KIDS ARE LOSING THEIR CHILDHOOD...do you agree??

I have often noticed this espically since I have a 17 year old sister in law and have watched her grow through her teenage years. Let me point out some issues that cause kids to loose their child hood. First, divorce is one. FOC traditionally gives the mother sole physical custody of the children with the father only haveing visitation rights. Unless the father has lots of money sitting in the bank to fight the court for more visitation that is what they get. So what happens when the kids turn 12 or 13 when they no longer legally need a babysitter and mom is at work and then maybe going out at? Kids are left to fend for themselves and bad decisions take over. My theroy, if kids can't be with mom they should be with dad bottom line. Second, too much freedom. Kids these days have way to much freedom. Parents are busy at work and worring about how long they are going to have their jobs and so on so kids are off doing what they want and they learn grown up stuff way too fast. We did better as kids because in our day only maybe 30% of households had both parents working. Therefore there was always someone to tend to the kids. Now that number is up to around 70% and unfortunetly this is what it does to the kids. And please don't misunderstand I am a working mother too. I have to work in order to survive and pay for the politicaians to live there extraggvant lives!! I think you can tell who I really blame for this mess.

Mimpi, thank you for your comment to my response to Mathewsir. I would like to add the following. It seems, sitting with a drink, while watching the people around you were comparing your childhood with the kids you saw in the mall. One day these kids too will grow up and they will find their kids in a new childhood. It should also be in mind that the new borns take their lessons from the elders. They will learn it and implement it in their own way. This process is continuing through generations and that is called change and is inevitable also. Thank you Mimpi for your good discussion

Yes I have to agree with you there and it is such a shame as they are not being Children and are missing out on the best time of their Lifes. It is sad but what can be done to stop it. They want to be so grown up before their time and then when they are grown up and it is late they want to be a child again.

of course I do agree with you....there is no doubt ...we are loosing our playground in such a rate..so that within few days u will not able to see the sky....the mental growth is totally depends on our physical growth...they are proportional to each other...

I personally don't think they're losing their childhood. They might not have the same childhood as you (or I) did, but it's still a childhood full of curiosity, petty arguments, and discovery. I mean, haven't we all as kids played 'dress-up and grown-up' where we would try on our mothers/parents clothes and acted as though we were adults? The difference between today's society and that of a while ago is our values are a little different. I think one of the causes of this materialistic world (that a bunch of other users have mentioned) was that parents don't have much time to spend with their kids anymore and tend to take the easy way out by giving them what they want (to compensate for lack of time spent, I guess?). And by that they are exposed to the media quite early. I'm 19 now and I had a very sheltered life growing up. I was lucky enough to live on the same street as other kids my age and we would play outside until the sun went down - and sometimes later. We rode our bikes everywhere and spent our time outside playing. It also made a difference that we weren't very well off so we knew not to ask for things like video games, computers, cds etc. And my parents are chinese - and frankly, don't care about celebrities or about what goes on in the north american entertainment world so I wasn't exposed to it until I was 14-15? If you're really concerned your children becoming too exposed to the media, make sure they have other interests - take them to swimming lessons, dance lessions, piano, or sports. And set restrictions - don't buy them their own computers, make sure they don't watch tv/stay on the computer for more than an hour etc. The future is not lost :) Because portable technology is so new, it's hard to realize the consequences that come along with it. I know all the friends I've talked to about this tell me that they would impose a lot more restrictions on their future children in regards to access to technology and media. They realize the negative affects that have arisen from technological advances and they know how to deal with them.

Some borders are shifting all the time; it's nice to see a 5 year old kid to read and write, but it's harder to accept that same kid to go out on a real date at 12. They are not losing their childhoods, they are only living them on a different way than we did.

Yes, really they are losing their childhood. They know so much that I think many of my age also won't about. Information is available to them from so many sources, Mass-media, Internet, Movies... I loved my childhood very much with lots of fun the kids way, but now i don't my kid would have the same fun... The questions that comes to my mind is for gaining progress in life, are we losing something more valuable that needs to be given to our kids...

Yes, I agree with you. Now a days kids do not have any childhood. Since the age of 2 they are admitted to play school,nursery & so on.. They just have to behave like a remote in the hands of parents.

As a mother I would have to agree with you. I watch all these children growing up so fast. I tell my kids all the time there isn't a rush. There is plenty of time to be an adult. it's just hard when everybody around them is doing things that I feel are way to ahead of there age. Every generation grows faster it seems. To the point that teenage girls no longer even look like teenage girls they are women. I remember being a tomboy for the longest time. I just wish they would all slow down and not pass there childhoods by.

Oh yes. Here the kids don't really get recess at school any more. It's all about academics. Don't get me wrong, but they seldom have time to just play or use their brains. They are not creative and don't see the need for using their imaginations. How often do you see kids out playing in yards any more?

I definately agree to this. I think children are losing their childhood. When I was growing up, my childhood was actually great because I felt like a child. My mom used to have this family friend who would babysit us whenever my mother and her mother went out shopping together. Well, today this same friend has three small boys of her own, and we went to visit them the other day, and they just didn't want to do anything for their age. I think children are too busy trying to be in the adult world, that they don't know how to be children. And in these times, it's hard to be children, because there is fear all around them. And they feel like they have to grow up fast in order to survive.

When I was a child I used to play with dolls, roller skate, climb trees, all the things kids used to do back then. Now children are entertained by the media, television, video, dvd, computer games and the like. They have access to the internet too, and this often means they do not develop the social skills they woudl have learnt from simply playing and being children. I have a good friend who has a lovely little girl of nine years old, yet she wants to dress in clothes more suited to a nineteen year old, she is on the way to developing eating disordered as she wants to be stick thin, and she spends a lot of her time looking at clothes catelogues rather than playing.

Absolutely, its very sad to see how fast they grow up.......my girls act so much older than they are and i have to keep reminding them they are only 9 and 13. :-(

I definitely agree. 50% of the things that kids know when they're 10 I had no idea about until I was 16. It's pretty sickening.

yes i think childrens are not anymore children and teenagers are just an adult things are moving so fast and fast that no one can catching up them easily.. they are just running along the road.. hunger for everything is so much there present in kids and teenager now days.. thats the only reason why things are changing so rapidly. Regards, Sam

Well parents don't watch their kids, my son watched almost no TV until middle school. He was busy from the time he was 3, he started swimming lessons, skating lessons, the following year, we added in soccer and hockey. When he was not playing he was at home playing soccer or roller blading or playing roller hockey. He ate dinner, played some more, took a bath and went to bed. He did not have a girl friend until he was almost 17. And then between work, school and sports, they only saw each other 2 days a week. He did not see what was on TV, he did not have a video game until he was 13. I lengthened his childhood as much as I could. How children grow and dress is up to their parents. You keep the kids tired, they don't hang at the malls or watch tv, they stay kids longer.

children are loosing their childhood beacous adult people do'nt let them enimore to be real kids... when i was a kid i was really wild... but today kids just wach tv and speak ditry...is so so sad

I agree im 16 have a job and school next year when im 17 i will have a job highschool and chinese classes at the local university...

I get shocked by the language kids use and the way they dress, but when I remember back, really, I wasn't that different! Maybe when we think of our childhoods, we remember ourselves as more innocent than we really were.:) That said, sure, the internet is probably changing kids SO MUCH. I can't even imagine. I didn't have the internet until college... Today's kids have probably seen all kinds of inappropriate stuff online before they get the "growing and changing" filmstrip in schools! I can't imagine that doesn't make them much older in certain ways. On the bright side, the internet also gives them lots and lots of information. I remember being a kid, and if I wanted to know something, I had to look it up in our (ancient) encyclopedias at home, or else I had to wait to go to the library. Now they can just look on wikipedia...

In China ,children are very busy. They have lot's of homework to do ,At lunch time ,in KFC you will see some children doing homework there. It's terrible.But my sister told me that they were very happy when they were young,maybe 9 years old,they ofhen play kites after school or play with the flowers in the village,no homework. So everything changes when the world grows.