The Human Rabbit

How parents teach their kids in the olden day

general 12:44:00 PM

I like reading blogs every morning before starting my work even though it's just a short one. It gives this sort of 'vision' or 'dream' on what you want to do with your life. It also freshen up your mind.

The blogs that I read are normally revolve around creativity, true stories, experience. Try reading one, cause it can inspire you to get yourself going.

Well, one of the many blogs I follow these days is Timothy Tiah's (I followed him like e.v.e.r.y.d.a.y). What I like most about his writing is, he writes about reality, what has change between now and the past, what have we forgotten about olden days parenthood, how his wife cope with pre-eclampsia during pregnancy, etc. It's so inspiring that it made me feel sooo grateful with what I have, had and will have. Taking life one step at a time and embrace your inner self.

So there's this one topic that actually caught my interest. The '5 things our parents used to do that we are increasingly not doing for our kids'.

1) Travel in a car without a baby seat

Today it’s almost a given for us that every baby must have a special car seat at the back to sit in when traveling in the car. And for good reason too. Car seats are safer and protect a child much better if an accident or a collision were to happen. Heck many countries have even made it the law to have a car seat when traveling with a baby.

Compare it to our parents’ time back in the 80s or 90s.There were 4 kids in my family and not one of us had a baby or toddler car seat in the car. We sat in the back seat just like an adult would (heck most of the time even without a seat belt) and if a baby was too small to sit on his own, he sat on the lap of someone older. It was that simple. No special seats for babies. Everyone was equal.

2) Learn to ride a bicycle

During my time, every kid learned how to ride a bicycle. It wasn’t just a useful life-skill. It was a necessity since going out cycling with your neighborhood friends was part of a late afternoon’s fun. The person who taught you was always either your elder brother or your father, with your mother often cheering you on when you succeed.

Today I increasingly see more and more kids grow up without learning how to ride a bicycle. Perhaps habits change. Kids spend these days spend less time on outdoor activities like cycling and more on indoor activities like video games or iPad games.

3) Coloring books or reading story books on the dining table

Speaking of iPad, go into any family restaurant today for dinner and you’re bound to see a kid being entertained by a cartoon playing on an iPad or a smartphone.

Our parents never had the benefit of that technology. Keeping us busy on the dining table then normally just meant coloring books or even just reading story books. Watching cartoons on the iPads while addictive doesn’t do much for personal development.

Coloring books though gave us the chance to walk away from a dining table having feel like we created something. That we added color to what would have otherwise been a very plain picture.

4) Beat us

If you grew up in Asia in the 80s or earlier, chances are your parents may have beaten you every now and then to discipline you. Today some parents still do use the physical to discipline their kids but it’s becoming less and less because beating your kids to discipline them is seen as a controversial part of parenting now.

A good number of parents disagree with it now and even among those who agree with it want to limit the extent in which they use such force.

5) Allow some level of chaos

I find myself and many new parents my age now to be very overprotective. We’re afraid to let our kids touch dirty things for fear they might put it in their mouth. If someone coughs in public we run away for fear of our kids might get an infection and heck we even worry bringing our kids out for a night walk around the house for fear of getting mosquito bites that might lead to dengue.

That never used to be the case in my parent’s time. They would tell me not to touch dirty things but wouldn’t freak out if I did. They wouldn’t evacuate me from any area within a 5 mile radius if someone coughed. In fact they often felt it was good I built my immune system anyway. We had lots of fun with our nights too. Some of my fondest memories as a 10 year old kid was following my dad out for night rides on his motorbike as we crossed Penang bridge.

Quoted from Timothy Tiah, November 9, 2014