| I found my childhood to be boring, bordering on depressing. It was literally for a lack of stimulation for the following reasons: - Only child. - Invalid mother, so no access to all that entails: no car, no ability to get to places to do stuff, and all limitations related to health concerns. - Father worked all day. - I lived in a small, dark apartment with no internet, no cable, and no nearby friends. Of course a kid is gonna find ways to entertain himself; I wandered the neighborhood, watched broadcast TV, played with my toys, etc. But the general tone of my childhood can be summed up in a typical weekend: since dad is at work and mom is disabled and sleeps all day, I build my day around the newspaper TV guide. Just boring crap on until I Love Lucy comes on at 4 PM. Fill the cracks in with bouts of random wandering around the neighborhood by myself, but no kids around to play with. Things changed as I grew and got more agency, but my formatives years of like 0-10 were pretty much this. Not ideal; I therefore have pretty strong opinions about giving my kids structure and access to their interests. |