CHILDREN - Is it time to do away with them?

[Olly]

Is there any point in children these days? All they seem to do is wreck things and dig up your garden. Is it possible to make toddlers become adults when four and force them to work and fend for themselves? With ipads and GPS it mightn't be as far fetched as you think.

[Rois]

Really really insensitive thread.  Especially the title. 

[Ulick]

All they seem to do is wreck things and dig up your garden.

Never a truer word said.

[muppet]

Maybe we could introduce a tax on children?

This would be fair as you could obviously opt out. Free snips could be made available from the health service too.

[Leonardo]

Talking about snips - was considering going for this. Any advice lads? Havent been to see a doctor in about 20 years and dont know what to expect

[Jonah]

The harder this olly fella tries to be funny, the less funny he is becoming.

[Hereiam]

I have 3 boys all under 4 yrs of age. The two oldest are now only startin to get going at the wrecking now. The house will look alot different after this summer i would say. Wouldnt be without them though, they have there funny moments.

[Olly]

The evidence is irrefutable:

William Pitt the Younger was Prime Minister at 24. Can you imagine a 24-year old running the place today?
Socrates was a master stone-cutter at 13. Today 13 year olds can barely make tea.
Beethoven was giving classical concerts at 7. Today a seven year old would only know the theme tune to Spongebob.

We are mollycuddling children for far too long now.

[brokencrossbar1]

The evidence is irrefutable:

William Pitt the Younger was Prime Minister at 24. Can you imagine a 24-year old running the place today?
Socrates was a master stone-cutter at 13. Today 13 year olds can barely make tea.
Beethoven was giving classical concerts at 7. Today a seven year old would only know the theme tune to Spongebob.

We are mollycuddling children for far too long now.

While you may be taking the piss you do have a very valid point.  We have a 14 year old and when I was his age I spent my summer holidays either labouring to a brickie or working on my uncles farm.  If we can get him set up this summer after the Gaeltacht then he will be out working,either for his uncle or his granda, farm or sparking.  Far too many kids have it far too easy and this is not a 'in my day' rant. Let them out into the world and start earning their corn a bit earlier,teach them to appreciate things.

[deiseach]

The Scene:

Four well-dressed men are sitting together at a vacation resort.
'Farewell to Thee' is played in the background on Hawaiian guitar.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, very passable, that, very passable bit of risotto.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
Nothing like a good glass of Château de Chasselas, eh, Josiah?
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
You're right there, Obadiah.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Who'd have thought thirty year ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Château de Chasselas, eh?
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
In them days we was glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
A cup o' cold tea.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Without milk or sugar.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Or tea.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
In a cracked cup, an' all.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Oh, we never had a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Because we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness, son".
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, 'e was right.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, 'e was.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
I was happier then and I had nothin'. We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor was missing, and we were all 'uddled together in one corner for fear of falling.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Eh, you were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in t' corridor!
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Oh, we used to dream of livin' in a corridor! Would ha' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House? Huh.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Well, when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
We were evicted from our 'ole in the ground; we 'ad to go and live in a lake.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred and fifty of us living in t' shoebox in t' middle o' road.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Cardboard box?
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of 'ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, 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 and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.
ALL:
They won't!

[wildrover]

That is brilliant Deiseach!  Where is that extract taken from?

[deiseach]

That is brilliant Deiseach!  Where is that extract taken from?

It's from Monty Python's stage show, although I seem to recall reading somewhere that they didn't write it.

[seafoid]

5 excellent tips for how to parent small children

1. Buy an expensive toy that comes in a cardboard box. The box will keep the child amused for hours. 

2.The feeding thing. The easiest and least frustrating thing to do is just to take all the food you  were going to  prepare for the  child and tip it straight into the bin. It has the same end effect,
but saves you the time & electricity taken to cook it, and also mean you don't have to sweep it
off the floor afterwards.   Plus, you don't even need to remove the child from its continuous video feed, so there is no  temper tantrum when the telly goes off.

3  If you wish for a taste of parenthood, over a fortnight set your alarm clock to go off at irregular intervals throughout the night, get up each time it goes off, go downstairs, carry two bags of potatoes around the house for 15 mins, put down sacks of potatoes, put on CD of Diamanda Galas at top volume, pick up potatoes, turn CD off, put down potatoes, turn CD on....

4 Or buy a skip full of toys which come in lots of tiny parts. Empty all over your house, pick them all up & refill the skip. Empty all over the house again & repeat ad nauseam or until 18 years have passed, whichever takes the longest.

5 Get all your money out from every available source & chuck it all in the sea.

[passedit]

The evidence is irrefutable:

William Pitt the Younger was Prime Minister at 24. Can you imagine a 24-year old running the place today?
Socrates was a master stone-cutter at 13. Today 13 year olds can barely make tea.
Beethoven was giving classical concerts at 7. Today a seven year old would only know the theme tune to Spongebob.

We are mollycuddling children for far too long now.

While you may be taking the piss you do have a very valid point.  We have a 14 year old and when I was his age I spent my summer holidays either labouring to a brickie or working on my uncles farm.  If we can get him set up this summer after the Gaeltacht then he will be out working,either for his uncle or his granda, farm or sparking.  Far too many kids have it far too easy and this is not a 'in my day' rant. Let them out into the world and start earning their corn a bit earlier,teach them to appreciate things.

I was having a wee moan to my oul fella about the trouble I was having getting No1 son to do a bit of studying. One minute you'd have one foot nailed to the floor at a desk the next you'd hear a ball or sliothar hopping off the side of the house. He just started laughing and I got the point.

It's his turn now BC, he'll do things different but not by much.

[Olly]

I was in a gymnastics waiting area and a 2 year old was screaming at the mother, just falling short of calling her a dick. The other mothers were smiling at it, and one said I'm sure it is as good as gold at home.

1. Remove the child
2. Everyone should frown at it
3. Authorities should threaten the mother with eviction