No, this has nothing to do with politics, but I had to post it. In the Fifties, two little boys who'd been playing in the fields near their home stopped for some big, soft pretzels their mother had packed for them early that morning. They spent their the summers wandering, exploring, finding things to do. Sweet summer days..........little boys doing what they do best.As an aside, I wanted to tell you all about something that happened during my preschool music class. They are studying BUGS this week so "Mrs Z" brought bug songs. One of them had to do with butterflies and I asked the 12 girls and 6 boys to stand up and dance like butterflies. Only the girls stood up. They were swaying, arms wide in the air, little butterfly ballerinas! Little Ryan, sitting on the floor, said "Mrs. Z, ask us to be SPIDERS!" Boys...Girls.....they're different! Alert the media! I hope you're having some sweet summer days, too. I ache for our children that they don't have the opportunities those 2 little boys above had. Want to bet those two above were playing with some bugs, too!?
Sometimes doing nothing is the very best education, don't you think? Thanks for indulging me...I just had to post this picture!
z
16 comments:
I have pics of two of my brothers and I in Ohio that look a similar to this one. Sans the cow. Brought back some good memories.
Just soaking in life can be quite the education.
Funny classroom story! Isn't it funny how girls and boys naturally gravitate to different things?
When I turn my children out, my girls are looking for butterflies, inchworms and the like, and Connor is kicking over dog poo to see the beetles eat tunnels through it. Gross, but true. (Of course, I make him hose his own shoes off!) LOL!
We should let our boys be boys!
amen to that Brooke. There'd be no explorers, astronauts or sky diving if you didn't.
Boys are boys and girls are girls and they don't overlap that much, except in S.F. and Hollywood.
Boys in a Pasture
My favorite Winslow Homer. The boys are rather nondescript. I expect he wanted them to be generic and use this as a scene of our national healing after the civil war.
Not that troubled these days but we could use some healing.
Folks need to tell their kids to get off the "Nofriendo" and go outside and play!
Exactly, everyone...kids need to be kids, but they're really not anymore. And girls ARE different than boys..yet another thing those 2 little boys from the past didn't have to worry about..nor did they worry about being transgender and what bathroom to use. HOW did they SURVIVE, right?! :-)
Ducky...Homer's one of my favorite paintings...it really does fit this picture. And yes, we need LOTS of healing. Maybe I"ll post my poem about Winslow Homer today when I get back...
GO OUTSIDE AND PLAY is right, Edge!!
What a lovely post and so true Z. I would like to add, that my son, albeit Autistic and high functioning has a very active imagination. I would bet he would have stood up with the girls and played being a butterfly. Since pre-school when he learned about caterpillars and chyrsalis's turning into butterflies he has been in shock and awe. Really. He actuallu found a caterpillar, then when it began forming into a chyrsalis he was sooooooooo excited waiting for the butterfly, but it did die. He took it okay, but he loves butterflies. I wonder if had been their and joined in if the other boys would have followed him or made fun of him? Thanks to our not so wonderful media examples.
I love this Z. And yes Brooke, let our boys be boys. What good is summer vacation without a few scraped knees?
Forget the playdates and classes. Let them have the thrill of 'new' discoveries and the imagination to invent their own games.
Who needs a pool when you can play with the hose?
There's only one childhood for a few short years.
For all the boys and girls, let them be children. God bless 'em.
Pris
As the father of two princesses all pink and purdy I'm sort of at the other end of the spectrum. One thing that I have noticed about little girls as compared with little boys is that the boys have it harder in many ways. When my girls do "boy" things or play rough with us or with boys they receive praise and people cheer them on. On the other hand when little boys come over and gravitate towards their dolls or necklaces it is not met with the same response. Not that I would go out and purchase necklaces and princess dresses if I had boys but sometimes people put a little too much pressure on little ones who are just curious about the entire world. It's hard being a kid.
Pops, I think little boys do occasionally gravitate toward the girly things and likewise...
And that shouldn't be besmirched or stifled...
But, I DO believe that little boys MOSTLY want boy stuff and little girls, the girly stuff.......it's so well illustrated in my class's 3 and 4 year olds this morning, the butterfly story....
This happens ALL the time.
And yet the feminists want us to paint the baby girl rooms blue and the boys get pink..
it's just stupid.
and WHY mix them up? They're born with this stuff..I didn't do some subliminal "now, aren't only the GIRLS going to be pretty butterflies? " Not at all. The boys didn't even want to SING the butterfly song! NOt ONE of them.
ah, well...just to show I think trying to do some kind of noninvasive sexual surgery in changing tiny kids so they won't be too rigid in their born sexual role is NUTS!
I love the picture of the boys...especially since it has been my dream to live on a farm...and I grew up wishing I was laura Ingalls. I suppose its the life free from crime and kid heaven that is appealing to me...so this picture reminded me of a time when life used to be like that. :)N
Nikki, this shot is from a bunch of pictures from Germany in the fifties that was on the internet entitled "Forgotten pictures from the Fifties!" Would you believe I got weepy seeing lines of little school children in beautiful clean clothes and nicely combed hair with lunch boxes, etc....so DECENT, so sweet and innocent.
Farm life pictures of decency and hard work....family dinners........children playing with REAL toys they had to have imagination to use, not just read instructions and plug something in!
It actually made me cry a little...WE were like that here, too, when I was young. WE could play on our cul de sac street in Van Nuys, California all day long! ...no worries...Moms stayed home and some mom could always keep her eye on us and they'd even discipline us if they thought we'd done wrong, and OUR mothers didn't sue them for doing so, you know? People were good...
I envy my parents the world in which they brought up their kids.
I guess that's why I like to watch LEAVE IT TO BEAVER! Kinda weird, I know...but it makes me feel good inside. Heck, they even went to SUNDAY SCHOOL! Imagine? Some teensy minority religious group would protest if any sitcom had their kids go to a Christian church school today!
WE're so lost......so "GOTCHA"..so sad.
Z,
love the picture.
So far, my two girls are busy looking for frogs while my boy is digging in the dirt!
Well rounded, I suppose.
Children should be able ot get back to doing nothing and learning about all that is around them.
pinky, there will be exceptions and they should be celebrated!
Some girls DO like the frogs! I sure never did!
Beverly, I think that 'doing nothing' is what created America's greatest scientists! They learn and explore and their minds work better, right?
This is why we have to stop the Obama plan to tax pharmaceutical companies into oblivion. America, which has invented something like 54% of ALL great drugs in the world will be just another country because the first place the companies will have to cut is RESEARCH! And people don't understand how important it is to pay people for years just to experiment until they come up with something life saving! Sad...liberal non-thinking at its worst.
Post a Comment