Latch Key Kids

I had a conversation with a lady the other day, a single mum; life seems to have its ups and downs for her, and I am sure most parents these days’ wether single, defacto or married.

Her two boys who give her hell, we talked about these new to me letters, because they certainly were not around InMyDay, ADD, ADHD, LD etc etc.

These letters get blamed for all sorts of problems with kids now.

She then we went on to talk about some reasons for this behaviour, broken marriage, strain on the kids, no father figure around all the time, work causing her to leave the kids with sitters or to fend for themselves for short times as they grew older.

I defended these blame factors that the mother used, they were not her fault entirely, all she did was help to create the situation that they lived in.

It was the child who through the choice of free will made the decisions to extenuate the situations that they found themselves in.

In short they were the blame as we all are for everything that happens in our lives as we have the free will to make changes or choose situations that will shape our lives.

I know this is not the be all and end all of answers, I know situations can keep coming up that are less than presentable, I know some seem to be tarred with a charmed life and some seem to get the rough end of the pineapple all the time.

But we still have that free will to choose the path of our making, shaping the outcome in the end.

This brings me back to InMyDay, I was one of the Latch Key generation.

Yes I had a whole family, but it was the start of needs in our life and both parents had to work to make ends meet.

My dad never seemed to be around as he worked all the time and weekends he worked Saturday to pay the taxes he told me, which left Sunday for it seemed nothing but work around the house to catch up.

InMyDay I had to walk the several miles to Primary School each day rain, hail or shine.

No lifts, buses or friends dropping us off.

After school I had I had to do the same walk every single day, while we were younger my brother and I were minded by the lady down the road and that was no picnic.
As I grew and started the walk to the High School, a bit further each day, we became the Latch Key Kids.

This was called so because our parents used to leave out the backdoor key in a secret place for us each day.
The back door in days older than us used to have a lock that operated a latch, a piece of metal, lifting it up to open the door.

Once inside I was in charge of getting the afternoon snacks for us, and organise the play until Mum came home to prepare the tea.

I grew up in an area of Sydney that was real bad, in primary school we had drugs that were rife, girls getting pregnant and even one kid getting arrested for a robbery, yes in Primary School.

I made it through this tuff time because of one reason, I made the right choices, not always, but enough to keep me on the straight and narrow.

Today and then, the situations are very similar, though I really do believe that kids today are being affected by what is in what they eat, and that is everything which does help to put some of their behaviour out of their control, but not all.

Of course the quantity they eat is a problem but certainly the quality is affected, remember everything we consume becomes us; our food is technically a sponge that absorbs everything in its environment to grow, therefore becoming a product of its environment.

Once again we are also a sponge taking on board everything that is in the food that we consume, making us what we are today; we also are a product of our environment.
Sadly I see today’s youth and feel sorry for them, they are already huge, when I was that age I was called Sparrow at High School.
For those who know me now I am a bit bigger than that these days.

I also believe today’s generation is also greatly affected by the media influences that baby sit or entertain them through the day.

They watch TV, Movies and play Computer games that are scenario based.
All of these situations are placing their minds into a false reality, the longer they spend in this false reality the harder it is for their minds to disseminate from reality and fantasy.
Our bodies are trained by our environment to automate a lot of our daily tasks; parts of our bodies have memory stored in our mussels to undertake certain tasks.
These situations are trained into our psyche by repetition and rote learning.
Now take the child who participates in fantasy role plays for long amounts of time.
This has now become Fantasy Learning, and has become the old style of learning by carrying out tasks and situation, learning them by repetition and rote learning.

If a child plays a Car Racing game a lot, he is imbibing into his mussel memories these instincts of how to react during the game whether it be speeding driving erratically, crashing into other cars whatever the game play needs to win.
These are becoming his psyche for driving.

Could this answer some issues we are having with our young drivers?

Now swap the games for one of violence, fighting, bashing victims etc, play enough and the mussel memories and the psych are being trained into a reality that is not suitable for a normal society life.

Movies have long influenced our youth, they see a fight scene in a movie, they take note subconsciously of action taken to survive or win, and these are stored in the memory for later use if needed.

Somewhere in the future usually after alcohol has taken its toll a situation arises that triggers these stored memory responses, they pick up a chair and hit the person with it, though it is not a stage chair this time, serious injury or death can arise from this action.
The same with a bottle it is not sugar glass harmless to the actor, but solid and real.
The case is the same for the stories you see on the news, where a person is brought down like an animal, then like the movies or the games, they are kicked constantly, once again in the movies it is acting, in life it is serious injury or death.

This also can explain the rise in violence by children to their peers.

InMyDay we had a healthy fear of our peers, Parents, Teachers, Police, again InMyDay there was those that bucked the system, they now are either dead, in jail or a now hoper.

Choice is our only true gift that we can use for our betterment.
The answer try to find the time to spend with your kids doing things you both cn enjoy, try to limit their time baby sat by the media’s and try to feed them the best food you can.
Remember you are growing a child who like any plant need all the nurturing and best environment you can give them, it was the same InMyDay, but with less outside influences to make your job harder.