[Closed] Kids these days....

My kids are sound, it's how I've dragged them up I suppose...

My three year old described in great detail the other day how "we don't need pennies" to buy a huge helium balloon in the newsagent's as "you and mummy can drive up very fast, let me out, I'll run in, pick it up before the woman sees, run out, jump in the car and you and mummy drive away".

A bright future awaits.

wrightyson - Member
My kids are sound, [b]it's how I've dragged them up I suppose...[/b]

This I think is a key point (In a good way!)

Pook - Member
My three year old described in great detail the other day how "we don't need pennies" to buy a huge helium balloon in the newsagent's as "you and mummy can drive up very fast, let me out, I'll run in, pick it up before the woman sees, run out, jump in the car and you and mummy drive away".

A bright future awaits.

Just lol! 😆

It's true though, talk of I pads, phones etc is usually met with explain why? Yes they both have iphones but bought by me when I deemed they were needed, none of this I need the latest version etc as that one is fine. Laddo has just got an xbox one, bought with every penny of his own saved up money. I bought him a duel charger thing as he'd done well in first week at big school.

as he'd done well in first week at big school.

Xbox one a bit much for a kid in reception class surely

Corrrr! Big School

dont worry about the kids they are just the tip of the iceberg.. see the rest of the human population

the sense of entitlement to the latest & greatest iPad/iPhone

Substitute the ipad/ iphone with house, car.. even job for more that 26k

These kids are smart its just we have ruined the environment for them explore and expand as human beings

What's set you off Op? drinking last night were we?!

These kids are smart its just we have ruined the environment for them explore and expand as human beings

Quite. I don't think it helps that a certain subset of the Baby Boomer generation seem to spend half their lives telling the Yoot of Today how shit they are, neatly avoiding the fact that it was them who ****ed it up for the rest of us in the first place.

It's my nephew's s birthday today.
I texted him a couple of weeks ago to ask how he was, how his summer holidays had been and what he wanted for his birthday.
He came back to me almost immediately with two requests. Nothing about his holidays or general wellbeing.
Today I called him to wish him happy birthday.
Call was ignored. And, if past years are anything to go by, I won't get even so much as a thank you text for the gifts.
He is 18 in three years time. I am going to put an end to present buying then. Can't bloody wait.
So yeah I agree with you OP. Kids, bloody awful things!
There are some nice ones I know but also many many horrors.

He is 18 in three years time. I am going to put an end to present buying then. Can't bloody wait.

Why wait? Bollocks to the ungrateful git, teach him an important lesson about life.

^This.

15 is plenty old enough to be told to GTF by an uncle.

I was sat in McDs (don't throw poo) after me and my eldest (7) had been playing on the pump track for ages this morning. Lad around the same age as him sat by us with friends and had an iPhone 5!! He was saying that he got his first iPhone at 5 and was getting an iPhone 7 😯 He was also talking about his YouTube channel and playing with his computer. I was like WTF?!?! I'm glad my lads enjoy riding bikes, playing etc as I couldn't cope with a bedroom dwelling nerdlet and I like computers!!

Mmm, I get annoyedby the lack of a thank you. In these days of communication its not hard to text, phone, or email a thank you for a gift.
I have to do without many things to give presents, so to not get a thank you makes me quite angry.
As children we were made to handwrite thank you letters to relatives and friends of our parents for any gifts we received.
Oh and don't get me started on lack of manners, mostly table at the table - shudder.

well they must have learned it from somewhere. slaughter all parents IMHO

As a counter a lot of kids are awesome,many I teach are. Some are rude self entitled idiots. Come parents eve guess what the great ones parents are like and guess what the idiots parents are like.

I am always battling in laws over this. Apparently my son had to have presents on his sister's birthday so he did not feel left out, what a load of bollocks.

They also gavee him an iPad as he "needed to learn to use one for school" - I gave it back with a fight

Quite. I don't think it helps that a certain subset of the Baby Boomer generation seem to spend half their lives telling the Yoot of Today how shit they are, neatly avoiding the fact that it was them who ****ed it up for the rest of us in the first place.

So true Cougar.

Two of my boys get presents on each others birthdays, I think it's spoiling them but the wife insists. Twins are a real pain.
They do play on the computer and watch TV bit also have swimming, football and cycling every week and play outside quite s bit. No phones until they're older and they have an old iPad they get to use occasionally but only in moderation. Also I teach them to swear at any grumpy old men they see, keeps me happy.

a lot of kids are awesome

I totally agree with you. The kids who looked a bit rough and ready at the local park and BMX track were really nice and respectful and didn't swear around my kids. I had a great chat with them and they encouraged my lad and let him have a go on their rocker bmx. Absolute stars!!

The kids of a similar age who live on my estate (middle classville) are little shits who are cheeky and rude.

Yep, let's blame teenagers for society's ills. 🙄

Kids copy their parents, surely? Hard to blame them for the culture of consumerism when they're not even in the workforce yet, making the commercial and legislative decisions that frame the choices we all have...

It's us that's created the world they're living in.

Both my kids have iPads the schools provide homework that can the complete on them, my eldest has PS4 too and an iPhone. She spends as much time outside as she does in if not more, I get bored of people kids sit in all day playing on consoles. It's only true in a handful of cases, no different to the kids that never played out when we were young.

When I was a nipper I was lucky If I got a quid for the school disco!

it's just a perception, and simplistic in the extreme. Children are unfairly the object of criticism for this type of behavior for two main reasons; the 'idea' that kids understand the value of nothing, because they don't know what it is to earn something, and secondly that 'we' had it worse than they do today.

Truth is, this behavior is arguably more prevalent in adults. And they have no excuses.
Nevertheless, we're all products of a society that conditions us to behave this way.

jekkyl - Member
What's set you off Op? [b]drinking last night were we?![/b]

Hell no! 😀 End stage kidney failure. Allowed 1.5l max between dialysis sessions - this includes any liquid in food etc! My days of drinking anything but small cups of tea are long dead. Just to make it clear - I wasn't wishing to bash any particular kiddy winks, Just that some don't have any appreciation of what they have/receive. .Thank-you is so easy 🙂

Strange, when I was at school I remember a decent number of obnoxious, lazy kids who had no real interest in the outside world and had low aspirations of mostly looking forward to a giro etc. but knew every shop that would sell them fags and could shoplift booze with incredible skills, back in those days it was video nasties and whatever else that was to blame.

I agree about all the clubs! We have twins (aged 7) and they do Brownies, swimming (on top of my taking them at the weekend and school lessons), gymnastics, horse riding (one of them) and singing/acting classes (the other one). They are also about to start music lessons. I think it is too much but my wife says they should get all these opportunities. When I was a kid I did Cubs and the occasional swimming trip with my dad.

Chatting to Mrs Grips this morning about gifts.. she's mentioned many times before that the (not well off) parents of my daughter's schoolfriends shower their kids with a ridiculous volume of Christmas gifts. They still have *unopened* gifts from last year, that's how little they care about things. So what's the point?

Some kids' lives seem to be centered around 'stuff'.

Kids copy their parents, surely?

Yes, they do, but there are a lot more influences than just parents. My eldest boys are really in football and they didn't get that from me 😆

Serious point being that I've noticed behaviours developing in my boys that must have come from friends/classmates at school, because they certainly haven't come from me and the missus. Parents can't control everything.

My brother-in-law used to bemoan all the other kids at his kids' schools having everything they wanted (phones, iPads etc) and would go on about how wrong it was, how the kids didn't understand the value of stuff, how it effected his kids etc etc.

At the time he didn't have very much money (so much so we used to give him old TVs, stuff like that). But he had a very fortunate turn of events and is now on pretty good money and now his kids (10, 8 & 6) all have iPads (proper ones, not cheap tablets), the eldest two have iPhones, they all have Fitbit Blazes (yes - a 6 year old kid with a Blaze) and various other crap.

Saying that, he still has very deep pockets when it comes to anyone else such as when we wanted to club together to get his mum something really nice as a thank you for organising a lovely weekend away for the family (all paid for) and he said he couldn't afford to give much.

...he said he couldn't afford to give much

Maybe he'd spent all his budget on the latest iPhone 7 for his kids

My son turned 8 in July. He wanted a road bike but I hadn't long built him new MTB that cost me far more than most other 8 year olds bikes cost. So we said if he still wants a road bike at Christmas or next birthday we'll look into it. And he took it on the chin and was happy with the pressies he got.

He also got a load of money £150ish for his brithday and we said "don't just blow it on the first thing you see in toys r us lets wait and buy some thing decent". Again he took it on the chin and carried on.

Last week we went to Decathlon and picked up his new road bike that he bought with his brithday money he'd saved from July and money made from sales of old Thomas the Tank Engine toys he'd grown out of.

[img] [/img]

Sorry I missed the start of this... I was busying picking up a iPhone for my Son's 11th birthday next week.

Kids get stuff, kids have always got stuff, there's more stuff about these days, but stuff is relatively cheaper than is used to be. The Nintendo NES system cost £200 when in launched in the UK in 1985 - about £450 in today's money - PS4 is £250.

But a lot of Kids do get spoilt, every Xmas Eve my FB is awash with pictures of Xmas trees, they're meant to be about reminiscing of years gone by when the parents were kids, but it's bullshit the focus is on the big pile of presents - it's a crass display of "look how much I spent, I really love my kids, so I'm better than you" and I think in these days of social media a lot of the desire to go mad at Xmas is down to fear of not looking like you've bought enough love, rather than a desire to spoil them.

Is he now saving up for a haircut? Youth of today, indeed. 😀

Maybe he'd spent all his budget on the latest iPhone 7 for his kids

Is he now saving up for a haircut?

He's going for the Peter Sagan look!!

Kids get stuff, kids have always got stuff, there's more stuff about these days, but stuff is relatively cheaper than is used to be. The Nintendo NES system cost £200 when in launched in the UK in 1985 - about £450 in today's money - PS4 is £250.

But these days (as is often the case) siblings get one games machine each (which means a TV each and often even the same games each). When I was a kid we got a Grandstand console (the less successful challenger to the Atari) to share between the three of us and even then we only got it because my dad worked in the electronics business and (as we live in Harrogate) he had contacts at the importers (Adam Technology).

I do think kids (including mine) get too much these days. I would give my kids much less than they get but my wife doesn't quite share the same sentiment.

Good lad, maybe one day he'll ride like Sagan too. Avoided posting on here cos moaning about kids getting too much/being rude etc is basically saying look what an utterly useless generation of parents/grandparents we are. It's not their doing is it? Dumbarses. Kidz rool, end of.

All these after school clubs, extra activities, school arranged holidays etc.

Our two are lovely, caring, conscientious, well-rounded. Always get comments on how polite they are, at 10 & 8 it's a joy. They have their moments of course. Son is saving like mad so he can hopefully buy a laptop, that he can use for school next year..

every generation says the same shite, get over yourselves.

Kids get stuff, kids have always got stuff, there's more stuff about these days, but stuff is relatively cheaper than is used to be. The Nintendo NES system cost £200 when in launched in the UK in 1985 - about £450 in today's money - PS4 is £250.

Nearer £600 even with Dad discount.

there's more stuff about these days, but stuff is relatively cheaper than is used to be.

That's a very good point TBF. My ZX Spectrum was £130 in 1983. According to the Interwebs that's equivalent to over £400 today. My Atari ST circa 1988 was IIRC £625 - £1600 today 😯 First PC in the early-to-mid 90s bought with my own money after I'd started working cost me £1500 - adjusted that's over three grand!

Made a deal with Jr last night, that for every £ he makes working for someone not in the family, I'll add 50p. Bit like a working tax credit to bring his earnings up to the living wage of an aspiring Xbox One owner 🙂 Maybe Gordon was on to something.

We have started making our girls sell old toys they no longer play with so they can buy things they do want. It would work really well but for the shonky and unreliable nature of people 'buying' from Facebook 'Local For Sale' pages. For every person we have had buy something, we have had another 3 or 4 people not turn up to collect.

ti_pin_man - Member
every generation says the same shite, get over yourselves.

🙂

I remember hearing all the "kids have so many toys these days, what happened to being happy with a single wooden block and a bit of imagination?" moans from relatives when I was a kid. A few years later everyone was moaning about how all the toys needed batteries. It's going to continue for as long as (certain) things keep getting cheaper and technology advances. Plus ça change.

We discussed something similar recently. I think that often it boils down to "we didn't have that" presented as a sign of impoverishment when often it's that "that" hadn't been invented yet. I didn't know how lucky I was to have three television channels to choose from, apparently.

More relevant to the previous discussion, there's fear and resentment over the unknown. What will exposure to iDevices and the like do to impressionable young minds long-term? We don't know because in and of itself tablets and phones haven't been out long enough to find out. But I'll wager it'll be the same as video games, television, rock music, radio, books, and everything else that's been the cause-du-jour of the problems with the youth of today ever since some hippy in the Middle East got himself nailed to a tree.

When my 13 yo son wants something expensive we (mostly me) have a long chat about the real value of stuff and whether he needs something or wants something and then we reach a compromise. Last Christmas he wanted some Beats headphones. I flat out refused to get them. He found some cheap ones on eBay so we had a chat about the often false economy of buying cheap ie knocked off gear. We then had a conversation about consumerism and how he might as well strap a couple of adverts to the side off his head and fashion over function. I offered to take him to a proper hi-fi shop if he wanted good quality headphones but it turned out quality wasn't that important. So we compromised and he got some Beats ear buds instead and he also got some Sony headphones with Christmas money. He's good though, we spend a small fortune on him because he dives but he works hard at it and is getting some good results and he appreciates the sacrifice we make, most of the time anyway.