Monday, August 10, 2015

Those were the days when kids were "home-preschooled", only spent 1/2 day at kindergarten and learned how to "find something to do"...

I was born on August 13, 1957, at Payne County Hospital in Stillwater, Oklahoma, almost 58 years ago!  It was such a different time.  You could look down Orchard Lane and see children wearing chaps and holsters, lassos in hand, riding tricycle 'horses', in hot pursuit of the next adventure.  Children too young to participate were 'in jail'...that's what the older kids might have called it...in their playpens, soaking in the sunshine and excitement from the bleechers.  


 
Moms like mine would get a lot of housework done while the kids played, outside.  It boggles my mind how much times in America have changed, in a matter of half a century.  

Once we moved to Louisiana (in time for second grade), our non-school hours were spent outside.  Fall meant raking leaves, often into a "football field" configuration, so that the game could commence.  In inclement weather, we congregated at our backyard neighbor's house for a rousing game of canasta.  Springtime meant baseball, and we'd ride our bikes to the vacant lot to work on hitting and fielding ground balls.  And our driveway was the year-round hangout for very competitive games of "horse" or "cat" since WE had the basketball goal.  

I treasured those times...and chose to be a stay-at-home mom so that I could give my kids the same kind of upbringing.  In some respects, I feel like I succeeded.  In other respects, I feel that I failed.  I regret the fact that I "caved" and let them have nintendo, cable tv and a vcr player when their age was still in single digits.  Electronics entered my home with a vengence...and creativity and inventiveness suddently took a back seat.  

I wonder how many of you reading this were blessed with the kind of "preschooling"  that I had.   I sure wish I could tell my mom thank you for all the hours of non-adult conversation that she muddled through joyously with me in tow.  I hope she knew...

Until next blog post,
peace and love to you...
dorothy

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