Kids these days ... have it tougher. In the past, our parents could only use us to compare and compete within a smaller group. The worst shame you suffered was a wrong note at the piano recital, not at what age the meet the PlayItWithMeNow toy piano Milestone. Now, with the ease of access to information, every kid is graded against a "milestone" even though more parents do not understand that the milestone is just a the mean of child behavior. Most parents are emptying store shelves of Baby Einstein DVDs in hopes that will cultivate their genius. PerSchools are judged by their "projects" curriculum.

All of the toys are colored so brightly that a parent is unable to identify them. Yet, my one year-old picks up the remote control, cell phone and spends his time pulling out pots and pans and all of those child-proof outlet plugs as well as any device plugged into the wall. What is up with this baby industry?

If every child is special, where do all of the ordinary adults come from?

I half expected your message to be

Kids these days.... with the hair and the clothes!

I guess you mean that kids these days have it tougher than YOU did. I am in your parents' generation and I remember a childhood that was very happy, but one in which adults did not even try to understand kids. Teachers were irritable and crabby and they hit us, sometimes for no reason. And no, these were not nuns, this was a public school. It was not exactly that kids should be "seen and not heard" like in my parents' generation, but adults had their own lives and worries and they fed us and clothed us and sent us to school, and some of us did well and some did poorly and some were average, but the parents just did the best they could, they didn't have their own self esteem wrapped up in their children's' accomplishments. So, yes, in some ways we had it tougher, but in other ways, we were free of the heavy burden of trying to live up to someone else's agenda.

I'm with you as to the horror I feel confronting those "Baby Einstein" DVDs. In this culture we have equated "earlier" with "smarter," and somehow have gotten the idea that a child who reads or does quadratic equations or whatever at a very young age is more intelligent and has a brighter future than one who doesn't do these things until later. Nothing could be further from the truth, but we're creating a lot of unhappy children and disappointed parents in the process.

Kids leave the plastic toys lying around in favor of remote controls, pots and pans, and plugged-in appliances because they are more interested in what people around them are actually doing than in what the toymakers have provided for them. I was always fascinated by how my children ignored their toys and instead spent their time trying to do what they saw adults and older siblings doing. Play is not idle time: a child uses play to figure out what it means to be a human being. A plastic toy often has very little link to reality, and thus has no real meaning.

I love your last question!

--Littljoe

Well Said and remembered. Our parents were consumed with their own lives really and us kids were a part of that life but not the center of it. Just think about all the times in the summer when every single kid in the area was at the local park or school playing kick the can until way after dark with no parent in sight, ever. We all rode our bikes miles to school or walked, our parents did not drive us to school. It was different financially too. Most families had about the same amount of income, there was no huge income separation between us at the time. I think doctors only made about 30k a year back then and that was good money indeed.

How often are kids these days reminded that in 18 minutes thermonuclear destruction could become a reality? Do kids these days have atom bomb attacks in school? Are kids of the wrong skin color relegated to inferior status in law? Can holding hands with someone of the another race or the same gender get you killed?

Stop your bitching?