Kids Today Aren't Spoilt

"Back in my day son we didn't have..."
"When I was your age..."

You know how the saying goes. You feel that your kid has it much better than you did. To a certain degree that may be true but kids really are growing up in a different society than we did.

On Saturday we attended a fifth birthday party. It was Yu-Jin's best friend from kindy. They had hired a bouncy castle for the afternoon which wasn't a bad idea considering there was a total of 13 boys at the party. We didn't have one of those in my day but then again we had much more space to play. The party was well organised, not that we had much time to talk to the hosts, and the boys had a treasure hunt for gold coins of chocolate, bubbles to blow, balls to play with and a sandpit to muck around in. Food included party sausage rolls, frankfurts, popcorn, chocolate crackles and other delightful finger food.

Back in my day, mums would know how to cook anything. Today, if I had to make chocolate crackles it would mean firing up the computer and Googling for "chocolate crackles recipe". We don't have to know anything as the knowledge is at our fingertips.

As soon as the cameras came out the kids asked, "Can I see (the photo) it?" My how times have changed. No more waiting for the film to be developed.

We parents were talking about how good the kids of today have it. My father only played cricket with me a couple of times and football about the same. Today we spend more time doing sport with our kids because we feel the need to do something with them. We may take them to the playground more often than our fathers did but look at the situation back then - kids could roam the streets free of the worry of child predators and there were lots of other kids to play with. Nowadays your kids aren't safe to do that and so have little power to entertain themselves. It appears that we spend more time taking our kids to events - like Santa, the miniature trains, the playground, movies, etc - and we do, but because we have so little time to spend with them and want to make the most of it.

I don't think that kids of today are spoilt. We spent our time doing different activities with them so that they get the best out of life.

I bought a secondhand book about Aesop's Fables for Yu-Jin. There are close to 100 stories in the book and I find it to be great reading. My mum would have known all of those stories but I don't. And I don't want my kid to miss out on something that I took for granted.