Being a child

I grew up in the seventies, born in 1973. That means that I spent the eighties as a teenager.

I remember my childhood as a long fun time. If I look back it seems that the most of my memories are from the summer. I can’t really understand why? Probably because that’s when you had the famous summer vacation! You spent your whole days out playing games with your friends, sometimes it felt like the whole neighborhood was out at the same time. We used to play football, “röda-vita-rosen” and “brännboll”. I can’t remember any rules; I asked my mother if I remembered wrong? Yes I did. Of course we had rules, they were not many, but most of us children had the same ones. We learnt the social rules by playing games together, boys and girls, young and old.

Even though I grew up in the late seventies/early eighties we had school, I can’t really remember being in the classroom. I do remember that we all went home after school, there was always some parents at home (mostly mothers) that could look after you. You were out playing with the other children in your neighborhood, not so tired.

Today, many of our children’s activities are very controlled by us adults. A boy, nine years old, can have hockey practice three times every week plus one match on the week-end. If that is the case it leaves very little time for spontaneous games in the afternoon. Also, the schooldays are getting longer and longer, children stay at “fritids” until very late. Some of the children are really tired when they finally get home. The computer, which is so naturally for our children but quite unnaturally for us, is one of the things they have energy for when they get home. We learnt our social skills from playing games, could it be that the children today learns that from playing games over the internet, chatting etc?

Of course we want our childhood for our children, but I think we have to accept that times are changing. The computer is something that we have to accept, our children learns so many things that we never could. But was it always better before? No I don´t think so. It is just how we remember it, you were free! No bills that had to be paid, no washing machines that had to be started. You just remember the good thing, of course we had bad days when I was young, you just don’t remember them as well as the fun ones.

If you grow up today you should be able to play “war” in the forest, play land-hockey on the street, and pick flowers in the fields. Maybe we have to consider all the rules that we have created to protect our children sometimes is stopping them. Okay, you may break your arm if you play in the forest, but it won’t kill you. Maybe we have to accept that accidents happen and let our children a little bit more free.

We complain that our children spent more and more time inside, but can it be that we have created this ourselves by all our rules?