Dear readers,

If LPG have posted my letter on the right day, today is National Children’s Day and while it is a day to acknowledge the importance of making sure that all our little ones of tomorrow enjoy and treasure their childhoods, it always reminds me that we oldies often forget all the naughty things that we did when we were young. I recently read about a young boy who nearly set the house on fire in your pages (►►►) and it made me smile and brought back a few things that I had forgotten until then.

I bet every reader has at least one memory that makes them smile.  When I think of my childhood I remember the day that I got spanked on the back of my legs by my teacher because I could not run on the spot properly, and there was the first school play I was in when I forgot to deliver the one sentence that I had to say. I remember having to memorise the words of a hymn because my name was the fifth on my class register and nearly always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. There was that really frilly dress that my mother insisted was perfect for the school party (the one which I wore with a serious air of embarrassment as an accessory on the day) and I will never forget the day I nearly drowned my brother in the pond in the back garden, and all this happened to me before I ever got to secondary school.  But back in the 1960s, a good smack was the recipe that parents used as the ultimate teaching tool.

I think that by the time we children of the 1950s and 1960s got to parenthood, we compensated for all the things we thought that our parents could have done better by bringing up our little ones using the absolute opposite rules to the set that governed our start in life.  Many of us were overly strict with ours if we were spoiled, or became the producers of really spoilt little ones if our parents were stern. 

I suspect that I speak for many when I say that our children grow up too quickly these days, although I think that lockdown has slowed down the process a little for the primary school aged young people over the past year. I also think that, while textbooks are always helpful, for all the information written with authority on the subject of successful parenting, modern mums and dads often read too many, yet still end up muddling through parenthood in spite of the researched science behind getting it right.

I read a little on the internet which informed that National Children’s Day is about making sure that the little ones have the childhood that will help them to grow into healthy adults, although all the text books in the world end up making little difference.   

I suggest we spend the day cherishing our childhood memories, remembering our children when they were that age, and enjoying those grandchildren with a hug if we can, or a chat on the phone if we can’t.  After all, we the present pensioners of the population, were all children in a much less informed age and most of us turned out all right…

Happy National Children’s Day!

IW, Bell Green.

LPG found a little information…

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