Childhood is not the same

I thought about this during my 2:30am feeding... see what I do when I'm awake in the middle of the night/very early morning.

I've seen commercials for Cabbage Patch Kid's 25th Anniversary. Ok I'm going to date myself here... 25 years ago I was 10. 25 years ago I had not one but 2 Cabbage Patch Kids (actually I had the newborns). Do you remember the craziness of the first Christmas that Cabbage Patch Kids were out... I can remember seeing on the news parents getting in fist fights over a doll... anyway I digress, I didn't start this post to talk about the strange actions of people over the "it item" (hmmm that sounds like it maybe a good post in the future).

Ok back onto what I was thinking at 2:30am...

As I said I had 2 Cabbage Patch kids when I was 10 years old. That puts me in the fifth grade. I was not the only person in my fifth grade class with these dolls. It was not odd for a fifth grader to have a doll... Can we say the same thing today?? Nope! I look at my years teaching kindergarten and think about the fifth graders that I knew and can not imagine them playing with a doll. I can not imagine then even considering having a doll no matter how popular and "in" the doll was that year. I think a fifth grader who had a doll (other than one that may be part of a collection like ceramic doll kind of thing) they would be seen as immature.

Children now a days are expected to grow up a lot faster. From the academic expectations that are now put on young children to the behavioral expectations that are put on every child. I can even remember times as a teacher where I looked at behaviors of a child and deemed them immature... when if I thought about the same behavior when I was a child it probably would have been seen as normal.

What are we as a society doing to our children? I can't see this as a good thing, for the most part. Can we blame it on the tv shows and movies that children are allowed to watch? Can we put blame on the music that they are allowed to listen to? Can we put blame on the fact that the world has changed and children aren't allowed to play outside and feel safe? Can we put blame on the business of our lifes? Can we put blame on the technology that they have available to them?

I want my sons to feel that they can play. I want my sons to enjoy life. I want my sons to enjoy their childhoods because soon enough they will be grown up and childhood will be a mere memory.