I was born in pretty big family. I have sister and brothers. When I was a kid I just had one toy, a doll. It seemed was enough. I was her mother role and I talked and took care of her. I didn’t have private room but I was free to go out and play with neighbors’ kids. In the past, it was common that every family had 4 or 5 children. So our neighborhood was full of kid. My mother didn’t restrict me and there wasn’t any limitation and restriction in time, place and friend. I remember I sometimes went out early in the morning until noon. We rode bicycle. Every kid hadn’t bicycle. We share it. We compete in riding and running. If we were injured, it wasn’t a big problem. We forgot it quickly and we went back to match. We dug ground and played with soil. Finally our clothes and body were dirty. It was usual. My mother just bought one pair of shoes and 2 or 3 set of dresses every year. Fashion, style and designer cloth didn’t exit. Nobody didn’t care about appearance as much as todays. When weather was cold in the winter, my friends came to our home and finally we had a simple and quiet health food. Life was very simple in the past. There weren’t different hobby and entertainment. I remember TV had 2 channels and they had 1 or 2 hours primitive cartoons. In spite of simplicity, I think I passed a quite childhood. Now I am a teacher and I compare today’s kid lifestyle with my own.
Today families are nuclear family with one or two children. Almost every child has a private room full of gadgets and electronic toys. They have big closet full of shoes and cloth. There are a lot of options for free time, Zoo, museum, aquarium, amusement park, pool, 3D cinema, game nets etc. the TV has some channels that show professional cartoons 24 hours day!!But I like to know are they happier than us or not?
In spite of technology make life easier and more comfortable and it offers new and modern hobbies but as you know digital and electronic devices don’t help to rise talent and mind abilities. I see my students envy others possessions especially on tablet and smart phone. They force their parent to buy for them. Then they get tired after some months and want an upper model and they addicted to digital games that waste their time, energy, talents and harm their health.
In the other hand, small families (one or two kids) cause to rise attention and concern and these extra concern lead to insecurity feeling. The today’s parents don’t allow their kid paly at neighborhood. They forbidden their kid to play with anyone. They forbidden their kid to dug ground and share their property. They limit their kid to handle with different tools to prevent injury.
In the first glimpse, today’s kids wear variety of beautiful cloth and they possess different toys and hobby but they suffer from extra attention, caution, prejudice, isolated, jealous and unhealthy foods. In my childhood we didn’t prejudice other kids and we don’t fear of others.
What is your opinion?
Do you think today’s kids are happier than our generation?
Thanks foe your comments and correction.
Anyway, the answer to your question is very simple: today's children are neither happier nor unhappier because they have nothing to compare with. My parents have always told me that their childhood was way better than mine; but the truth is every generation just takes all goodies that the current time offers for granted. We have to face it, not buying your child, for an example, a tablet while all other children have it makes them unhappy.
Some people questioned that digital information or electronic devices were hamstring children's creativity, I might have to cast a doubt about the speculation. My reasoning is if children can get a couple of devices to help them easier build up their confidence in their talents or learning with these handy devices in the digital format, they can be more likely to maximize their talents. Thinking about present how convenient these devices are to connect them to any place wherever there is internet , they must be able to meet much more phenomenal people than parents' generations and creativity can be stimulated to grow and develop with each other.
Do you think present children are unhappier than last generation? not necessarily, I suppose.
Many children of the last generations have no right to complain when many parents were busy in their career and had no time listening to their children. Their have few chances to do their choice because their parents did not have good material conditions to support their talents or their dream. Children were on the surface free to choose something they consider is true in the past but they in a sense lack a couple of greater opportunities to fulfill their lives. In this case, children at present are luckier and happier at least considering children around me.
Surely you may argue that some children at present are not happy that I can hardly deny or refute but in general, I consider children at present are more likely to have their own time to develop their own business if they are really talent in that field. I wish there would be a useful scale to measure the degree of happiness especially for children. My parents in particular my mother thought we would be very grateful to her dictatorship arrangement for us whereas she finally knew such arbitrary measures were not helping us at all and that more or less did harm to us some years ago when we grew up.
I have been wondering about my childhood from several years. Now I am almost 40 and sometimes I note 80's when I couldn't rely on any gift from Santa Clouse due to a permanent economic crisis. Oranges, bananas or Coca-Cola were a real rarity accessible only during Christmas. Although I spent all free time outside with my colleagues, we don't have any possibility to spent our time effectively. We played but probably we wasted too much time. Nobody and any institution like the school couldn't use our capability to learn something positive.
Through the years I have dreamt about a bicycle, about special soccer shoes and runner shoes. In winter we played hockey on the frozen lake using sticks. Nobody dreamed about skates. I didn't have a possibility to go on the holiday so I spent youngest years in my small village.
In those times I thought it was normal so maybe I was happy because I had a lot of friends and we spent a great time together sometimes eating the only fruits and vegetables which we found in some gardens. But now I see that those time could be better used. My daughter now is 8 and she can swim, learn English, play the violin and has a knowledge which I have acquired maybe when I was 12 -14 years old.
I must mention that I learned swimming when I was 15 without access to swimming pool, I learned ice skating when I was 35 and I bought my dream racing bike 2 year ago. But not all dreams from my childhood have come true yet ...
