Stuff I had that my 3 year old doesn't

GhIFA

Graham_Devon wrote: »

I fear the point is being missed here ISTL.

So lets just take Haven holidays as an example, in Wales., in October (term time) for 4 nights = £239.

Same place, same caravn, in Wales, in September (school holidays) for 4 nights = £719

This is why we used to go in term time (I guess!). If we didn't go in term time, we'd never have gone.

Summer holidays are always expensive, as is the UK. Over the past few years we've had a number of holidays at parks on the continent, it has nearly always worked out cheaper than UK ones.

A week in France at Easter a couple of years ago cost around £300, including the cost of Eurostar.

We've never taken the kids out of school, just a personal choice we made, but the pay off for that is accepting that holidays will cost more.

That said, when I was a kid (born 1975) we never went without holidays - even if these turned out to be going to stay with relatives, or making use of a friend's beach hut at the seaside town 20 miles down the road.

I think it's a bit of a generalisation to say people can't afford holidays anymore - what is actually the case is that not everyone can afford to go abroad every year, that's always been the case, but with a bit of improvisation you can still have a holiday.

dryhat

It's weird how people measure progress/quality of life in terms of how much "stuff" you have or haven't got.

Standard of living and quality of life are two different things.

But consumerism and the dream of perpetual growth have merged the two over the years and people now assess their lives in terms of possessions and call it progress.

The American dream?
Yeah, you have to be asleep to believe it.

atush

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Obviously the opposite of generalis thread. We often look at what our kids have, but not at what they don't have.

So I'll start...What I had that my 3 year old doesn't (or won't have)

- A stay at home mum I mostly stayed at home with ours mainly as I could not afford the childcare x3

- A garden that was actually big enough to learn to ride the bike in we have 2 acres for ours to roam

- A large enough house from the start that was owned by parents even though only one wage was coming in. I had this when Iw as small
- A greenhouse I could grow tomatoes in (I hated them though). no greenhouse required for toms
- Lego that was cheap enough to buy with pocket money. I had lego, they had lego don't ever remember it being cheap
- Computer games that came on cassette that were also cheap enough to buy with pocket money. was young before computers, but worked to summer jobs to pay for my Sony Walkman
- Roundabouts in the park Mine had this

- A playgroup that was simply that. Wasn't overseen by offsted and didn't include parents evenings...you just turned up if you needed to go in. Used to love that place. Have no idea if ofsted looked at nursery schools 16 yrs ago? I never went to playschool

- A playgroup in the supermarket (which supermarket offers this now?!) Never seen or heard of one of those, but have seen the IKEA ones and may have used it once
- Freedom to roam seemingly anywhere I wanted to roam (probably helped by the lack of mobile phones!) Mine are/were free range in the countryside, I restricted them in town and after dark. I roamed as I liked, but was actually approached by 2 Peodophiles. And at 16 was groped/assaulted and flashed at the public library.
- The ice cream van doing it's rounds and the excitement when you heard it (they only seem to park up now?) I hate ice cream vans and avoided them with my kids when I could. But they have seen a few.


I also had quite a lot of stuff. Maybe not the same stuff as now. But I had stuff. A TV, a commodore, an Atari. My chopper bike was frankly awesome. As was the ability to ride it somewhere...more so when I got my dynamo rear light which you had to cycle at 45mph just to get it glowing. I didn't have a lot of stuff, I read books

Edit: Oh and holidays - we used to go on holiday, usually to relatives places or to a caravan, IN term time! I mean, the horror! But it was cheaper (read, therefore viable), and no one seemed to care. I remember those vividly. You can't do that anymore, hence man ykids simply don't get to go on holiday as their parents can't make use of the cheaper times.

Mine have had much more flash holidays than I ever had. I didn't fly until I was 16

Conrad

Graham_Devon wrote: »

- Freedom to roam seemingly anywhere I wanted to roam
.

Less crime, fewer abductions and fewer road accidents than in the past. Kids can still roam if the parents are logical.

Mr._Pricklepants

This thread reminds me of this Monty Python sketch.

Michael Palin: Ahh.. Very passable, this, very passable.

Graham Chapman: Nothing like a good glass of Chateau de Chassilier wine, ay Gessiah?

Terry Gilliam: You're right there Obediah.

Eric Idle: Who'd a thought thirty years ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Chateau de Chassilier wine?

MP: Aye. In them days, we'd a' been glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.

GC: A cup ' COLD tea.

EI: Without milk or sugar.

TG: OR tea!

MP: In a filthy, cracked cup.

EI: We never used to have a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.

GC: The best WE could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.

TG: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.

MP: Aye. BECAUSE we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness."

EI: 'E was right. I was happier then and I had NOTHIN'. We used to live in this tiiiny old house, with greaaaaat big holes in the roof.

GC: House? You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of FALLING!

TG: You were lucky to have a ROOM! *We* used to have to live in a corridor!

MP: Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin' in a corridor! Woulda' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House!? Hmph.

EI: Well when I say "house" it was only a hole in the ground covered by a piece of tarpolin, but it was a house to US.

GC: We were evicted from *our* hole in the ground; we had to go and live in a lake!

TG: You were lucky to have a LAKE! There were a hundred and sixty of us living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road.

MP: Cardboard box?

TG: Aye.

MP: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, out Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!

GC: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were LUCKY!

TG: Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.

EI: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, (pause for laughter), eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing "Hallelujah."

MP: But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.

ALL: Nope, nope..

OffGridLiving

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Oh and holidays - we used to go on holiday, usually to relatives places or to a caravan, IN term time! I mean, the horror! But it was cheaper (read, therefore viable), and no one seemed to care. I remember those vividly. You can't do that anymore, hence man ykids simply don't get to go on holiday as their parents can't make use of the cheaper times.

This is a strange leap of logic, "kids don't go on holiday anymore because their parents aren't allowed to go outside term time"? It's reminiscent of the logic "my cat is deaf, my cat is black, all black cats are deaf".

To many people, the prevention of disrupting children's education for something as immaterial as a holiday would be seen as progress rather than a backward step. Do you have issues with other rules such as it being compulsory that children have to go to school in the first place? Perhaps you'd prefer them to be out in the workplace from age 12, "shock horror, like they did in the good old days"?

Own_My_Own

OffGridLiving wrote: »

This is a strange leap of logic, "kids don't go on holiday anymore because their parents aren't allowed to go outside term time"? It's reminiscent of the logic "my cat is deaf, my cat is black, all black cats are deaf".

To many people, the prevention of disrupting children's education for something as immaterial as a holiday would be seen as progress rather than a backward step. Do you have issues with other rules such as it being compulsory that children have to go to school in the first place? Perhaps you'd prefer them to be out in the workplace from age 12, "shock horror, like the old days"?

How very narrow minded of you. Family holidays are not immaterial. My father worked away when I was a child. Our family holiday was one if the only times I got to spend real quality time with him, as many weekends were taken up by jobs needing going in the house.

OffGridLiving

Own_My_Own wrote: »

How very narrow minded of you. Family holidays are not immaterial. My father worked away when I was a child. Our family holiday was one if the only times I got to spend real quality time with him, as many weekends were taken up by jobs needing going in the house.

The discussion isn't about whether family holidays are important, it's about whether you should disrupt education in order to go on one at a cheaper rate.

I guess it depends on the value you place on your children's education and whether you think a cheaper holiday is more important than the disruption to their education?

grizzly1911

Graham_Devon wrote: »

I fear the point is being missed here ISTL.

So lets just take Haven holidays as an example, in Wales., in October (term time) for 4 nights = £239.

Same place, same caravn, in Wales, in September (school holidays) for 4 nights = £719

This is why we used to go in term time (I guess!). If we didn't go in term time, we'd never have gone.

We always used to go in static vans or down to Bournemouth year after year and stop in a B&B that was cheap but excellent, even if it was about 2 miles form the beach.

Our kids have mainly been in self accomodation cottages /flats/houses when they were really small then we camped for Whit/Summer holidays. We invested in a good quality, sizeable tent (8 berth) and gear in the end of season sale one year.

The kids loved it out from early morning till dusk, when we weren't out or on the beach, made lots of "mates". Best thing was it wore them out so we could get some peace too.

When it was wet there was loads of space for them in the tent if need be for games, colouring etc. We looked at vans but for me they were too small.

We used a nice site for several years and often met, unintentionally, the same families and children. A much more social thing.

We did do a few European (non beach) holidays and the kids always got their School Trips.

N1AK

Generali wrote: »

I guess it depends on whether you value education or holidays more highly.

Only if you see it as such a black and white, and pretty judgemental, decision. Is there any evidence to suggest that a child taking a week off school noticeably alters how well educated they will be?

If allowing more affordable holidays in term time meant kids got exposure to more of the world then it could considerably improve their prospects.