Those were the Days! I copied this from a recent Probus mag. ( author unknown) So very true.

Hitting children will always be about the adult expressing their own poorly controlled anger by causing pain and fear to someone too small to defend themselves.

How many parents have lost their children to estrangement because they thought beating them installed respect for authority and found all they installed was fear?

How many parents have wrung their hands because their child is being physically abused by a partner and they just can't understand why their child equates abuse with love even though that's how they raised them?

How many parents have watched their child sink into addiction or self harm because the child has learned that abuse is love and are abusing themselves or numbing that pain?

How many parents have watched their own child turn into an angry unattached parent who can't bond with their own child and relies on punishment they received yet the grandparent can't stomach seeing that happen to their own grandchild?

There is no "fine" about beating children

Fear is not respect

I have opinions about this all the time and I got off very lightly compared to some older friends

nanna8

What a bunch of miseries. No sense of humour, glad I don’t live there !

Sense of humour bypass I think.
I enjoyed your list btw.
Particularly the ‘we all knew that we had to accomplish something before we were allowed to be proud of ourselves’
😂

Huh?

There is no age limit for opinions on any subject

I didn't say I was beaten at school, I was commenting on it...

Being children was not a good thing and anyone who thinks children turned put fine after a good beating obviously didn't turn out fine... they think it is fine to beat children.

No logic there

I must be one of the lucky one's and would re-live my childhood and teenage years again at a click of a finger. Born in 1954
I only have happy memories of being free and having lovely friends who I would say were all brought up the same with the same values.
We all lived in a village and were free to go out over the fields and countryside. Walked, biked. My best friend and I aged about 7 or 8 years old used to go into town on the bus most Saturdays. Sometimes to the pictures.
Dare parents allow their children to to that these days. No.
We had lovely Christmases. We only got toys at Christmas and birthdays as far as I remember.
My parent's were not well off. Dad worked at the local ironstone pit six and a half days a week. There were 5 of us children.
Of course it was harder for parents in those days. No mod cons. Of course they had their worries but unlike these day's
I can honestly say that my parents never ever loaded their problems on to us to worry about.
Sadly many children are burdened and weighed down with parents telling them they have no money for gas, electric, mortgage, food etc and they don't know what to do. So many children having to be carers. It's not a child's problem in my opinion. Children should be children not mini adults.
Personally I would rather go back in time than face living in this world in the future. I dread to think what's ahead and only glad I won't be here to see it.
I've been lucky.

FannyCornforth

Violet you were at school mainly during the 1980s, you are a few years younger than me I believe.
I don’t think that your memories of school (beatings?) tie in with most others on here

To add some context, I’m 51 and my husband is 77.
There is absolutely, totally, utterly no comparison with our experiences of school

Probus is a club for retired professional and business people.

Violet you were at school mainly during the 1980s, you are a few years younger than me I believe.
I don’t think that your memories of school (beatings?) tie in with most others on here

Indeed VioletSky. I was terrified every day of my childhood. At school and at home. As I said though, I remember good friends, games, favourite sweets etc.

Redhead56

Very apt indeed the bath time memories are so vivid four of us at once and yes only once a week!

You were lucky you had a bath 😄 we had to go to the public ones. We didn’t have a bathroom until I was 15.

It's all a bit:

"I walked across 3 lanes of traffick with a blindfold on and I was fine!"

Not everyone was fine.

Why do people equate "the good old days" with a good beating and being locked out of the house all day?

I thought it was crap personally

My children are way happier than I ever was and aren't up to all the awful shenanigans children were up to shut out and bored when I was growing up.

annodomini

Did your mums suffer in silence and unacknowledged when they went through 'the change' as the menopause was then mentioned, in hushed tones if at all? Our generation and the next one have much to be grateful for.

And my generation of women (born in the 70’s) and generations to come, have plenty to be grateful and thankful for, regarding what older generations of women achieved.

I'd never heard of the menopause until I was heading towards it. My mum would never have complained about it as it was the least of her worries.

Did your mums suffer in silence and unacknowledged when they went through 'the change' as the menopause was then mentioned, in hushed tones if at all? Our generation and the next one have much to be grateful for.

Nostalgia is about the good things you remember.
There certainly were bad aspects of the past, though as children, we mostly only knew about them if they affected us or our friends.
We weren’t constantly bombarded with words and images of the horrors happening in the world as we are now.
Unlike today, the games we played, kept us fit and were mostly free. I never worried that I couldn’t afford to play hopscotch, or marbles, or tag, or skipping or juggle 2 balls against the wall, though we couldn’t afford the diabolo I coveted.
Now the world is not a safe to play games out in the road or go off for long days in the park or the fields. Many pastimes are sedentary and cost a lot of money.
I wouldn’t want to go back, but if I was as poor now as I was back then, I’d be more aware of how deprived I was

I remember being in bed in a dark room for what seemed like weeks when I had measles . I wasn’t allowed to read in case my eyesight was damaged . I was allowed the radio and listening to MrsDale’s diary . No vaccines then and I caught the lot -certainly wouldn’t want to be in those days again.

Siope

Also loathe this kind of sentimental ‘oh, the good old days’ revisionism.

Me too

You can still do most of those things if you want to, however, most people choose not to.

Oh I agree Blondiescot. I still suffer trauma and flashbacks from my childhood. However, things like Saturday morning pictures for sixpence and favourite sweets etc are good memories.

FannyCornforth

I know that many GNetters take antidepressants, including me and MrC.
Me for Generalised Anxiety Disorder, him for PTSD

And me! I think we can smile at some of those kind of posts, but also see them for what they are too. As for all children being educated together and learning the same - well, in those days, children with what we now call additional support needs wouldn't have been educated in an 'ordinary' school, as they'd more than likely have been shipped off to an institution to spend their lives instead. Yes, we can all look back fondly at the past with nostalgia, but let's not pretend those days were 100% 'the good old days'.

I think we are dealing with two curate’s eggs here - both times were/ are good in parts. I wonder what it will be like for future generations, I would not be surprised if they were equally critical of the past.

My childhood was horrific but I can still feel nostalgia for certain things and I survived it all.

Siope

Also loathe this kind of sentimental ‘oh, the good old days’ revisionism.

Me too.

As for this -

We got the cane or the strap for doing something wrong at
school, they used to call it discipline... yet we all grew up to
accept the rules and to honour and respect those older than
us.

Sure - there's nothing like a good beating with a strap to instil a bit of discipline by those "older" people - who had to be respected simply because they were.

Most people, if they've been lucky, remember their childhood with fondness, whatever era they were born in. It's just nostalgia for lost youth, misinterpreted as being a better era of life.

Thanks Fanny. I looked it up and it is called fluoxetine here. I wondered about saluting the flag,too because as far as I know they didn’t do that here, more America. They must have ‘pinched ‘ it . Still think it is funny,though.

Mawthemerrier your post just reminded me of having scarlet fever at the age of 3 or 4 and being upset when my favourite book (a story about 3 rabbits) had to be burned. I was so upset.

I know that many GNetters take antidepressants, including me and MrC.
Me for Generalised Anxiety Disorder, him for PTSD