Thanks so much for the inclusion and kind words. I remember seeing a podcast with the author of this book https://www.amazon.co.uk/Respondent-Exposing-Cartel-Family-Law-ebook/dp/B094L76X5Q/ who recounts the nightmarish interference of the CPS in his family and how he was criminalized based only on hearsay. You are right that at the same time they are helicopter parented, they are also being awfully neglected and not getting their needs met by being parented by the screens and devices. My brother does nature talks in UK schools [they are completely ignorant of the natural world - literally don't know the difference between a rabbit and frog], and now he is seeing a phenomen where the younger kids have an american accent because they are hearing american voices on devices much more than they are hearing their parents voices!
Clown World! My sister was a teacher in rural Wisconsin, where you'd think children would know about farming. But now almost all of the family farms (except those owned by the Amish and Mennonites) have been bought up by Big Ag/Pharma. So now the youngsters don't know that food comes from farms. They must think it appears magically, like the rainbow unicorns that fester their little minds.
24/7 news stories amp up parental fears, for sure. I grew up playing in the woods with my cousins unsupervised. It was fabulous! I made my own children play outside all the time. When we lived in a dodgy area I did stay outside with them (we had drug dealing neighbors and prostitutes at that time), but once we moved to a rural area the supervision ended. It is important to learn how to negotiate real life situation on your own, for sure.
My husband's nephew is almost two and his parents have a camera on him in his bedroom. How weird is that? There's so much more I could say on the subject, but will let it go for now. The nanny state wants and has conditioned two generations of children to be docile, fear/anxiety driven, immature adults - which is what they want because they're easier to control. It's mind boggling.
I give a "like" here but it's in part for the freaky story of a kid with a camera in his room. You gotta wonder how long they're going to keep that running.
Samesies. Those children are going to have an extremely difficult life with absolutely no real, loving support from most elders. I don't know what their chances of full recovery might be. Will they be fully hooked into the Matrix? It's bizarre to even consider for a moment.😣
Great story. If we do not let our children and grandchildren learn the lessons of life, bruises, scrapes, falls, blood, and now and then a broken bone. Rejection, losing, sometimes fights, work, chores, and all the other experiences of the world. It helps them to grow and adjust into being productive adults. Protecting them from everything and everybody does them more harm than good.
So true, and coming from a grandfather, your wisdom means a lot to me and hopefully to our readers!
Also, great to hear from you. I've missed you on Substack, and I've been terrible at reaching out to folks via email lately. March is looking like another whirlwind month, but I'll endeavor to stay in touch more often. Wishing you all well!🙏💝
I have been hanging out in Notes mostly, not feeling real motivated to write anything longer than a paragraph these days. You sharing this story brought back many fond memories from my younger years. Thank you for that.
I'm so glad that kitten sent me here, Sharine, with the bonus of Gary's wonderful words. I failed my driver's test at 25--no iced-over potholes necessary. What a grounded, practical guy your dad is. I'm sure he feels loved in his last adventure, where you finally let him go outside and play.
In sailing, there are mistakes that can be termed “above water line mistakes” and “below water line mistakes”. An above water line mistake might be coming in too fast to berth at an expensive yacht club, resulting in a bent railing and being the laughing stock of the club for a while. A below water line mistake might be misreading your charts and hitting an offshore reef when no one else is around. Not good at all.
So, feel free to allow your kids to be in positions where they could make “above water line mistakes”, but not the other kind.
Good followup with the pothole, though I also gotta say that because of having been a pilot when I was a kid, before I fire up the engine I do one full walkaround of my vehicle, tapping it a bit to scare off cats, just to check if anyone's pranked me. I also stare at people while I'm doing this to see if anyone wants to make a joke. Well, I do it because of safety, but also cuz of that time when I had parked a three-ton vehicle and came out hours later and drove forward over the concrete curb thingie and bounced into the air inside the cab. I was like: oh, duh.
Yeah I was a professor for a while and I was always being sent to the principle's office for making too many jokes. We called the principal "the dean" but it was the same idea. I loved your story of the entitted, I mean entitled (I could never spell) young'uns freakin' out when faced with the facts of life.
Not all of us survived childhood but even with mothers trying to pull our pants down in public and whack us, all of us had a blast. Our obscenely named neighborhood, "Linda's Circle," was set way off in a state forest somewhere in Massachusetts in a past so secure that not even Google Earth can find it. We could usually outrun our mothers, and we only used the houses for pitstops and for sleeping. My dad could never spank me, but had to settle for kicking as I ran past. He was a six-foot-seven Goliath who named his kid David, so he was kind of a risk taker himself. Good times.
I kicked bullies in the balls. Some of them learned fast not to fuck with me, others must have enjoyed the torture because they kept coming around for more.
I'll always be thankful for the time spent with Ellen Chute and Eleanor Thomas in the laundry box in Eleanor's basement playing doctor. As an eternal spirit just five years into incarnational embodiment, that was prolly what I came for.
I literally did donuts on someone's lawn with my Dart. I loved that car. It came with safety instructions printed on the outside for pedestrians: Dodge Dart.
God knows why, but Ma and me between us, when she died in Tennessee of covid (or as I called it, old age), had over a century of accident-free driving. She drove for 85 years and I got the rest. I keep thinking a cop's going to pull me over and give me and (posthumously) Ma a medal for keeping everyone's insurance down for a century. It's weird cuz Ma was a leadfoot, famous for keeping Dad's E150 Econoline at ninety on the Tennessee interstates. Funny thing is, when I took my driver's test at sixteen in Massachusetts, I put it in neutral instead of reverse during a three-point, then with the revs high I rammed it into reverse and lurched up onto the sidewalk, somehow not hitting adjacent cars or pedestrians and--here's the point--I still passed. Massachusetts didn't care. That winter Ma was off in Boston in hospital and my brother and Dad were out west and I was alone with a soft-steering '67 Chevy pickup with no seatbelts and a steel dashboard. I remember the feeling of not knowing how to keep the thing on the road. I went to the library, got a stack of books on safe driving, wore my brother's and my hang-gliding helmet, set up cones in an icy parking lot, and taught myself skids. I learned to drive sideways and backwards that February of 1974 before I learned to drive forwards. I used to go up into New Hampshire at night and do high-speed drift-cornering on icy mountain roads because you could flick your car black in those days (not like now where cars fuss at you if you try to make the car go dark) for a half second to see if anyone was coming the other way. Your story about initial incompetence leading to far better competence really hit a nerve for me. I settled down in my twenties to being an extremely courteous driver, often with my window open to add extra hand signals to turn signals and also because I would wave a thanks to oncoming drivers as I was the only driver in Massachusetts to drive with my headlights on in daytime and people were kind enough to care in those days. So I had to kind of wave my way down the road like the pope. Well, thank-you for your stories here. --David
Love your stories. "Massachusetts didn't care" made me LOL. Those were the good ol' days, doing donuts in the icy parking lots (well, the boys did, not me). Hey, you know what? I've got a lead foot, too. It was hard for me living in Los Angeles with all the slow-and-go, stop-and-go traffic, so I would take my Toyota Celica out really late at light and drive the 405, with my stereo cranked up, blasting and singing along with Pat Benatar songs, burying the needle every once in a while on a long, empty stretch south of LAX. That was in the mid-90s. No can do any more, the traffic is nearly constant, even with several more lanes. Your "waving my way down the road" made me instantly recall a funny video by Charlie Berens, called "Midwest Driving School." I hope you like it as much as I do. The one about him meeting a California girl is hilarious, too.
Thanks so much for the inclusion and kind words. I remember seeing a podcast with the author of this book https://www.amazon.co.uk/Respondent-Exposing-Cartel-Family-Law-ebook/dp/B094L76X5Q/ who recounts the nightmarish interference of the CPS in his family and how he was criminalized based only on hearsay. You are right that at the same time they are helicopter parented, they are also being awfully neglected and not getting their needs met by being parented by the screens and devices. My brother does nature talks in UK schools [they are completely ignorant of the natural world - literally don't know the difference between a rabbit and frog], and now he is seeing a phenomen where the younger kids have an american accent because they are hearing american voices on devices much more than they are hearing their parents voices!
Clown World! My sister was a teacher in rural Wisconsin, where you'd think children would know about farming. But now almost all of the family farms (except those owned by the Amish and Mennonites) have been bought up by Big Ag/Pharma. So now the youngsters don't know that food comes from farms. They must think it appears magically, like the rainbow unicorns that fester their little minds.
whoah
24/7 news stories amp up parental fears, for sure. I grew up playing in the woods with my cousins unsupervised. It was fabulous! I made my own children play outside all the time. When we lived in a dodgy area I did stay outside with them (we had drug dealing neighbors and prostitutes at that time), but once we moved to a rural area the supervision ended. It is important to learn how to negotiate real life situation on your own, for sure.
My husband's nephew is almost two and his parents have a camera on him in his bedroom. How weird is that? There's so much more I could say on the subject, but will let it go for now. The nanny state wants and has conditioned two generations of children to be docile, fear/anxiety driven, immature adults - which is what they want because they're easier to control. It's mind boggling.
I give a "like" here but it's in part for the freaky story of a kid with a camera in his room. You gotta wonder how long they're going to keep that running.
I was wondering that myself. Seems like a slippery slope to me.
I do feel sorry for the kids today missing out on a normal life and they end up in therapy & on meds 😿
Samesies. Those children are going to have an extremely difficult life with absolutely no real, loving support from most elders. I don't know what their chances of full recovery might be. Will they be fully hooked into the Matrix? It's bizarre to even consider for a moment.😣
Great story. If we do not let our children and grandchildren learn the lessons of life, bruises, scrapes, falls, blood, and now and then a broken bone. Rejection, losing, sometimes fights, work, chores, and all the other experiences of the world. It helps them to grow and adjust into being productive adults. Protecting them from everything and everybody does them more harm than good.
So true, and coming from a grandfather, your wisdom means a lot to me and hopefully to our readers!
Also, great to hear from you. I've missed you on Substack, and I've been terrible at reaching out to folks via email lately. March is looking like another whirlwind month, but I'll endeavor to stay in touch more often. Wishing you all well!🙏💝
I have been hanging out in Notes mostly, not feeling real motivated to write anything longer than a paragraph these days. You sharing this story brought back many fond memories from my younger years. Thank you for that.
Glad to have inspired some good memories!
I'm so glad that kitten sent me here, Sharine, with the bonus of Gary's wonderful words. I failed my driver's test at 25--no iced-over potholes necessary. What a grounded, practical guy your dad is. I'm sure he feels loved in his last adventure, where you finally let him go outside and play.
In sailing, there are mistakes that can be termed “above water line mistakes” and “below water line mistakes”. An above water line mistake might be coming in too fast to berth at an expensive yacht club, resulting in a bent railing and being the laughing stock of the club for a while. A below water line mistake might be misreading your charts and hitting an offshore reef when no one else is around. Not good at all.
So, feel free to allow your kids to be in positions where they could make “above water line mistakes”, but not the other kind.
A very apt analogy, Johnno! Thanks.
Well said, Sharine. As you can prolly tell from my comments, I had a lot of fun reading about your life. --david
Good followup with the pothole, though I also gotta say that because of having been a pilot when I was a kid, before I fire up the engine I do one full walkaround of my vehicle, tapping it a bit to scare off cats, just to check if anyone's pranked me. I also stare at people while I'm doing this to see if anyone wants to make a joke. Well, I do it because of safety, but also cuz of that time when I had parked a three-ton vehicle and came out hours later and drove forward over the concrete curb thingie and bounced into the air inside the cab. I was like: oh, duh.
Yeah I was a professor for a while and I was always being sent to the principle's office for making too many jokes. We called the principal "the dean" but it was the same idea. I loved your story of the entitted, I mean entitled (I could never spell) young'uns freakin' out when faced with the facts of life.
Not all of us survived childhood but even with mothers trying to pull our pants down in public and whack us, all of us had a blast. Our obscenely named neighborhood, "Linda's Circle," was set way off in a state forest somewhere in Massachusetts in a past so secure that not even Google Earth can find it. We could usually outrun our mothers, and we only used the houses for pitstops and for sleeping. My dad could never spank me, but had to settle for kicking as I ran past. He was a six-foot-seven Goliath who named his kid David, so he was kind of a risk taker himself. Good times.
I love your stories.
Dear Shari--
I love everything about this post.
Your friend,
Timo
Thanks, Timo!
I got my sense of humor the old-fashioned way, from listening to bullies while they shoved me around.
I kicked bullies in the balls. Some of them learned fast not to fuck with me, others must have enjoyed the torture because they kept coming around for more.
I'll always be thankful for the time spent with Ellen Chute and Eleanor Thomas in the laundry box in Eleanor's basement playing doctor. As an eternal spirit just five years into incarnational embodiment, that was prolly what I came for.
That's perfect!
I did co-sleeping with my kids but when I was actually a kid most of the kids in my neighborhood did co-slapping with their parents.
I literally did donuts on someone's lawn with my Dart. I loved that car. It came with safety instructions printed on the outside for pedestrians: Dodge Dart.
😂
God knows why, but Ma and me between us, when she died in Tennessee of covid (or as I called it, old age), had over a century of accident-free driving. She drove for 85 years and I got the rest. I keep thinking a cop's going to pull me over and give me and (posthumously) Ma a medal for keeping everyone's insurance down for a century. It's weird cuz Ma was a leadfoot, famous for keeping Dad's E150 Econoline at ninety on the Tennessee interstates. Funny thing is, when I took my driver's test at sixteen in Massachusetts, I put it in neutral instead of reverse during a three-point, then with the revs high I rammed it into reverse and lurched up onto the sidewalk, somehow not hitting adjacent cars or pedestrians and--here's the point--I still passed. Massachusetts didn't care. That winter Ma was off in Boston in hospital and my brother and Dad were out west and I was alone with a soft-steering '67 Chevy pickup with no seatbelts and a steel dashboard. I remember the feeling of not knowing how to keep the thing on the road. I went to the library, got a stack of books on safe driving, wore my brother's and my hang-gliding helmet, set up cones in an icy parking lot, and taught myself skids. I learned to drive sideways and backwards that February of 1974 before I learned to drive forwards. I used to go up into New Hampshire at night and do high-speed drift-cornering on icy mountain roads because you could flick your car black in those days (not like now where cars fuss at you if you try to make the car go dark) for a half second to see if anyone was coming the other way. Your story about initial incompetence leading to far better competence really hit a nerve for me. I settled down in my twenties to being an extremely courteous driver, often with my window open to add extra hand signals to turn signals and also because I would wave a thanks to oncoming drivers as I was the only driver in Massachusetts to drive with my headlights on in daytime and people were kind enough to care in those days. So I had to kind of wave my way down the road like the pope. Well, thank-you for your stories here. --David
Love your stories. "Massachusetts didn't care" made me LOL. Those were the good ol' days, doing donuts in the icy parking lots (well, the boys did, not me). Hey, you know what? I've got a lead foot, too. It was hard for me living in Los Angeles with all the slow-and-go, stop-and-go traffic, so I would take my Toyota Celica out really late at light and drive the 405, with my stereo cranked up, blasting and singing along with Pat Benatar songs, burying the needle every once in a while on a long, empty stretch south of LAX. That was in the mid-90s. No can do any more, the traffic is nearly constant, even with several more lanes. Your "waving my way down the road" made me instantly recall a funny video by Charlie Berens, called "Midwest Driving School." I hope you like it as much as I do. The one about him meeting a California girl is hilarious, too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGrIz9BSnm8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feMRUH35jQo