In an Ideal World....
Weeks ago I read a very nostalgic post about how our childhoods were richer, more action packed and freer than the childhoods our children are having now.
I was sure Pam had written the post but I can't find it over there. Anyway it made me smile with a tear in my eye when the poster described all those days so full of possibilities when we ran about free as the wind unconfined by parental worry and we didn't have mobile phones either...
We roamed in twos or threes much further than our parents knew, raced around building sites and cemeteries and played chicken on the railway lines. Yes really. I've never told that to my mother who would quite likely die if she knew. I know I would.
I've given my children the best upbringing I could with as much freedom as I could but it's true they've never taken off on a summer morning with a sandwich in their pockets and the day laid out like a map before them. I've always been there in the background hovering...
So.....last week I was having coffee with a group of friends from the village. We all have big children of about the same age and, of course, they're all of the age where we can't protect them anymore even if they were willing to be protected and, of course, they laugh away our advice and concerns because danger is a story to them having been picked up and dropped off all their sweet lives.
Then we mums took a trip down the nostalgia route and it transpired that out of the 5 of us, an American, two French, a Belgian and me, we had all as children been offered lifts by strangers.
Fortunately all of us had run away. And I never told my mother about that either but I don't know why. Looking back I suppose I realised that if I told then my days of freedom would be numbered.
Times are different now. There are more people, more cars, more possible dangers so I wrapped mine up in cotton wool and now I wonder how Boychild will manage when he leaves us this coming Autumn.
I was sure Pam had written the post but I can't find it over there. Anyway it made me smile with a tear in my eye when the poster described all those days so full of possibilities when we ran about free as the wind unconfined by parental worry and we didn't have mobile phones either...
We roamed in twos or threes much further than our parents knew, raced around building sites and cemeteries and played chicken on the railway lines. Yes really. I've never told that to my mother who would quite likely die if she knew. I know I would.
I've given my children the best upbringing I could with as much freedom as I could but it's true they've never taken off on a summer morning with a sandwich in their pockets and the day laid out like a map before them. I've always been there in the background hovering...
So.....last week I was having coffee with a group of friends from the village. We all have big children of about the same age and, of course, they're all of the age where we can't protect them anymore even if they were willing to be protected and, of course, they laugh away our advice and concerns because danger is a story to them having been picked up and dropped off all their sweet lives.
Then we mums took a trip down the nostalgia route and it transpired that out of the 5 of us, an American, two French, a Belgian and me, we had all as children been offered lifts by strangers.
Fortunately all of us had run away. And I never told my mother about that either but I don't know why. Looking back I suppose I realised that if I told then my days of freedom would be numbered.
Times are different now. There are more people, more cars, more possible dangers so I wrapped mine up in cotton wool and now I wonder how Boychild will manage when he leaves us this coming Autumn.
