INTERFERING PARENTS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19523, 24 June 1933, Page 10

INTERFERING PARENTS

ORGANISING CHILDREN’S LIVES It used to be “the children.” Now it is “the child”; and beneath thissinister change lies the secret of much unwarrantable interference that is made with children’s freedom, says an overseas mother.

The children of pre-war days were dressed and put to bed, taught and fed—and doctored when necessary. But in between were stretches of glorious freedom, when grown-ups went their way and left children to their own devices.'

In some sunny, red-walled kitchen garden, far from parental eye, many an explorer has first put up his tent. In a home-made “shop,” where rabbithutches, ships, barometers, and telephones were constructed, many an engineer has first discovered himself, and so fitted his square person in after life into the necessary square hole. Not so with “the child” to-day. If it so much as begins to amuse itself some clean and clever toy is thrust into its hands or some well-meaning grown-up takes it out in the car. Its very films are snatched from the camera by a kindly parent and taken to the chemist to be developed and printed. It saves all that mess that we children used to make in the bathroom.

It is not the school organisation of work and play—inevitable with large numbers—that I lament, but the perfect passion of modern parents for organising their children’s holidays. Hardly an hour is left free for individual hobbies. It is simply not worth while to begin to make or draw or write or invent anything. It is small wonder that so many children to-day are so nervy, irritable, restless and discontented, or that so many have no resources whatever to amuse themselves.