Now THIS is a self- help title to reckon with....

[Katie-Ellen]

Very wholesome. Nourishing reading for monomaniac uber geeks.

 

[Rich.]

Or an aspiration for the parents of small children.

 

[Emily]

That was the first thought that came to my mind @Rich. ! (It wasn't doing 'nothing'; but I was collecting rosehips this morning, being flittered by thorns and tormented by my 4-year-old, all the while thinking, "I just want to do this with nobody "helping", just be by my self Weep")

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Exactly @Rich and @Rainbird. That's exactly how we want it for small children, and bigger ones too, so the disease of geek-dom doesn't get them.

And boredom training, ie learning how to do self occupation, like focus training, is great training for life.

Tiny tyrants. My mother would order us out of the house or give us chores if we ever dared complain of boredom.

 

[Rich.]

No, no, no! I meant me – after a long day stopping fights, wiping arses, fetching, cooking, cleaning, carrying, playing daddy-is-a-climbing-frame.

Sod the kids, it's me that wants to do nothing, with nobody, all alone by myself.

 

[Emily]

Sod the kids, it's me that wants to do nothing, with nobody, all alone by myself.

That was my thinking too!!

@Katie-Ellen Hazeldine , for sure, that's my hope for my kids, especially the older ones. But when I'm stuck in a ditch with someone driving me mad, the thought is only for me, lol!

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Ahhhh .....those bratterated days are behind me now, she said smugly. Except when there is some crisis of course.

Yes it is a luxury. Lonesome time. Especially for you two....

Not entirely sure about the cakes on the toilet, but, oh well.

 

[Leonora]

Sounds like the definition of writing. If making black marks on paper counts as 'nothing'.

 

[Webbwalker]

Exactly @Rich and @Rainbird. That's exactly how we want it for small children, and bigger ones too, so the disease of geek-dom doesn't get them.

Nothing wrong with geek-dom!

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Please don't be offended @Webbwalker. I was not talking about the professional techie or techie savvy. I was talking about 'Monomaniac uber geek-dom'- and there's plenty wrong with that for growing children. This title is offered as a children's book. I'm hearing from some very concerned parents lately, and the art , value and I think, necessity for happiness, of being able to amuse oneself, pottering about, tinkering, is a great freedom and a boon of unsupervised childhood not fashionable enough right now, and not often given airspace, so I loved, just loved this title.

 

[Rich.]

...the art , value and I think, necessity for happiness, of being able to amuse oneself, pottering about, tinkering, is a great freedom and a boon of unsupervised childhood not fashionable enough right now...

I agree with you, quite passionately actually. I'm lucky enough to live in a village where there's a strong sense of community, where kids still play out in the streets, where there's a sense that independence is worth fostering from the off.

During the Crimean War, during that first terrible winter, British soldiers died in droves, many from disease, but a good number from malnutrition and exposure. Their French allies were largely unaffected by those last two – they were mostly country boys and knew how to live off the land (I know the situation was more complex than that, but stick with me). The British soldiers, on the other hand, were mostly city boys, factory workers, already malnourished, who didn't know the first thing about catching rabbits or building shelters. Many never saw battle at all. Their lack of self-sufficiency killed them first.

And as for the kids we're raising at the moment, here in the industrialized West, it does appear that many will never get to the battle.

 

[Webbwalker]

Goodness, I'm not in the least offended, I was just joking.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Oh good Would hate to seem rude, and I need to try and keep up a bit more with the techies myself.

Does anyone remember Nature tables at school, and growing water cress on cotton wool? It's not quite living off the land @Rich. but I resonate with that concern. Taking children out, blackberrying, catching minnows in a jar, and the whole mushroom thing is a bit dodgy but well....

Skinny, scrawny, tough short little soldiers in WW1, used to living tough, poor souls. Joining up to escape the gruelling life an an agricultural labourer. Hard to imagine that they could see enlistment as an escape, but many did. And the public schoolboys, 6 inches taller on average but still tough, if not brutalised, getting beasted in hard sports and getting walloped. I guess they must have had the ghastly old Spartans in mind.

We had a hill behind our house, it was great to go up there on my own and sit and look over the city as it got dark. There was a scary tramp up there. We found his den and the word was, he had a knife. He came to our front door one summer's morning and my step-father Peter asked what he wanted. The tramp mumbled something and my step-pa passed him a bottle of milk off the doorstep.

My grandmother used to pay my mother sixpence for finding her toad and frog specimens. Not to kill. She was a frog conservationist, but it meant my mother spent a lot of time alone out in the woods and meadows. It's such a sad thing we daren't let our children have that same freedom the same...I certainly didn't dare, though my girls did outdoor things and outward bound stuff and I just hoped they'd like it and get a taste for it.

 

[Emily]

A frog conservationist! I've never heard or thought of that before How fascinating!

unsupervised childhood not fashionable enough right now

Thankfully I have always been quite the least fashionable person I know... My kids are enjoying a very wild and feral free childhood; helped by the fact we live in a quiet area and, during the day everyone under 70 is in work or schools apart from us and a few farmers... this is a great blessing for all concerned since the noise level of my children seems to be several decibels higher than most

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Noisy and feral free. Most excellent

Yes, she dug a big pond in her own garden, made it a frog refuge. She wrote two books, 'Count The Frogs' and 'Consider The Frogs'...toads too. The Lancashire coast is one of the few habitats now of the natterjack toad. Made efforts to prevent schools from using them for dissection in biology lessons.

 

[Rich.]

It's not quite living off the land @Rich. but I resonate with that concern.

I wasn't really being that literal (I don't have a bunker filled with bottled water and tinned food). A general sense of resourcefulness is what I was driving at – kids who aren't afraid of their own imaginations.

But we're all on the same page with this conversation, it seems.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Bunker, heheh.....

I have a big old DIY book somewhere, with a section at the back about surviving emergency situations, including how to survive being caught in the path of a nuee ardente.

I am to get my love ones to jump in a handy pond and submerge till it's rolled over, or crouch in the lee of a big rock.

Yeah, right.

 

[Allan Hunter]

Can't link to "Next to You" by Carole Etzler because I can't find a YouTube or equivalent online performance thereof.

Lying here
Next to you
What a lovely way to spend a summer afternoon...
I feel you breathe quietly
Lost in secret dreams that only you can see
There isn't room for me
I watch your face, and I can tell
There is nothing could make me break that magic spell
And so i smile, I lie still awhile,
Next to you


Hmm, I bet I can find a link to Sarah McLachlan singing Elsewhere...
yeah...