Home › Forums › Campfire Forum › Apr/MayTBM editorial
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So…… Yep……. Hmmm……..
I could pile on some more examples. I’ll keep it to one. My boy wrote a paper in the 2nd grade about what he did during the weekend. When I read the paper I thought it was pretty darn good. But apparently, for the powers that be, it amounted to a description of some neglect: Running free in the woods, catching catfish out of the beaver pond by hand and cooking them on a campfire, crawdads, etc. OH well. One boys neglect is another’s heaven.
That said, times are a changing. My wife needed a jump while parked at the high school (left lights on) last week. She had cables, but not the knowledge. That’s my department I guess. Anyway, she got a volunteer to provide the car for a jump, but no parents, many dads among them, knew what to do. Wife called me and I explained the process.
People have to check their “smart” phone to know if it’s dark outside. Or if there is a drought, or what season it is. These kids today are not the first generation. Merely the latest in a long line of generations inching farther and farther from nature.
No worries thought, mother nature has ways of correcting such tom-foolery….
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R2, that app probably has something to do with train schedules. … dwc
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What I’m saying applies to what Don is talking about, children not being allowed to run and be children, all they know is the apps on their tech devices. What light have they got to reach for?
The press along with a lot of local societies deny the parents the opportunity to let kids grow and learn from real life experiences.
Thinking on it, there’s areas where I can’t blame anybody for keeping their children in and wonder why the children would want out.
Sure I lived in a world of more childhood freedom, also stricter rules that came with corporal punishment. That’s the way it was.
We need to adapt, try our best to instill good in our children but we ain’t gonna make it like it used to be.
I actually don’t care for that, I just try to make today better.
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I handed the magazine to my wife and had her read Mr. Thomas’ article, she loved it. I grew up in North Memphis with my brothers and a hundred cousins and friends. We roamed the woods around our subdivision, built tunnels, played on the Loosahatchie River, built bows, and hunted and fished. Our parents worked and they knew we were around, but we also watched out for each other. My scout leader was a WWII vet who seemed to know everything about tents, fire, cooking in the open and knives…parents now would be appalled that he smoked in front of us….and all of us kids think he probably took a few pulls on that 1/2 pint in back pocket…When we moved to Missouri it was more of the same, but now it was bigger woods and the Current River. My three boys did not have us hovering over them, we taught them responsibility and they ran with it. They all grew up pretty darn good.
I can’t understand some of these social teachers, workers etc….they aren’t helping kids by hovering over them.
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R2 wrote: … We need to adapt, try our best to instill good in our children but we ain’t gonna make it like it used to be.
I actually don’t care for that, I just try to make today better.
Spot on! Life is change. Those that can’t adapt, go extinct. It’s nice to reminisce about days gone by, but they can’t be lived again.
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I thought it was an excellent editorial.
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I enjoyed it as well. My two boys 4&6 spend hours stomping in mudd puddles and catching bugs in the woods out back. I’ll check in on them every once in a while but they’re on their own mostly. They know what to watch for. I’d argue that not providing a child with unstructured play time in the woods is neglect.
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Bouncing off Clay’s comment I’m reminded of Last Child in the Woods, by Richard Louv. Unstructured play time is the key. Play piano and sports with specific lines to follow is important, but the unstructured time outside of the lines is tremendous for the imagination. dwc
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Lori and I spent yesterday photographing a youth hunt sponsored by the Southern Arizona chapter of Quail Forever. Kids and parents hiking through the desert, playing with bird dogs, shooting shotguns and even learning how to cast a fly rod. Nary a smart phone in sight. There is hope. Don
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I have to agree with the editorial. Like Mr. Thomas, I grew up running the woods in Upstate NY (far from the “Big Apple”). Right behind my house was a very large (to me) chunk of woods that I roamed most of the time. It was about a mile and a half wide and maybe 10 miles long. It had been “landlocked” by the road I lived on and an abandoned railroad track that dated back to the 1910’s. There were a couple of ponds and a stream. If I wasn’t “wandering” & camping, fishing, or hunting (first with my BB gun, after with a .22), I was in school. I’m sure today’s helicopter parents and all the bleeding hearts would consider my life a case of abuse. But my parents really only had one rule, to know where I was and when I expected to be home. Most Saturdays my response was “in the woods, back for dinner” and everything was fine. My only lingering side effect of that abuse is a strong urge to loaf in the woods whenever I can. I would wish the same for today’s kids.
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yup!
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Excellent editorial! This blog post came across my Facebook news feed this morning. It makes a lot of the same points. Personally, I’m glad I was raised by parents who let me learn from failure and didn’t hover over me every waking moment.
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I loved getting dirty…and strong…and fast (I still remember the feeling:))and not even knowing it was all happening and generally good for you. Remember the fights with sticks and if there was a locust branch you could break off you usually won! As natural as it was there must be a positive in todays’ world in a lot less eyes lost from bb gun wars now..but I wouldn’t trade that free range youth for anything. Then there were the “locals vs the migrant worker” fights in the tobacco fields of my youth..and so on and on the benefits of a life less supervised..
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