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All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it
151–160 of 181 posts
Re: All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it
#152I see this clearly at kids birthday parties whenever there is a piñata. Adults hate them. All they see is the goal and the incredibly inefficient path the kids are taking towards it. But the kids love it, they don’t care when they miss, they are just enjoying hitting something with a stick. And every miss heightens the excitement for the eventual lolly scramble.
I get piñatas, but there is an extreme version of this that I find just too much. Not sure in other places, but in Spain there is a kind of fair stall where children use a plastic fishing rod with a magnet or hook to catch some plastic ducks with the corresponding magnet or hook. The ducks have some points and give you rewards, but the payoff is terrible - maybe you spend €10 and you get a gift that you could buy for…
Have you tried setting up a tub of water at home and gluing some magnets to some rubber ducks? When my son was 7 I would pay him his weekly allowance and he would get distracted and leave it on some random table and walk away. It's likely the act of fishing for ducks is more appealing in this instance than any potential ROI calculation.
Re: All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it
#153I see this clearly at kids birthday parties whenever there is a piñata. Adults hate them. All they see is the goal and the incredibly inefficient path the kids are taking towards it. But the kids love it, they don’t care when they miss, they are just enjoying hitting something with a stick. And every miss heightens the excitement for the eventual lolly scramble.
I get piñatas, but there is an extreme version of this that I find just too much. Not sure in other places, but in Spain there is a kind of fair stall where children use a plastic fishing rod with a magnet or hook to catch some plastic ducks with the corresponding magnet or hook. The ducks have some points and give you rewards, but the payoff is terrible - maybe you spend €10 and you get a gift that you could buy for…
It's called a profit deal [1].
People don't pay to get the crap, they pay to have a fun experience and get a memento of it.
Re: All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it
#154I see this clearly at kids birthday parties whenever there is a piñata. Adults hate them. All they see is the goal and the incredibly inefficient path the kids are taking towards it. But the kids love it, they don’t care when they miss, they are just enjoying hitting something with a stick. And every miss heightens the excitement for the eventual lolly scramble.
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Re: All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
"But it's okay if a battery goes on fire daddy, I'll put carbon dioxide on it!" - EBv2.0, aged 3 and a half
I think the first time my son said the 'f' word, he got the tone and the body language exactly right for the context in which he used it (a frustrated/resigned "fuck's sake", with roll-eyes and throw-head-back, look up to the sky). He might have been five years old at the time. And back then, I really didn't say it around them very much (out of an attempt to be somewhat responsible). They're absorbing everything. The…
I never quite understood the obsession with keeping some language away from children that everyone uses themselves. The words are there because they are needed. Walking the euphemism treadmill is a Sisyphus effort.
Re: All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it
#156I mostly remember how it felt to be a child and it's extremely important to me that I continue to do so as I get older. The best days of my life are when I can capture the perfect nostalgia, or deja vu, of the past when I was much younger. Sometimes only for a split second, sometimes longer. Increasingly I believe it's one of the few things in life that truly matters on an existential level: how children feel, and how we feel about (ourselves as) children.
Would appreciate recommendations for reading material about this.
Re: All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Kids are so much smarter and more capable than adults give them credit for, and it is stunting society as a whole I think infantilisation is a huge part of the reason we're where we are today - kids 100 years ago were working harder jobs than most adults today (not implying child slave labour is a good thing, just making a point) Kids today, though, are given exactly 0 responsibility and treated like babies the whole…
One of the first emails from the school when my small son was in Primary 1 was that they'd been making some pancakes in class and he'd picked up a Big Sharp Knife and began slicing some strawberries to put on them, and this was Very Much Not Allowed! Children should not be touching the Big Sharp Knives! Yeah, did he cut himself? No? Was he holding the knife and the strawberries carefully, so he didn't cut himself? Ye…
Terry Pratchett:
"You can't give her that!' she screamed. 'It's not safe!'
IT'S A SWORD, said the Hogfather. THEY'RE NOT MEANT TO BE SAFE.
'She's a child!' shouted Crumley.
IT'S EDUCATIONAL.
'What if she cuts herself?'
THAT WILL BE AN IMPORTANT LESSON"
Re: All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am familiar with her background she was sadly later projecting into many/most of her books. I am pretty sure vast majority of Swedish kids was growing back then in complete families without dead mother/father, same as they do nowadays regardless of marriage or divorce status. Emil of Lönneberga and The Six Bullerby Children are great books, the rest about traumatized kids/orphans not so much as kid books.
You are sure wast majority of kids had both parents same as today after WWI when childbirth was way more dangerous then today? One of parents being dead was way more commom situation then it is today.
according google in 1925 85% Swedish kids were born to married parents
and
"Long-term cohort studies tracking historical Swedish registry data from the early-to-mid 1900s indicate that approximately 2.3% to 3.6% of children experienced the death of a biological parent before reaching adulthood (under 15 to 18 years of age)"
so less than 4% of the kids experienced parental death, absolute majority was born into regular complete families, my point was like half of the Lindgren characters are missing parent for whatever reason, not one in 20 books main characters, she was clearly projecting something unhealthy unrealistic into her books, if she was following reality it would be rare in her books and not that many if not majority of her characters are from incomplete families
Re: All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
"But it's okay if a battery goes on fire daddy, I'll put carbon dioxide on it!" - EBv2.0, aged 3 and a half
I think the first time my son said the 'f' word, he got the tone and the body language exactly right for the context in which he used it (a frustrated/resigned "fuck's sake", with roll-eyes and throw-head-back, look up to the sky). He might have been five years old at the time. And back then, I really didn't say it around them very much (out of an attempt to be somewhat responsible). They're absorbing everything. The…
When EBv2.0 was tiny, like could walk but not really talk tiny, and I was WFH Because Coronapocalypse, he one day did a straight deadass impersonation of me.
Picked up a cordless mouse and held it up to his little ear like a phone, "Hello? Yeah? Yeah..." and started wandering around the living room with it, occasionally scowling and holding his other hand up to his ear, "yeah... yeah... well yeah, yeah? Naja, yeah... nah, nein! Nein nein nein... Yeah, 'kay, bye."
Put the mouse down on the table.
"Uuuuuurgh....."
Absolutely nailed it, Gary Oldman level precision.
Re: All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it
#160Actually, most people are still children, in adult bodies.
Just observe aggressively and you will notice a lot of childhood patterns at work in adult life around you.