I wonder how children survived to adulthood in the past, with todays standards and warnings.

I see reports, what seems like daily, about some new warning to keep children safe or how to raise them.  I wonder, by today's standards, how we survived to adulthood. I then reconsider and wonder how our present crop of children will survive their adulthood with the stripped down, sterilized, no consequences or failure allowed, modern way of raising children.  I for one haven't read a book on how to raise your child, I understand some people need them but where is their instincts or common sense with their child gone, if they do?  I watched a morning show this last week that was talking about how the young adults in our society, that have never failed in their childhood, struggling in the work place.  This new thought that every child gets a trophy, you should let your child always win at games and reward them because they breathed in and then breathed out again, is a failure to our children.  I was raised with the good old spanking and gave mine a few a time or two.  NO, I never once beat my child or was beaten. People that don't believe in spanking always relate the two as the same thing, believe me they are not, I have seen both and they are a more different than time outs and spanking, which in many ways are two sides of the same child raising philosophy.  They are degrees in a disciplinarian bag of tools.  Beatings are not spankings, are not tools for parenting and are criminal.

I am saddened by some of the developments of our society, lack of discipline in our children, to the point of why children are obese.  I have literally heard young mothers say "I don't understand why my child is over weight, I can't get them to eat veggies all they will eat is pizza for breakfast".  I would say that is part and parcel to the whole problem.  More of the never allowing you child to fail and thinking that your three year old should or can plan their own meals, day or parties. Only someone who parented out of a book would think a child that small would have a brain developed enough to make those decisions and would believe their wonder child could make those decisions on anything at that age.  Be a parent, children love to be parented and helped to their decisions.  I find that the naughtiest children are only naughty because they want you to discipline them or just spend time with them.  They are crying out for your attention and want you to love them enough to give them rules and consequences.

I remember as a child being the bane of my mothers existence, on many levels, my siblings and I were naughty alot, there were alot of us and one on one time was not something my mother had time to give us.  Shortly after are grandparents were killed, in a car wreck, we had moved into their house to live. We were playing out in the yard, we being, Red,2, Silver, 3, and me, 4.  We were playing in the car, it was one of the old one from the early 60's that if you pushed a button in the cubbie drawer the trunk opened.  We opened the trunk and were playing in it, it was mid summer and hot out.  We had all crawled into the trunk and Red pulled the trunk lid closed, we couldn't get out.  We were in the trunk about 45 minutes, we had screamed until we were hoarse and couldn't scream anymore.  My mom had figured out around that time we were missing. She called and called us, she said later she could hear us and thought we were at the fairground, behind the house, so she looked there, but when she got there it sounded like we were in the front of the house.  It took her awhile to find us.  When she did we were, I am sure, suffering from some kind of heat stroke or heat exhaustion.  To this day I can't be in a small dark warm area with out being totally claustrophobic. A short time later, Red, Silver and I decided we would lay on the railroad tracks, under the train, we wanted to see what it would be like when the train passed over us.  Luckily we got bored and crawled out from under the train before it pulled out. A year later we moved to a fifty acre farm, the freezer had somehow gotten shut off or quit working ruining the contents. Mom had put all the meat in the wagon to get rid of it, Red, Silver and I pulled the wagon out into the middle of the field, out of sight of the house.  We played cooking, he made hamburgers and mud pies for lunch.  We dutifully ate up our creations. We were so sick that to this day I can eat a steak that could literally moo but if my hamburger isn't cooked, totally done, I couldn't eat it on a bet. A couple years later when friends of moms were visiting, like ladies do, all of us kids, probably 10 or 12 of us were playing in the barn. We had been using a rope to swing in the rafters, each taking turns. The moms had told us to stopped tattling or we would get it. That many kids together, bicker and tattling, is just one of the natural results, but we were told not to tattle any more on dire threat. We had been swinging on the rope for awhile when Red had gotten his ankle caught in it and was hanging from the roof of the barn, none of us could get him down. I, as one of the oldest, had to got tell the mom's.  My mom later said I was white and ashen, when I went into the house, they knew something was wrong, but as I was not to tell, they almost couldn't get it out of me what had happened.  They saved Red, he was almost purple when they did though. A couple years later, when I was in the fifth grade, my brothers and I were walking to town, don't remember why, it was about 5 miles to town, when we took a short cut across a field and across and irrigation ditch.  We had learned to swim about a year or so earlier and were all pretty proficient at it.  We swam across the ditch and meant up with Dad.  He asked us how we got wet, we told him and he was livid. He explained to us that ditches weren't like creeks and rivers, they had much more current by design and were much more dangerous and that we could have drowned.  I know that there were many more harrowing events that we survived, and tortured our parents with, but not once did we get told how wonderful and creative we were that we had accomplished these feats. I do know each time we got a talking to and a punishment for our behaviors. 

Maybe part of the reason we baby boomers are so adventurous, as a group, is that we took and take great risks because we didn't live in a sterile, over planned, over thought, world.  We got to be kids with all the ups and down that that entailed, we took the good with the bad and became the people we were meant to be.  We know that failing like winning is part life.  We know that reading, watching tv, playing in the field, swimming and exploration of our world are all part of a well rounded life.  We had less structure and our brains got to grow and develop in a natural way.  I for one think the best way to let a child develop their brain is let them be a child......... tomorrow