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Fat kids - cruel parents

By Arthur Webster of My Local Gazette

I have long maintained that parents of obese children should be charged with child cruelty.

BUT

Let's get something straight here. I was a child in the post-war years when we ate food that would be condemned today as being unhealthy - to say the very least.

How many of you used to have bread and dripping with salt as a treat for tea? How many of you ate suet puddings and dumplings with every meal. Suet is now not sold with the kidneys to which it is attached so todays children, at least, do not see the rendering down of this solid white lump of fat nor the grating of the fat to add to dough. We had all our food fried in lard and had lashings of margarine on bread. Chips and fried potatoes were almost a staple food.

According to the experts (either once read a book or were once drips but are now under pressure) this diet was lethal. How strange then that we all survived it.

It isn't just the food!

When did you last see a gang of children running around and playing? How many of these obese children walk (gassssppp!) to school? How many of these children do any exercise at all?

The worst sin I and my peers could commit as a child was to be indoors on a dry day. Parents were forever telling their children to go out and play. We used local parks and woodland areas. We were allowed free range around many of the gardens in our communities. The only time many of us were allowed to sit still was when we were reading a book. There was always work to do. There was always some activity to partake in.

We burned off calories almost faster than we took them on board.

I have heard all the arguments about not being able to let children out to play because of all the 'danger' out there.

Listen up - there is no more danger out there today than there was forty years ago. The difference today is that the danger is all that people see and all that people talk about. Children were abused when I was a child. Children were murdered and disappeared. So why is there such fear abroad today?

The simple answer is that children today are terrorised by their parents and teachers. They are taught and even sing songs about stranger danger. They are taught to be afraid.

I'm so glad that I grew up in days when children were taught 'if you are in trouble - ask an adult to help you'. Today adults, myself included, dare not help a child in distress because the terrorists in the administration have convinced parents that if I am a stranger I must be a threat.

The war for terror was fought in our homes and in our schools - the war was won and now everybody is not only terrified but they will believe that anything at all is a threat.

Even our food.

This is such a sad world.

Great intel. Your comments bring back memories of we children playing kick-the-can,hide and seek,fishing in the streams and many other activities, without an adult in sight for hours. Great country living.
Thank you .
Frederick

Ah, yes - I remember those days well.
Do you also remember that sickly children, like me, who could not always chase a ball were always brought into the games by their peers who actually understood?
What about those adults who joined in the games? They were fun people but always scored all the goals!

You eloquently describe a tragic turn in the evolution of society: the steady erosion of communal trust. I'm not sure how it happened or if it can be reversed. The only good news I can think of is that the malaise has not taken hold yet in less developed nations, such as Belarus or Burundi.

I will hazzard a guess as to how it happened.
SOCIAL ENGINEERING!
Over the past twenty years children have been given 'rights' but no tuition on how to correctly exercise them.
A child is a two legged 'want', worse, it is a two legged 'want it NOW!'
Parents are now too scared to correct a child because a clip round the ear or a slapped leg carries the death penalty in the (over) developed world. It brings me to hysterical laughter when I hear a (supposedly) adult trying to reason with a screaming brat while the brat simply keeps taking deeper breaths to scream even louder.
Staples in Belarus and Burundi - respect both for self and others.
The developed world respects nobody.

Excellent article. I remember growing up in the 60's spending most of my summers at the local park, going home for meals and sleep. Children had a lot more freedom back then to go outside and play with their friends - unsupervised! That's something that's not happening today - too many electronic toys to play with - and parents won't let children out of their sight.

I'm quite sure that there was some form of 'bush telegraph' among mothers. It didn't seem to take much of a problem for a mother to appear on the scene to adjudicate or simply see fair play.
Children are no longer encouraged to seek 'adventure' by inventing their own physical games because parents have been convinced that there is a murderer in every park, garden, undeveloped plot of land or even a neighbour's garden shed!
Even the games they do play, as you say - too many electronic toys to play with - require no interaction with other person so the children are isolated.

I live in what is considered a dangerous part of the world. South Africa has a crime rate that beggars belief, yet I trust my kids to stay out of trouble. I would never cage the buggers... that is cruelty. PS I do beat the buggers when they are really naughty

Hi, Guy,
A man after my own heart.
A child that does not know that retribution will follow swiftly upon the heels of ant misdemeanor is a child with parents who should know better.
The line is there so that children know that they are safe on one side and risk punishment for crossing to the other - if the line is not respected the adult who tried to position the line will also not be respected. That is probably the reason you see so little respect for parents in the west.

A few years ago, a young nephew enjoyed playing with my daughter's old Gigantic Snakes & Ladders game. Someone bought him an electronic Snakes & Ladders but when he saw me again he told me it wasn't as much fun as the old fashioned Gigantic actual 'board game'. I went out and purchased it for him. That was one well appreciated toy!

Parents and other adults alike, should encourage imagination and instead of giving them electronic toys, buy the old fashioned board games, the big jigsaw puzzles and get off their a**, get down on the floor and play with their children.

My daughter is 23 now, but some of "her" favourite games were Scrabble, Yahtzee, Mastermind, any card game (esp. Crazy 8's), puzzles and that's because I played them with her.

Great memories! You don't get those when your children are playing with electronics or are with the other babysitter "TV"!

I often wonder if nostalgia is doomed. I really can't see the parents of children in twenty years time telling them how they loved to sit in their den and play games by themselves. (I am assumimg, of course, that parents will actually talk to their children!)

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