At home with the kids

At Home

3/16/20

Now that more parents are working from home, we see programs that give us advice on how to amuse our children and not have them drive us crazy with the enforced togetherness.

I think back to the families in the 1950’s where the Mom stayed at home and took care of the children.

The usual technique was “go out and play and don’t bother me”.

This was especially important during summer vacations and snow days.

Now we have the dividing up of a household and games invented for the kids.

I don’t know how those mothers of bygone days did it, no cell phones ,no Facebook, no Twitter, or self help television shows.

Now we are bombarded with all kinds of “help” with no time for the children to have space and time to be alone.

The generations who grew up before these modern electronic wonders all turned out pretty well, and survived to raise their own families.

For the helicopter parent, now is the chance to really get to know your child, since you will be in lockdown with the little darlings 24/7.

Will families even survive?

I do not know about other senior citizens, but I enjoyed my isolation as a child and teenager.

I had no cell phone, only a family rotary phone which was not for my benefit to chat for hours with a girlfriend.

We had no television, only small a.m. radios.

We had good books.

We had the open spaces of a farming community, where the Garden Club was the elite organization for the women, and Future Farmers the thing for teen age boys.

The girls in high school had Future Home makers, but it was not really for college bound teens, only the ones who got married right away, or took secretarial classes.

So what were the outlets?

Just like in American Graffiti the boys  could build hotrods and cruised down country roads at full throttle with no mufflers.

Country roads were preferred as it was easy to out run the county sheriff.

Shift to modern day practices and we find that those who were raised loosely can now abide by the rules and stay isolated with the minimum of electronic gadgets to amuse them in their imprisonment. 

For those over 80, being shut in with a good book is always preferable to being put on the ice pack and shoved away.