it’s time to bring back the summers of the 90s

Image: Getty Images

American mother Alex didn’t think the summers in the 90s were that bad. So this summer she decided to apply some of the elements from her childhood to the education of her own children. And she gives you tips on how to do it too.

“The days were long and the years… too! I ate my cereal in the morning and stared at the cat, wondering what he had planned for today. My mom was standing by the phone on the wall chatting with the neighbors. The cord gave her only ten feet of room to move. When I walked out the door, she yelled after me: ‘Stay where I can find you!’ That meant somewhere close. At least four streets, 30 houses worth of territory. And she made herself Don’t worry, she knew that at some point someone would push a peanut butter sandwich into my hand and if I fell bad enough, I would come home on its own.

Other times

The 90s were a different time to raise children, or to be educated. It wasn’t all perfect by any means, in some ways it was much worse than it is now. People with psychological problems just had to work their way through it and above all, not whine. We drank liters of soda full of sugar and ate fewer berries. And we had certainly never heard of chickpea pasta. But we also didn’t have phones that needed passwords and security. Or tutoring camps that swallowed up our summers. Instead, we had the perpetual outdoors and endless, unstructured days.

wise lessons

This year I’m trying to bring some of that 90s energy back into 2022. And these are the lessons I want to pass on to you too:

I’m the kind of parent who tries to say “yes” as much as possible. Unless there’s a really good reason not to. But sometimes that leads to too much ‘yes’ and that doesn’t make my children more patient types. Psychologist Lara Goodrich says that kids in the 90s were a lot better at that. After all, they had to wait forever for the commercials and searched encyclopedias for information. You can simply train this by saying ‘no’ more often. And then stick to it.

hello boredom

Children today are sent to nurseries, camps and babysitters. I myself think back to long carefree days in our garden. My biggest problem as an only child was boredom. With just my dolls, a playset and finally MarioKart to fill my hours. When I indicated that I was bored I got ‘Oh, do you have anything to do? I’ll give you something to do” around my ears and that meant: the laundry. My parents weren’t trying to entertain me, so I could either come up with something myself or they would put me to work.

And the great thing is, they didn’t even know they were giving me something very valuable. Research has shown that boredom has major benefits on your creativity. As a parent, I now (after all those camps) schedule time in which I deliberately give my children nothing to do. That way they can figure out for themselves what they want to do. And if they can’t, there’s always the laundry.

Reverse

But of course it wasn’t all roses and shine in those 90s. Attention to both mental and physical health has evolved enormously. We pay more attention to the psyche, and therefore also that of a child. And that, I would like to keep that in 2022.

Source: ScaryMommy.com

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