Our kids too wrapped in bubble wrap these days?

[awayatc]

Ahhhh ... i remember those days so well!
They were fun!!

Must be something wrong with some of you lot,
or maybe something wrong with me..?

I am still having fun.....

My kids?

Can't even remember how often we been at after hours surgery.....
They all survived....

[batesclan]

Thinking back to my "kid years" not unheard of to climb trees above power lines, jump of haystacks, jump creeks on the all powerfull pushbike lol.

You get hurt, you learn to either not do it again or do it better. Its called experience. I see the results of these "experiments" in my job. Doesn't mean I wrap my kids in cotton wool. They got to learn their limits.

Maybe if the PC brigade gave it a rest for a while then kids might leave the computers.TV's etc and venture outside into the bright sunshine and use their imaginations like we used to. (who remembers having more fun at times with the packaging at xmas rather than the contents ? go on you know you do).

anyway thats my 10 cents worth

[NighthawkNZ:Me]

I am still having fun.....

I'm still a kid... shit I ride a motorised two wheeled forward momentum contraption for fun...

[blossomsowner]

yeah it would be good if all the officious beaurocratic osh types gave up for a bit so the kids could play using imaginations and skill and decision making for themselves. My kids spend most of their time up a big tree at the end of our street or kicking a rugby ball into or over it.
it helps them learn stuff about commonsense and gravity.

[Motu]

And what about going for a ride on a hot summers day,teeshirt,shorts,jandels
and no helmet(had to wear something on the feet to kick the old girl over)

Too right - how many of the ''tough'' posters on this thread would dare to do that eh? Have they ever gone over 160kph with no helmet and goggles,have they ever crashed in jeans and sneakers,no helmet or gloves....picked the bike up and ridden it home,and not even have your mother get upset when you told her?

Take off the bubble wrap yourself if you expect the kids to.

[MIXONE]

My standard lines to my kids are "It wont hurt once the pain goes away" and "Is there any blood or bones sticking out?Well it can't be too bad then."
They have both had their share of stitches and have skinned knees on a daily basis.Both happy well adjusted kids though.

[Number One]

Yeah, bring back Bullrush I say! I always used to be the last boy standing...

And I the last girl I can tackle alright - committed heart and soul was the only girl in a huge bunch of friends and you learned to play rough and handle the jandal!

Why not run a "New Zealand Bullrush Championships", just to piss off the PC brigade!

OOOO Yeah!!!! I'd be keen

I'm still a kid... shit I ride a motorised two wheeled forward momentum contraption for fun...

Indeed - when will we ever grow up? Hopefully never

My standard lines to my kids are "It wont hurt once the pain goes away" and "Is there any blood or bones sticking out?Well it can't be too bad then."
They have both had their share of stitches and have skinned knees on a daily basis.Both happy well adjusted kids though.

My old man used to touch the painful area/s and say "that doesn't hurt...well I just touched it and it didn't hurt...no really I felt nothing" Then he'd slosh on the surgical spirits to sting the shit out of any 'bad' bugs, slap me round the ears and say go play on the road. What a sweetie I had my fair share of bumps and cuts and other such stuff too...just means I don't wear short skirts...on account of my ugly mishapen and scarred knees.... nah bugger that I just don't wear short skirts might catch my death of cold or something if I did

[Chrislost]

The second half of the program is a classic case of the NZ double standards when it comes to "protecting" our children.

No climbing trees, playing bullrush, rafting in the rivers but hours and hours of crap violent TV viewing.

All produced in New Zealand and now "proudly" being sold overseas to feck up other nations kids. Shheeeeesh bloody rubbish!

This country has some crazy mixed up values. (IMHO) John.

PS: Pussy, nothing wrong with watching topdressing planes, did a lot of it myself. (in fact we did everything and anything when we were kids, total freedom!)

even the cartoons are not funny anymore.

its just 2 minutes of screaming then some fighting.

none of this adult humor that kids find funny for completely different reasons

and we wonder why theres more kids heading towards jail...

[TOTO]

when I was a kid, and that was not that long ago, in my county we used to play at constuction sites with huge cranes, concrete platforms and steal beams everywhere...

Used to brake apart car batteries in order to get the lead out so we can build fire, melt it and lay it in the ground to create shapes...

Used to go steal cheries and getting shot in the ass with salt from an air gun and chased by german sheppards while we were wearing flip flops...

Ride on the front seat of a car withought a seatbelt, wth open windows and our head out the window...

Walk to school in snow storms in -15 and still make it home in one peace...

Used to Put kerosine in the toilets so when the kids at were smoking in the toilets and they trew thir cigarete in the toilet, the toilets exploded and left the school closed for 2 days...

Used to call fake bomb threats at the school when there was a final exam happening...


Used to play with matches and make quite nice bombs out of it...

Teachers used to trow a ball of keys at us if we didn't listen in class, and it hurt...



Those kids we see today are soft man. You put them in a car in the summer and they die , what kinda of shit is that. We got left in the car in the summer in 45degrees celsious and we didnt die.

Maybe someone should start a HTFU school for kids...

[awayatc]

Everybody wants their kids to be better off then they were themselves.....
As of late people have more means to spoil the kids.....

And under the guise of spoiling them,we slowly but surely have strangled them......
They have more posessions then ever before...., but they are definitely no better off.

[BIHB@0610]

They have more posessions then ever before...., but they are definitely no better off.

True .... in a way ..... but it makes me sad when people keen going on about how spoiled our kids are these days, and how they are ALL wrapped in cotton wool.

Mine have a lot more material things than I did, granted, but they also have a lot more opportunity and just as much dirty fun. They have flash mountain bikes, sure, and I take them half way around the country to throw themselves down a downhill track, and get a cool trip down the hill in an ambulance They all have dirt bikes, and their Dad takes them half way around the country on both days of his weekend so they can throw themselves into gorse bushes when they miss a corner, and have the bike land on top of them. They have great camping holidays where they get to find, name, and bury a family of puffer fish, and keep and treasure rotten old hammerhead sharks for days on end, stinking out the camp ground and making me lots of new friends They have overseas holidays where they get to collect coconuts, geckos, and shells, and go snorkelling with barracuda, moray eels, sea snakes, and sting rays, or throw themselves around theme parks that feel just like the Easter show used to (as I remember it anyway!).

And when they come home from all that excitement, they are still happy collecting cicada skins in a bottle, jumping on their trampoline with the cat , sliding down the hill at the park in old cardboard boxes, climbing the rotten old trees in my un-pruned garden, beating each other up until they get black eyes (it's self limiting and I don't interfere unless a bone pokes out) or playing at the school (on 'mum's' confidence course hehe!).

I think most kids, and their parents, these days are doing great

[Oakie]

Random thought about being PC. We used to play 'cowboys and indians' when I was at primary school some 40 odd years ago. I guess they play 'Cowboys and Native Americans' now?

[yungatart]

We used to do all that old stuff too. Cricket on the main road, off to the beach on our own at 10, homemade go karts (they go really fast down Bayly Rd hill in NP!), tree climbing etc.
My kids range in age from 17 up to 33. The things that it was okay for the older ones to do certainly got the "tut tut" look when the younger kids did them. Things really have changed, and not for the better.
Risk taking teaches valuable life skills and should be encouraged IMHO.

[Lissa]

I saw the ad for that 20/20 but I forgot to watch it, but I told my kids yesterday we were going to find a tree to climb and as long as they dont break any bones they should try it! Mister 9 and Miss 7 turned to me and said "but what if we get hurt?" hehe, I told them all about how growing up with three older brothers I was always climbing trees, jumping out at the milk boys as they delivered the milk bottles and watching them jump and the bottles smash (those were the days of glass milk containers), playing cricket on the street, riding my bike down to the river, playing in the stream (unsupervised) down the end of my street. My kids miss out of heaps of stuff, so what I broke an arm, got cuts and bruises its all part of knowing your limits!

As for getting dirty, I actually encourage my kids to make Mud Pies, got a little garden that is theirs (until I plant the tomatos) to get down right dirty!

Off to find a huge arse tree this afternoon

[Ixion]

Random thought about being PC. We used to play 'cowboys and indians' when I was at primary school some 40 odd years ago. I guess they play 'Cowboys and Native Americans' now?

Sexist reactionary ! Shame on you.

Cowpersons and Native Americans please. And I'm not sure that doesn't breach some PC rule about species discrimination against cows.