8-year-old next-door neighbour all around London for the day. No cell phones back then!
I started hitchhiking when I was 10! When I was 14 I had checked a hundred kilometers to attend a music festival for a weekend. From where I stand now that looks totally bonkers but also totally awesome!
In mid 60’s at grade 5 my parents would tell me when Saturday supper - 6 pm - was ready and for the day, hit the Vancouver bus to the library, YMCA, and then a movie with a lunch meal at the White Lunch on Granville. Home at 6 and happy parents. Never a worry and felt totally safe…….why? It was safe.
This checks all the boxes for me. I started hitchhiking at 10. From the beginning of my schooling I would come home from school, toss my school stuff in my bedroom, walk out into our suburban neighborhood and be gone until supper time. Most of the time I was hanging out harmlessly with friends, playing pick up baseball Etc but some of the times I was getting drunk and smashing windows. My mother had a decent sized brass handbell that she would ring when it was suppertime. You could hear it up to about a kilometer away. The whole neighborhood knew when my sisters and I had to go home for supper!
Is this for real? Hitchhiking at 10?
Yup! For real! The first few years was just hitchhiking home from school which was about 3 km or hitchhiking into town (Sydney NS) which was about 5 km. Lots of kids did it. This would have been in the 70s.
No hitchhiking at 10 for me but my mum made fun of me — called me a 'little baby' – when I was 10 because I wouldn't go to the doctor (a couple of miles on the bus) on my own.
I left home at 16 and moved 100s of miles away.
Mid-Boomer but also with now 20 something kids. (Yes, I did collect CPP and the Child Tax Benefit for about 6 months.)
We homeschooled our boys largely because school seemed to have moved away from teaching towards becoming a peer group petrie dish with a dollop of "the Current Thing". Also because with the internet kids could explore, quite deeply, what they were actually interested in.
Our boys like to party, to a degree, but the younger one needs his licence for work so no drinking and driving. (Graduated licence, one drink and you're out.) The younger has a decent trades job, his own ancient BMW - which he bought - a delightful girlfriend and bunch of hockey bros/Magic players for friends. The older runs a BMW diagnostics shop in our garage, fixes college kids' cars, enjoys beating his father hollow arguing everything from law to history. Boredom paid off.
I don't think "vandalism" has ever occurred to either of them, but we did cut down and they carried back to the house, a 14 foot Christmas tree, in the snow.
My own view is that a lot of the "behavior" which occurred in my youth, and apparently yours, was mainly about a lack of opportunity to behave better. Our objective raising our boys was to give them plenty of opportunity to do well. We'll see how that turns out but, so far, they seem to have taken the opportunities offered.