{"id":515,"date":"2009-08-13T14:08:54","date_gmt":"2009-08-13T21:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=515"},"modified":"2025-11-07T10:33:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T17:33:10","slug":"then-vs-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=515","title":{"rendered":"Then vs Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like most of my generation I had an\u00a0unsupervised childhood.\u00a0\u00a0Although I bet every parent says that!\u00a0 Those of you my age know what I mean.\u00a0 We had 7 channels if we were lucky and NO kids programs so there wasn’t anything else to do except play with our friends, play board games at home or read.\u00a0\u00a0 And being home alone back then was fine once you were 10 or so.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

We lived in a neighborhood that had a bunch of kids.\u00a0 During the school year we played with our classmates but during the summer we played with the kids in the neighborhood no matter the age group.\u00a0 I hung with Nancy Batiski who was a year older than I but tolerated me because we both loved horses.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Now, hard to imagine but try… In elementary School I was a shy girl.\u00a0 NO REALLY… stop laughing.\u00a0\u00a0 I was a follower and I was Nancy’s sidekick.\u00a0 The person she called when she couldn’t find anyone else to play with.\u00a0\u00a0 I was fine with that because she hung with older kids and I got to tag along.\u00a0 She dragged me to the “Streakers Club” the boys had formed in the basement of the Knovaks house where they’d play music and randomly drop their pants and accuse us of looking if we didn’t cover our eyes fast enough.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

I remember being one of about 15 kids in this huge tree.\u00a0 And I mean IN the tree.\u00a0 The boys on the limbs to the left “at work” and us girls walking along the limbs on the right “at home”… I mean this tree was\u00a0huge!\u00a0 I’m not even sure how we all got up there!\u00a0 And we had no fear.\u00a0 And where the hell were the parents!\u00a0 Amazing that none of us ever broke a limb.\u00a0 We were a pack of kids running around the neighborhood on our bikes with absolutely no supervision or orchestrated play dates.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Today is so different.\u00a0 My kids don’t even want to go play at their friends house unless its to play that kids electronics.\u00a0 So play dates are bonding mommy time and as our lives get more and more complicated its just harder and harder to arrange that.\u00a0\u00a0 Add to that the fact my “still in elementary school” kids are just fine with each others company.\u00a0 Especially if they’re doing their favorite pastime together… television.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

So today I told them we would be having one day a month of no electronics except radio.\u00a0 (Can’t live without my music!)\u00a0 All of us… including the parents.\u00a0 Which means we will ALL find a way to entertain ourselves like I used to when I was a kid.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Fine with me… I always have a good book to read!<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like most of my generation I had an\u00a0unsupervised childhood.\u00a0\u00a0Although I bet every parent says that!\u00a0 Those of you my age know what I mean.\u00a0 We had 7 channels if we were lucky and NO kids programs so there wasn’t anything … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=515"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3428,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515\/revisions\/3428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}