Kids today do have some advantages, as the technology of the world helps provide much quicker communication, and information at everyone’s fingertips. There is also a wealth of entertainment. However, today’s children are also losing a lot of things as well. As the world becomes a less trusting place, and technology changes how we do things, a lot of what we used to take for granted as children may be going away forever.
10. Snow Days
Most adults are nostalgic about snow days and think back on them fondly. There is nothing like waking up on a school day to a thick layer of snow on the ground, and a confirmation from the TV that you don’t have to go to school, and have a whole day of freedom to play in the snow with your friends. Sure, maybe somewhere in the back of your head you know you’ll have to make it up later, but as a kid you don’t really have much of a sense of the long term, and for one day, everything is just bliss.
Unfortunately, it seems snow days are slowly being phased out of existence in favor of remote learning. While the experiments were already starting, the pandemic seemed to have been the kick schools were waiting for and 39% of school districts are now using some form of remote learning instead of snow days. While some places resist either out of fear remote learning will not be good enough, or out of sheer nostalgia, the snowier states that have the most need for continuity of education are phasing out snow days the quickest,
9. Safety At School
Today in America, dozens to hundreds of school gun incidents are happening every year and there doesn’t seem to be any indication that it is stopping or slowing down anytime soon. This has led to Americans doing something they do really well — talking about the whole issue at length from every angle, getting angry at each other, doing nothing, and then doing the same thing over again.
People have talked about mental health, and gun control and little to nothing has been done about these issues. However, what has been done is a small amount of increased security at school, and active shooter drills to teach kids what to do if a shooter comes to kill them. Now, it is this last part many parents object to, as they feel it is overly traumatizing to their children. Of course the counter argument is that it is supposed to save lives, but some feel it is hardly going to help children that much in a real situation, and the odds aren’t even that high for an individual child to be involved in one.
8. Old School Trick Or Treating
Trick or treating used to be one of the time honored traditions of kids all around, but it is slowly evolving out of what it once was. Many people remember fondly going door to door throughout their neighborhood and getting all sorts of different varieties of candy and filling up a pillowcase with pounds of loot. It was a way for the neighborhood to get to know each other, and was like a big festival for everyone to enjoy — like a giant, moving party in the streets that went door to door without any worries about organization.
Unfortunately, while trick or treating will continue to exist, it is evolving away from the more free spirited even it once was, into something much more regimented and focused on safety. Many parents are less comfortable with their kids going door to door without them, for all sorts of reasons, but mainly it is likely because they just don’t know their neighbors as well anymore. In the 1970’s about 30% of people regularly talked to their neighbors, and only 20% did not do so. Now, that stat has flipped, and things like trunk or treating where the parents are more likely to know all the people involved, have become much more popular.
7. Free Play At Daycare
Many parents have to find someone to watch their younger kids while they are at work, or watch their slightly older kids after school before they can get home. For this reason, daycare has existed for a long time and been a necessity for many parents. For a long time, it was a place where there may be some rules, some activities and your kid is safe, but for the most part they play, have fun and hang out with other kids.
However, today things are changing in a much more businesslike and success oriented direction. Call it daycare, call it after school care, preschool or whatever you want, because at this point they are becoming more and more the same thing in all but name. In order to attract parents, pretty much every institution that watches your kids now wants to teach them stuff in order to impress you and get you to open your wallet and choose them over anyone else. To give instant satisfaction, many are now regularly sending the kids home with completed craft projects so the parents can see what the kids are doing. The child’s success becomes a product, and they become more a number to the system than ever.
6. Licking The Beaters
Most people have fond memories of licking the beaters, often while making desserts with their mom, grandma or other baked goods loving guardian. That taste of the dough before it goes into the oven is a delicious way of priming our taste buds for what’s to come and helps us to be patient when we know it not only has to still bake, but also cool as well. Now, as people have become more concerned about food safety, many guardians are throwing this time honored tradition in the garbage.
The issue is unfortunately twofold, and that makes the problem worse. First, many people were already considering ending this tradition due to fears about salmonella, which is the sickness you can get from eating raw eggs, Now, some people figured it might not be the worst illness, is fairly rare if the eggs are good, and figured it might be worth going ahead with anyways. However, now health experts are pointing out that even worse is the E. Coli you can get from raw flour, which is in most dough even if it is egg free
5. School Music Programs
A lot of people fondly remember music programs from school, whether they were a part of a choir or a band. Going to band camp used to be common enough that it is a meme from an old comedy movie that pretty much everyone knows. Even if you didn’t use it to become a musician, many people feel it helped them learn better communication skills, and made them want to come to school and learn.
Now, while many educators agree that these are good reasons to keep a school music program, they often are the first thing to be cut when budget cuts come. In the United States, when the first recession hit in the late 2000’s, school music programs were facing the hammer before anything else. Since then, only about half of the country has access to school music programs, and those in minority or poor communities are least likely to have them. However, it isn’t just the United States that is cutting school music programs. In the United Kingdom, a study of school budget cuts found that if things continue to go at the same pace, A-level music programs could be gone by 2033.
4. Drinking From The Garden Hose
One thing that just smacks of summer nostalgia is drinking from the garden hose. Many kids have done it over the years with no ill effects, and remember the experience fondly. It is something many kids would do as a group so they could all play outside together without traipsing inside and annoying neighbor moms as they ditty up the moms house. To avoid sharing germs, kids would drink from the stream coming from the hose, and not from the metal itself.
However, it seems that parents are now teaching their kids that this practice is dangerous, and doing everything they can to encourage against it. The issue at play is basically germs, and not really much else. With the internet at their fingertips, the parents of the modern world have full access to the information that tells them that garden hoses are a petri dish for bacteria and viruses. Their is also the issue of insects possibly nesting inside the garden hose that you are drinking from. Even worse, as garden hoses are not meant for drinking they don’t need to meet drinking water laws. This means the fittings can often contain, or leech out lead.
3. Fast Food Playgrounds In America, Adventure Playgrounds In The UK
Back before America started to get a bit more health conscious, at least on the surface, you could go to almost any fast food restaurant, especially McDonalds’, and find a playground area full of colorful slides and almost certainly a ball pit. These playgrounds could get all sorts of bodily fluids on them, and the employees almost certainly hated cleaning them up, but they had a sort of romantic feel to them. The idea that after eating a kid would go play and get some exercise with other kids was a nice idea. Unfortunately, since fast food no longer wants to market to kids, those days are gone.
In the UK, adventure playgrounds are slowly starting to disappear. For those who are not familiar with them, an adventure playground is a safe area, usually more natural, where kids can play freely and explore the world with each other. Oftentimes there are wardens around to help guide the kids and keep everything safe. While they are a great idea, budget cuts are starting to wipe them off the map in the UK. Already 28 have been shut down which is 15% of the original total. Sadly, it seems to be a trend with local city councils.
2. Pokemon Cards
Pokemon cards have always been popular with collectors, even in the early days. Kids from the 90’s remember well just how popular a Charizard could be even when he first came out, and just how much people would give for a first edition in mint condition. However, over the years, the issue has become an even bigger problem and culminated in a situation where kids are getting entirely boxed out of something that is meant for them and really them alone.
Now, we aren’t saying an adult can’t like Pokemon, or enjoy collecting older cards, but there comes a point where you are being unfair to children. Logan Paul recently bought a min condition first edition Charizard for $300,000 which helped drive up the speculation market even further. This speculation along with the pandemic led to a level of renewed adult interest that caused prices on not just old cards, but newer ones to skyrocket. Adults started buying up all the cards so the kids couldn’t, so Target put in limits of how many you could buy at a time. Then there was an incident with a gun in a parking lot, and they stopped selling them entirely for safety reasons. Again, we aren’t saying an adult can’t like Pokekon, but if your hobby involves buying up all the toys meant for little kids, and culminates in gun battles, there is something very wrong there.
1. Lemonade Stands
It used to be that if little kids wanted to save up for something, they would put together a lemonade stand on their front lawn. It was always seen as simply cute by most people, and mostly harmless. Many have fond memories of making their own lemonade stand as a kid, and many others have fond memories of buying lemonade from kids knowing that they just helped a budding entrepreneur work towards their goals in a cool way — and enjoy some delicious lemonade doing it.
However, especially in the United States where regulations are king, it has become almost impossible for kids to run a lemonade stand anymore. Between all the various bits of reed tape, they usually find themselves shut down by the local sheriff before long. In one recent case an eight year old boy from Ohio had his stand shut down because he didn’t have a vendor’s permit. In another recent case, a ten and eleven year old set of girl cousins who were trying to save up money got their lemonade stand shut down because they didn’t have a business license or health permit. To add insult to injury, they told the girls, who had been running their stand for almost a year, that they needed to calculate the excise tax and pay it to the government.