Those good ole days

 

I am constantly reading about how simple life was when people were children. 

People seem to assume that childhood should be simple, but when you are a child nothing is as simple, or chaotic, or complicated, as it will be when you look back at it with adult eyes.

Some people will be so traumatized they will remember only the darkness and horror.

Some will be so short sighted they will only remember the good times.

And most will forget that children see the world through different eyes than adults.

The world they know is their only world. And whether that is baseball, jacks, and jumping rope, or soccer, skateboards, hackey sacks  and video games they will all respond to it differently depending on the adults around them. If mom and dad are awfulizers their kids will tend to follow suite. If mom and dad take things in stride, their kids are more likely to do the same.

Childhood is for learning how to live in the adult world you are inheriting, not some idealized storybook written by people looking backwards.