Childhood - now and then

If there is one thing I am very much thankful in my life it is definitely the childhood I had. When thinking of it, there are pretty fast coming some words like woods, nature and creativity to my mind. My childhood was, for sure, a time that I mostly spent outside, whether in the garden playing on the playground and going on the swing or in the woods exploring the nature and whatever comes with it. It was totally normal to me, weather permitting, to leave the house after breakfast, making a quick visit to my parents for lunch and then returning home in the evening (: Most of the time my parents even got a little worried because they wouldn’t know where I was hanging around and I assume they had to ask themselves sometimes “Oh no, where is she got to now again?”. But in fact, they were not really anxious about me because when I was a child it totally was a normal condicion to spend most of the time outside running around.. And when I am thinking about my childhood and the one of children nowadays I can see that there was a change of things.

(me at a pretty young age (: )

I believe that there is a contrast between a childhood ten years ago and a childhood today and actually I am a little bit worried about the changes. Today I can recognize that there is definitely a trend away from spending time outside in the nature towards a condition where children are more and more put in front of the television to entertain themselves. This could have many reasons.. One reason for that could be that the offer of electronical devices is surely increasing and that children, from early on, are growing up just beside all those things like computer games, gameboys, mobile phones, television, and, for example, things like the PlayStation or a Wii. With all that electronical equipment accompanying childrens’ lives from an early age on, many children even don’t learn anymore how to play or how to occupy themselves without, for example, computer games. What is more, I think that it happens very often that parents, due to their career and time-consuming jobs, don’t have much time anymore for their children and for this reason they cannot “teach” their children how to play. There may also be a lack of time spend time with children outside.

All of these changes, I fear, don’t happen for the good of childrens’ creativity. With so much virtual entertainment, I worry that childrens' creativity as well as their imagination cannot improve. By watching television or playing computer games too many hours a day, I think that childrens’ minds are shutting off more and more and are going from an active state of working into a more passive one.

While observing all of those changes, I hope that there will be soon a decline in equipping little children too soon with all kinds of electronical devices which may not be for the best of them. And I hope that children will be soon again experiencing the utter freedom that spending your time outside has to give (: