Reply With QuoteThat's nowt, wait til' they ban talking a lot of crap about quartz watches, what will you do then?Originally Posted by Huertecilla
When I was a kid we all had an air gun.
You had a blowpipe made from electricians tube, a slingshot cut from a forked branch with your pocket knife which tought you that knives also cut fingers. Furthermore most of us had or had access to a push in barrel pistol; Diana was the queen and the BSA 5.5 the grail of powe we respected with awe.
We leared about gravity through climbing trees or shed roofs and got into trouble about window tickers.
Ah and we occasionally went on raid to collect balancing lead from car wheels to cast ´things´ in the sand box of the local kindergarten.
A bit later we tinkered with moped, put a lawn mwoer engine on a push bike and such way before we were 16.
Yes we all had to get stitches every now and then; it was how one learned; it was part of boyhood.
Mind you I lived just within the outskirts of a big city. Not city centre but not suburb.
When I read about air gun prohibition, knife phobia, kids wearing helmets on a pushbike, etc. not being allowed anything, I wonder.
What has happened?
Has feminism escalated from risc- thus learning experience banning matriarchal pampering to the politically correct thing setting society´s norms???
That's nowt, wait til' they ban talking a lot of crap about quartz watches, what will you do then?
´They´ tried Howdy, they tried. Several times is was suggested that all non mechanical talk should be in a seperate sub forum.That's nowt, wait til' they ban talking a lot of crap about quartz watches, what will you do then?
Part of the boyhood mentioned was the digital watch btw. Even cheap mechanicals were far too expensive to give to a kid and so I grew up without a watch but mid seventies at ´college´ we all aspried a [img]http://forum.tz-uk.com/images/icons/icon6.png[img] Seiko.
Living without a watch tought one to be on time other ways as it was no excuse at our place.
I was only talking to the wife about this the other day, my son who is 7 has never climbed a tree not because of the lack of them where we live, he don't want to and no point he says, so i regaled the fact that i had climbed (and fell out of) nearly every tree on the golf course at the back of granddads when i lived there as a boy, was he impressed no!.............back to the Xbox.
Petrus, when I was a kid, a lot of us youngsters had air guns.
I must have shot thousands and thousands of pellets in the garden.
I also had one of those metal target boxes, which had cardboard targets and the pellets landing at the bottom of the box.
This was in a residential area too and was seen as no problem back then.
There were never any accidents with the air guns and no neighbour ever complained.
Looking back it amazes me how I survived compared to the kids these days, Ime still waiting for the lead poisoning to kick in after using my mouth to carry air gun pellets while going on a big 'hunt', god knows how many I swallowed!
Good 1
I could see you doing that.
Though the effect of lead is accumulative, it doesnt seem to have made too much damage.
Yet none of the lot of us had any allergies and I can remember only one arm being broken. Today half the kids have some sort of problem and break a leg on the rare occasion they venture beyond parental supervision.
We moved over here into the countryside when we decided to try if we would be given the joy of having a kid.
He has limited hours of electronics use and we try give him space to be a boy. It is a difficult balance between letting him learn fall and prevent him from breaking his neck in the exerience.
He was/is out playing with kids of the neighbourhood and momentarily popped in for lunch. Muddy, pants torn, knee abrased and to get him wash his black hands before grabbing a slice of bread was all we could do... It´s raining cats ´n dogs now and he will be inside sómewhere. He knows he needs be in on the hour we stipulated or be grounded.
We will have to soak him in hot foamy water when he gets back and he will tell us adventurous stories. The censored good parts ofcourse...
For tomorrow I am summoned for a talk with his teacher. She will no doubt complain that he should do some of the projects with more effort. The problem is that he has a valid point; it is a bit silly to have to make some pretty but useless coloured paper thingamy when you can also make something handy like a sword from wood
I can´t tell her that offcourse because even a woorden sword is a thing of violence and a NoNo.
I'm afriad i don'nt really understand it,a different world.We climbed trees,fought with other gangs,damned rivers(well streams anyway),built mud huts and my 18 yr old son has done none of this.Whether makes any differance in 'long term' i don't know.He wears the longines handwound i gave him though.
My kids are still only young, they both like to climb tree's, the oldest who has his own air rifle and pistol. He started jumping his BMX at 7 although I do make them both wear helmets as do I as I have seen enough serious life changing head injuries at work to not risk it with my kids heads.
I think they do most of the activties I did when i was a kid, except they are supervised when shooting. However they did not have nurf guns, lasertag and paintball when i was a kid, so we used to use air pistols, double layers of clothing and you were not ment to aim at the kids head.
They seem to prefer the surrogate e-games in the comfort of the home. This is possibly/probably the result of not experiencing the fun of the real thin when younger.
We try to find the balance in that too. It took a conscious dedicated effort to get/keep my son from the e-game addiction by providing him real life experiences. He now enjoys freestyle rock climbing. As safe as that is with security lines and all, it took quíte a mental effort of my gf to let him do that.
As long as they funcion in the confines of urban life there is no differance. It is however nauseating to experience how devoid of common sense the protected generation is when they go on an ´adventure´ holliday.Whether makes any differance in 'long term' i don't know.
As to electrically propulsed plastic bb´s and the air/spring pressure lead we had Pastrana72, it imo is very much like kids with blunt plastic knives; they don´t learn to handle the real thing.
Living a pretty "urban life" here, being in the middle of a big city where land is very scarce. They even measure your residence's carpark space ( if you have one ... at £2500 a square metre it's not a cheap buy ) to make sure it is big enough for your intended car. However, there is still space made available for kids to be kids :
This place is known as "the dangerous park" to my kids and their friends. There are lots around. I seem to recall similar "adventure playground" type things in the UK. Have they gone ? The one above is an ever-changing collection of nailed-together forts and slides. The nails, hammers and wood saws are provided. As is the wood for building or burning, the bricks, and bamboo. Marshmallows you have to bring yourself. There is no supervision and no age limit. Being Japan, it doesn't get vandalised and none of the equipment nor materials goes missing overnight either :-)
Bizarre to read of a kid who hasn't climbed a tree !
Paul
Last edited by Tokyo Tokei; 11th March 2013 at 04:58.
This! Fantastic - don't forget a large glass of orange juice drank down in less than 5 seconds too.
As some people have said, just get out there and do it.
Oh, but if your child rides a bike without a helmet, you are an idiot.
All is relative.
Riding a bicycle has a lower risc total than climbing a tree.
Have you seen the wóndefull ´dangerous park´ above? Would you want a kid to wear a hard hat or other protective gear there too?
We tell our kid to wear a helmet depending on the situation. On the horse or his bicycle it is about 50/50.
With freestyle rock climbing he only wore a helmet in competition where he is tempeted to stretch the risc.
As he is progressing to more tricky climbing we obliged him to wear one all the time only since a few months ago.
It is all about chance x consequences and it applies to everything equally.
Chance is very much a result of how the kid is and has been accustomed to deal with ´dangers´ such as sharp tools, gavity and natural obstacles.
Traffic is something else. No helmet will protect a kid there. That is only adding to a false idea of security.
If my kid wants to go to school on his bike he can go through the olive groves without a hard hat. He is prohibited to go over the road no matter whát protective gear. No matter how carefull he is, he is not a match for speeding motorists.
Through the campo the chance of a fall is quite high but the consequences near nil ánd a learning experience.
On the road the chances are lower but the consequences realistically lethal without it being in his circle of influance.
LOL, how very true. My parents house backed onto a large wooded area and me and my mates spent many an afternoon going on "big hunts" same thing pellets in mouth for easy access/loading my Weihrauch HW97. Happy days indeed looking back.
Reference please, or citation.
Nope, but I can't see either any hard edges or two tonne metal vehicles. I'm not worried about a one metre fall onto dirt, I'm worried about a 40km/h metal box being driven by someone checking their texts.
I hope he rides short ponies, then.
Horse-cock. Absolute rubbish. "No helmet will protect a kid there" It'll protect their head. There is literally no reason not to wear a bike helmet. No visibility issues, no false sense of security.
Why did I know you'd argue about this, Zilla? You really do enjoy an argument, don't you?
You are nicely illustrating why kids are rarely allowed to be kids nowadays.
You think that you have the moral higher ground and are thús correct. This is symptomatic in our society and it leads to stiffling meddling, to socalled in our kids interest rules.
No sharp knives allowed, air guns banned and a hard hat when they go outside, íf they are allowed outside that is.
The topic title is apt.
Imo emotional protectiveness and politically correct feel good alibis for less hands on education create a Peltzman-effect.
Istead of investing time in teaching a kid how to fall, the easy way of protective gear and prohibiting is chosen. The alibi for not investing quality time.
The result being pampered kids that are more accident prone than we ever were.
We try let the kid learn from his own mistakes and only make sure he does not break his neck in the process.
As I wrote, we don´t allow the kid to mix with speeding metal boxes. Period.
Through the olive groves the risc is no greater than playing tarzan in the ´dangerous park´.
This parental freedom is very much a threatened area by the supposed moral high ground; the very reason why kids cannot be kids like we could.
Weihrauch HW97, that was serious weaponary, we made do with Diana and Webley junior hardware backed up with the obligatory bone handled 'Bowie' knife. I chuckle thinking about how the leadership of our little troop would change on a daily basis and the never ending arguements, one young warrior became the leader due to the fact he turned up in a 'genuine' Davy Crocket hat, needless to say we were all jealous as hell until his sister let it slip that his mother had made it from a toy monkey won at Blackpool Pleasure Beach!
You seem to have taken me as some representative of the Politically Correct establishment, some ambassador of liberalism. All of the comments in your last post don't engage with my argument at all. You misrepresent my position (or flat out invent some position for me to have!) and suggest that I am the cause of some large malaise to do with kids being kids. And you think I'm claiming some moral high ground?
You're either setting up clumsy straw-man arguments, or genuinely confused about how to have a discussion. Your English is better than my Spanish, Petrus, but you're on your own from here on.
Remember also that we all made our own fishing gear and gutted the fish using knives we carried and and cooked them ourselves over fires we made ourselves.
We also all had chemistry sets that would now be in violation of strategic arms limitation treaties.
During high school, I augmented my pocket money by selling knives, blowpipes (complete with darts), and nunchuks, all custom made to order. I made them myself using all kinds of sharp tools in my dad's garage. Unsupervised.
The health and safety executive would have had a fit to see a 15-year old using dangerous power tools to make dangerous weapons for other irresponsible 15-year olds.
Happy days.
My kids regularly experience gravity, shoot, have knives and explore rivers and streams - getting soaked and muddy in the process.
The major difference between their childhood and mine is that when I did all that my dad was at work and mum was in the kitchen.
When my kids do it it's usually with me and their mum. I am sure we take the edge off somewhat.
I teach them more respect and restraint, for example with air guns, than I ever had. It wasn't unusual for us to have air gun battles, head shots were prohibited - apart from the odd accident - and I did once manage to get an arrow into my brother's knee after he'd skimmed my head with a wayward arrow.
... I am fairly sure my wife would have something to say if I suggested playing chicken with a throwing knife, or a climbing race to the top of an electricity pylon, or a midnight sliding competition across a frozen outdoor swimming pool...
On balance I think my kids are better off!
Gray
Each generation wants their children to have better and safer lives than they did. Not just physically safer, but also economically safer. I ran a bit wild when younger, and don't know how many times it looked like the end. If I had children, I wouldn't want their safety to depend on caprice, as mine has. My father certainly wanted my life to be better and safer than his was, as, indeed, it has been despite my being relatively wild. So, people protect their children from as many risks as they can. This has a downside too. Unless exposed to risk, one doesn't have the opportunity to practice judging risk. Nor does one practice getting out of scrapes and tight spots. Both of these skills can be useful. So, it is a tough one.
Each generation laments the "softness" of the next, while going out of their way to make it so. :)
Best wishes,
Bob
Yes, it is hard thing to manage as it such a soft area. Even when you as a parent are fully aware, the whole surrounding still is a product of an era, including you yourself and your norms.
Thanks for thát one. I had completely overlooked that and you are spot on with this perfect example. The stuff we could simply go get from the pharmacy is unthinkable now too.
I was at a birthday party recently where all the "grown ups" were relaying tales of various dodgy deeds from their youth. Pretty much all of the 18-20 year old folk listening in were of the opinion that they'll never have any such tales to tell and that their childhood had been comparatively boring. Maybe it was a case of them not wanting to own up to anything or nostalgic goggles making us out to be more rebellious than we were but I thought this was a bit of a shame.
I did all that stuff as a kid, it was quite normal to shoot up people with airguns, throw fireworks, make dens, light fires, climb trees etc etc but that was because we had nothing else to do.
It all sounds very romantic but looking back I was lucky not to kill myself or any others.
My sons had the run of the woods behind our house and did the same stuff unfortunately my youngest son hit a girl in the eye with one of those "fun" air pistols and she was very lucky not to be blinded.
He was arrested and taken to the police station where he was lucky to only be cautioned and thank God the girl was OK.
These "fun" activities can very quickly get out of control and at least you know where they are if they stuck in front of a computer.
"Wilderness life" really has no part of modern suburban living IMO no matter how much the romanticists would wish it to.
Cheers,
Neil.
I'm amazed that today's crop of young teenage boys seem to have no interest in petrol engines or the things that they can be found in.
That is exactly why we moved out here as I wrote in the TO. With the observation that aiming at living creatures is a strict NoNo. There is enough vermin on the farm to make the occasonal supervised exception. Last time we had a rat round up it was with a short javelin but that was ´a bit´ too risky.
They are by and large product of their surroundings.
Although by nature they are still the males of the species but nurture is predominantly matriarchal pampering: It is ok for boys to play with dolls buy not ok they climb trees, shoot air guns or play on abandonned lots with demuffled old mopeds. What do you expect?!
These days you can't buy the ingredients to make your own nitroglycerin without someone asking why you want to do that.
Which reminds me that we could fireworks all year round too when I was a kid. Some of the best value I ever got from my pocket money was the thrill of watching (from a very large distance!) a milk bottle disintegrate into powder with a very large bang.
That's because engines have changed. The damn things now run for a year or two at a stretch without servicing. Whereas when we were kids, our dads were up their elbows in the family car's engine every weekend, cleaning sparkplugs and setting gaps, adjusting timing, etc. And some of the grease and interest rubbed off on us.
These modern engines are a result of our hands off society too. We have already escaped several times from being prohibited to open the bonnet and we probably will be at one time.
Anti-tampering caps/devices are anti-male nature realy. Another example of our sons being neutered... euh... nurtured .
We had no airguns, but we had these...
Despite all the miseries of communism, I believe I had the chance of a richer childhood than today's kids.
Cheers,
Christian
Electrician´s pipe!
We taped one pipe on a wooden plank so one could use a longer pipe without bending. The more perfectionist shaped the plank a bit like a rifle stock.
In season we shot soft white berries too. We called them´splat-berries´.
Rosebottles too. The elongated type. Those were painfull. Learned a natural science lesson with those too; about the same air pressure resulting in more kinetic energy using a heavier projectile.
Semi-ripe grapes were also excellent! Though I must say, it was implicit that you never aimed for the face. The back of the neck was a different story however :)
This thread saddens me, because it's half of how I've had to live. Luckily I have very different grandparents who love me doing the proper stuff, so it's not too bad. :)
Allergies are one of my particular bugbears.
When I was at school I remember being made to eat all of my school dinner before I was allowed to go out and play. There was no such thing as nut, gluten, dairy or egg allergies, or if there was I don't recall anyone being rushed to casualty because they were forced to eat quiche for lunch.
Where has all this come from?
Pesticides and crap with E numbers.
It has caused almost 10% decrease per decade in fertility in western men over the past 50 years.
To put insult upon injury we are forbidden to raise our own pig/calf for the annual slaughter. All so we buy bio-industry products raised on E-numbers and cross-gene crops grown on pesticides. Just as eating/living healthy and with common sense doesn´t fuel the chimneys of big pharma.
The big sell out of the populus for the big money. That is what caused it. The same mechanism that is enslaving europe´s working class to private banks.
Anyway, today my 11 y.o. has been working on a wooden sword with proper carpenter´s tools from his granddad. Later in the afternoon we had big fun with air pistols. He is being raised on home grown/butchered meat and pesticide free veggies/fruit from out own plot. No allergies, no nothing. Just the odd bump, cut, graze and other proof of a boy´s life as it should be normal.
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