Watch this and weep for the lost childhood of these children.
Cotton Wool Kids.
Visit The Joy of Lard and indulge your lard fantasies.
Show your contempt for Nanny by buying a T shirt or thong from Nanny's Store.
www.nannyknowsbest.com is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"
Celebrate the joy of living with champagne. Click and drink!
Why not really indulge yourself, by doing all the things that Nanny really hates? Click on the relevant link to indulge yourselves; Food, Bonking, Toys, Gifts and Flowers, Groceries
I watched some of this programme, but had to switch off as it made me too sad.
ReplyDeleteSilly parents totally brainwashed by Nanny producing the next generation of useless parents.
I watched one plank using Humpty Dumpty as a tool to brainwash his kid into how dangerous climbing was. The kids were frightened of their own shadow, no wonder we are seeing a rise in mental illness especially in relation to anxiety, depression and phobias.
The really worrying thing is that, these cotton wool kids, assuming they aren't too frightened to go outside, may be tomorrows 'elf'n'safety officers....Now there's a scary thought.
How very sad.
ReplyDeleteIt is TV so one wonders how much the editorial direction and editing distorts what was filmed, but still sad.
I notice that the lady driving her kids in the Sainsburys clip (driving and being filmed at the same time? Difficult for regular TV presenters, where were H&S? Have the police prosecuted?) did not seem to recognise a need to what the road, only the people outside the car in case they were 'strangers'.
I wonder where the greatest risk arose?
BTW, C4 should get some literate web site content creators or did they literally mean that many kids spent their lives "in doors"?
Perhaps they were thinking of "in drawers" as in the case of Shannon Matthews.
Grant
I truly despair when I see things like this. Even more so when I see it happening in real life. A prime example of which was the recently overheard "Don't go on the sand, it's dirty!" said by a mother to her child at the seaside.
ReplyDeleteMy own daughter is being brought up being allowed to climb, play with mud, poke things with sticks and -er- learn Karate much like I did as a child.
In fact, as an antidote to all the 'elf 'n' safety rubbish that infects our lives, a blatant plug for my own corner of the internet:
http://kaptainskonfessions.blogspot.com/
A celebration of doing the things we really should not have done when we were kids that would make Nannies Nazis weep.
My childhood? Apart from school days (and often enough then too) we'd be out early in the morning and off down to a regular spot by the river, in the woods. There we'd decide where we were going to go, and what we were going to do that day. Down to the beach perhaps; maybe walk to one of the disused quarries in the area and play there, climbing cliffs (er yes, bloody big ones), maybe go for a swim in the sea; go fishing off rocks; climb trees; make a den - sometimes up in a tree - once we spent a couple of weeks digging one out, then roofing it and turfing the top so nobody would notice it (the village copper did and made us fill it in - c'est la vie); we had rope swings all over the place, some really scary too; In the right seasons we would gorge ourselves: within five miles of home we knew where every strawberry patch was, every apple tree (and which ones were the best), every pear tree, every raspberry, gooseberry and blackcurrant bush, we knew every greenhouse the owner grew tomatoes in; every one where there were grape vines, where the farmers planted potato crops, every hen house for eggs (and yes, the occasional chicken ended up inside us). We knew where the seabirds nested - sometimes difficult to get to, but we were like little monkeys when it came to climbing. We made a fire somewhere every day, whether we'd nicked anything that needed cooking or not. We had a collection of air rifles hidden in various places down the woods: we'd hunt and shoot things - birds, rabbits (very tasty - you soon get used to the less pleasant prts of preparation). We used to shoot at each other occasionally - got hit myself once and oh boy does it hurt. Once shot a friend in the head. Blood everywhere - told his dad he fell climbing a barbed wire fence and caught his head. Good lad - didn't bubble me. Ever tried hunting crows with a gun? It can be done, but it's not easy.
ReplyDeleteIt was a childhood out of paradise - rain shine snow warm cold - out we were running around like Jeremiah Johnsons. Did you know there's wonderful stuff to be found down the rubbish dump? Or there used to be.
I enlisted at 15 - appropriate I suppose: the childhood I'd led was similar to how the Spartans trained their kids to be soldiers.
In later years, I became a mature (I hate that word - I'm 55 and I'm still a kid) student. In my forties as a postgrad student, I would occasionally sit in the coffee shop for a cuppa and a fag. If any of the youngsters saw me (you know - those who went straight from school into the university system - start as a postgrad at 21), then befoer I knew it there'd be a bunch of them sitting expectantly around me. "Tell us a story about when you were a kid and the things you used to do".
I asked one of them about that one day. Didn't he do those sorts of things when he was a kid? Or analogous things if he grew up in town. No, there were no kids around where he grew up he said, and his parents used to keep him in all the time. How many kids at the secondary school you went to, I asked - oh, about a thousand or so. Think about it then I said - there must have been a thousand kids within a couple of miles of that school - it's just that their parents kept them prisoner too. "Bastards" he said (his parents).
I weighed 142 lbs the day I enlisted at 15 (they weighed me). I'm 55 now and weigh just slightly under that.
Maybe I ought to write a book.
The plight of today's kids saddens me. They just don't know and will probably never know what freedom is - and that includes the freedom to feel some pain now and again. And broken bones were not uncommon - once plastered up it's back out to play. Sometimes I think the only hope for the future is the little animals we refer to as feral.
Good story Sir Henry. When I was a kid we'd grab a book of 'nature', such as the Ladybird Pond Life book, and go looking for all the bugs and animals; we'd go for miles even in Winter, with nets and wellies, chopping through ice sometimes.
ReplyDeleteYou know, WaterBoatmen are still active in February even when the streams are half-covered in snow?
We managed to find a few Newts and Dragonflies at the old pond behind the derelict garage. Surprising what with the old Super Tens and oil deposits.
As for cotton wool, some parents have always followed this crap, especially mothers, but now they have official backing.
It isn't fundamental; it is just emphasis.
My mother tried to quote from the paper today; two drinks a day makes one a 'heavy drinker'.
Didn't hear the rest. Too busy roaring with contemptuous laughter.
I honestly could cry at this. Reading about it is bad enough but when i actually heard these brainwashed parents of "Cotton Wool Kids"....I shuddered.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid we used to disappear from our homes early in the mornings, on school holidays and at weekends, wearing warm clothing and wellies - play jump the beck, fish, build dens, have fires, climb trees, go on bike rides, etc etc. At lunchtimes and teatimes whichever one of our houses we showed up at was where we all got fed. We'd go home about nine / nine thirty in the evening having been missing all day and our parents were not having kittens as regards our whereabouts.
ReplyDeleteWe were in the open air, in the countryside, in all weathers. It was bloody great.
When my kids started playing computer games, I would let them do so much of it then say "switch that off now and get up on the hills and see the world outside" They are grown up now and still go walking / mountainbiking etc.
What's the point of being on this earth if you don't go outside and look at it.
In Arthur Ransome's 'Swallows & Amazons' Father, when asked whether his children can go sailing in small boats, sends a telegram: "BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS IF NOT DUFFERS WONT DROWN".
ReplyDeletePity that today's parents mostly seem to have abandoned that robust attitude.