Littlemummy.com

I read a post today. I was going to leave a comment. As I wrote, I realised that my comment was running for longer than three lines. I read somewhere, that if a comment runs longer than three lines you should do an article on you own blog and link-up.

Here’s the article…

and a choice paragraph

During the eight years my children have attended this fine school I’ve watched one thing after another on the playground become “off limits”: the group of twelve trees constituting “the woods” (evidently trees are a silent killer), the open field if there is a trace of mud (in Alaska, a weekly occurrence), the hill if there’s any ice (ditto previous comment), the fence around the perimeter (because fences shouldn’t be touched on general principle) and if there’s even a trace of rain the whole thing is gone–it’s indoor recess.

It made me consider my own childhood…..

Bike rides that started at dawn and ended at dusk – that was the time you had to go in…no watches, mobiles, just when it got dark. Now this was a little open to interpretation – but basically if the cars had their lights on, or if you could barely see the football (or each other) during a game, then it was time to go in.

Lunch was a folded piece of bread with anything from the fridge that you could make in under a minute and take with you.

Weirdos? Yes there were weirdos – aren’t there in every neighborhood? We used to chap their door and run away to get a chase….

We’d go on adventures. Accidents happened but we are still alive to tell the tale. I came off pretty unscathed, my brother on the other hand, burnt his arm in a fire incident, split his head during a stone incident, and very nearly fell into a river – but he’s still alive – in fact he’s in the army nowadays doing much more dangerous things I would imagine. Did those childhood incidents harm him? No, they are his war wounds from a childhood of free exploration, ‘dangerous’ games and fun. In fact, I think he is a tad proud of them!

One of the games that was big when we were young didn’t have a name (or, I can’t remember it), you basically swung on a swing as high as you could then you would leap off and try and get as far as you could. Two people would do this, the winner would stay on and take the next person on….dangerous? yes, any fatalities? not even a broken leg…

Was my mum a bad mum for letting us do this (the bits she knew we were doing!)? No. I know this because all the other kids were there too, even the rich ones! It’s just the way it was.

Childhood is short, lets not spoil it for the kids by denying them the freedom we had, to explore, make up games and generally, well, be kids…