what do you think happens when the kids are left alone to just play?

[bryanthompson]

Shaun brought up this question just a second ago in the walmart thread and it made me wonder...

What did you do for fun when you were growing up, and what do your children, nephews, whatever, do for fun these days?

I can remember always having to make my own fun, and for me that wasn't too long ago. My friends and I were always creative and trying to come up with new games. Hell, we'd sit around and watch Bill Nye and then go try to recreate some of his experiments. Our fun always turned into building something creative.

Have young'ns lost all sense of creativity? Can you teach creativity? When I was learning programming, I'd build all kinds of random programs. I've tried to help several highschool students learn programming in the last year. If given a task, they can figure out how to accomplish it. What's missing is the drive to create something new. There's no creativity.

[livi]

I will emphatically second that. Seems kids nowadays expect their parents to wait on and serve them everything.

To paraphrase Rowan Atkinson : "I woudn´t trust them to sit the right way on the toilet seat...".

[dhoward]

That's because creativity is already engineered for them.

[dhoward]

Originally posted by bryanthompson
My friends and I were always creative and trying to come up with new games. Hell, we'd sit around and watch Bill Nye and then go try to recreate some of his experiments. Our fun always turned into building something creative.
.

Oops.
Just reread.
Here's why that won't work. With creativity comes risk.
Risk of failure.
Risk of social ridicule.
Risk of physical harm.
jesus! What if somebody got near a peanut!

[Joeaksa]

What really perturbs me these days is that parents feel that kids have to be entertained 101% of the time. DVD players in the cars? Give me a break, look out the frigging window and see the world.

Am not real happy with the way its going with kids in some areas these days.

JoeA

[cstreit]

Originally posted by dhoward
jesus! What if somebody got near a peanut!

[RallyJon]

If you leave your children unscheduled for more than 15min, social services will come and take them away.

[tabs]

Stepford Kids...

In my day we just fornicated...

[dhoward]

Originally posted by tabs
Stepford Kids...

In my day we just fornicated...

Well, yeah. After capturing the other kid's fort....

[Rodeo]

When I was a kid, we didn't even have MTV.

We had to drop acid and go to concerts*







*I stole this line from someone, but can't remember who

[dhoward]

Yeah.
Two bucks a hit and a $10 ticket.
2 weeks lunch money.

[Jims5543]

Originally posted by Joeaksa
What really perturbs me these days is that parents feel that kids have to be entertained 101% of the time. DVD players in the cars? Give me a break, look out the frigging window and see the world.

Am not real happy with the way its going with kids in some areas these days.

JoeA

Stricktly forbidden in our car. I will not lie and saw we do not have a portable DVD that we take on long road trips but it is purely for the 2 year old who really does not care about the scenery and then it is only baby einstein dvd's. Otherwise it is not in the car.

Bryan is right there is no creativity today. They expect to be entertained.

My wife and I are very concious of how much time our 12 y/o and 2 y/o are in front of the TV. Both are limited to 1 hour a day and the 12 y/o is not allowed video games on school nights.

[Rot 911]

Here is what I find so interesting. Everyone I know that is a parent is always talking about how when they were a kid if they talked back to a parent/teacher, the got spanked. They all went out and played with their friends until it got dark, they could only watch tv after they did their homework. They ALL talk as if this was a good thing. Yet these are the same people who claim the teachers are out to get their kids, won't let their kids go outside the yard and use tv as a babysitter. Seems to me the parents are more to blame then the kids.

[dhoward]

10-4.

[tabs]

I used to come home and watch Amos & Andy, The Life of Riley and the Early Show (Movie)....after the movie came the BIg News wt Jerry Dunphy....

[dhoward]

little rascals and the 3 stooges.

[RallyJon]

I plan on downloading Bugs Bunny, Roadrunner, Sylvester and Tweetie, Wacky Racers, Rocky and Bulwinkle, etc etc vids for my son to watch. That way we'll have something to talk about.

[BlueSkyJaunte]

Kill your TV.

[legion]

Are these the very same parents that let their children run around wild in restaurants and give you a "how dare you" look when you try to stem the source of the children?

I remember never being allowed to pick any TV show when I was a kid...so I went upstairs and played with Legos. I remember that in middle school/high school, both parents worked, so I had to find my own fun. Most of the time we would steal building supplies from the houses under construction and build forts in the woods...only to have them destroyed by older kids. I remember BMX races with my friends...

We'd play Nintendo, but only after exhausting other sources of entertainment, or if it was raining.

[304065]

If you had a family friend that you trusted, and left alone with your kids, and you came home one day and found out that this friend had been telling the kids sex stories, tales of violence, and accounts of drug use, while instilling crappy values, a lack of civic responsibility and no exercise, how long would you allow that situation to continue?

And yet this is what we do with our televisions.

Blue said it best: Kill your T-E-L-E-V-I-S-I-O-N. Humanity still produced some pretty great human beings before the advent of TV.