What has happened to our kids?

Can someone please tell me what has happened from the time we were kids to now? When I was a kid, my parents would have to basically come down the road to find me at dark thirty to get me home. I would leave the house in the morning and not return till I was made to. I loved riding my bike, jumping on the trampoline, would stay in the little backyard Walmart pool until I was dried up like a prune, and playing with the neighborhood kids. My parents rarely heard the words "I am bored."
There were times that I would pack up a snack and head out on my bike and ride for miles and miles. I would leave out one way and make a big circle back home, about a 13 mile ride. There were no cell phones, so I would have to stop at Mrs. Opal's house (about half way) and call home. Sometimes if it was really hot, I'd end up at the farm with my dad and hitch a ride home. If it were raining, that wouldn't stop me, I'd go out and make mud pies or help my daddy run waterfers in the fields. I got muddy but it was fun.

Not this day and age. I am beginning to have to dust around my children. All they want to do is lay up in their rooms and watch tv. They don't want to go out and play, don't want to ride their bikes (thanks to the new improved scooters which require no energy), don't want to use their imagination, they just want us to make things so simple for them. The don't make play dolls anymore, they don't use old tin and sticks to make forts or tree houses, they want us to build them an airconditioned $2000 playhouse with a deck (okay, I am guilty of this, we actually built it ourselves) or a den and kitchenette in a tree somewhere. They want, want, want and we have spoiled them rotten.

My kids aren't the only ones, it seems to be the going thing now. Children basically have become lazy and sedentary. Unless you have been on another planet in the last year, you should also know that our children today are more overweight than they've ever been. This has become a fast food, biggie sized, video game playing, tv watching society.

This all greatly concerns me. The federal government is on the right track by taking some of the junk food and sugar loaded drinks out of the schools and replacing them with lower fat snacks, water and sugarless drinks. Not that the kids can't bring this junk from home. But until the lunches become more healthy (instead of nachos, pizza, corndogs, etc) and physical education is brought back into schools, this epidemic will continue.

Yes, some schools, including the one I teach at still has PE, but its not the physical education you and I had. These days, they go color with chalk on the sidewalk or play some kickball if they want to. If they don't want to do anything, they just sit around and talk with their friends. When I was in school, we had to run laps, we had to play games we may not know, I dodged that damn ball, tinikled, and red rovered till I about croaked. But we were all made to participate or it affected our grade. We even actually broke a sweat! How horrific!

Now, major cuts in funding for education has meant taking art, music, and PE out of most of the schools and now our kids are being stressed out and schools main focus is teaching to the test. Don't even get me started on these damn standardized tests. I realize us teachers need acountability, we do have this country's future in our classrooms, but our kids are being left behind more now than ever before. I'm not much into politics, but there are somethings I feel strongly about and these are some of the issues that I am deeply concerned about.

Sorry, I didnt' mean to get off on a tangent, but I have four kids in this generation and I just wish things were more like they were when I was their age. A little booze and occasional joint was about all we would be tempted with. Now meth and crack have become rampant and has dug its addictive claws in our youth. Just the other night, there was a bunch of teenage boys mud riding when a 16 year old was so drunk he laid down in the middle of the road and another boy unknowingly ran over him. When he realized what he done, he drove off- scared to death, I'm sure. A few months back, three teenage boys were so barred out on Xanax that the driver lost control and one is totally paralyzed and another basically needs a new face. Sometimes I find myself wishing for the Second Coming to end all this mess.

I used to laugh at my parents when they used to say "back when I was a kid...." and all the "we didn't have this and that..." Now I am saying the same stuff. But I really wish things were that simple again.

God, does that mean I'm becoming my mother...??? Hmmmmmmmm..........