fishing4luckies
Well-known member
It seems to me that very few youngsters today are prepared to get involved in activities that require effort and application, let alone preparation and preplanning. What they will accept is anything presented on a plate. This is not entirely their own fault, but the result of "progress". When I left school in 1956 at 15. I was abruptly introduced to the principle of "working for a living" in engineering. I was pitched in with highly skilled, no nonsense, don't take no sh*t , unsympathetic tradesman. The learning curve was short and steep, it was called "growing up" and if you didn't, then you suffered. Nowadays kids don't leave school until 16, followed by two years at collage, then on to university, for 4 maybe 5 years . So on leaving Uni, they emerge into the reality of the real world as 23 year old children, with no experience of proper life. This exposure terrifies them so much they have to take a Gap Year to get over the trauma. I thank the Gods I was born in the Era I was, where you had to learn to look after and fend yourself, and not in the cotton wool cosseted age of today.
I think it's as much about parenting as it is about progress.
I've deliberately made choices about how I'm bringing up my kids. They know that life owes them nothing. They understand that anything they have has a cost attached, either monetary or otherwise. TV is not something that is a regular part of their lives (they NEVER watch TV without either myself or their Mum in the room to make sure that it's appropriate - I don't trust ratings or any other system of deciding what is OK for my kids to watch) and they don't have games consoles, iPads, iPhones or anything similar.
I know that makes it sound like we're crazy Plymouth Brethren type luddites, but nothing could be further from the truth. I want them to grow up slowly - so many kids start watching certain movies and programs WAY before they should. My son who is 12 tells me that all of his mates at school have Facebook and Instagram accounts. They all have a raft of digital toys that essentially prevent them form learning how to communicate properly, and they mostly get what they want when they want it.
For his 12th Birthday he wanted me to organise a day and night doing bushcraft in the woods with some of his friends (in February), lighting fires, cooking out, etc etc. They all complained that it would be too cold and they might get wet. Obviously he was upset until I told him that we'd be having a Father and Son trip in April to Exmoor in the rusty old Landrover for a 4 day weekend, wild camping, fishing if we can, and meeting up with his one like minded friend who lives down that way. Roll on April.