Childhood Differences: a LISTICLE!

It's Monday and I'm feeling back to my normal self again so you know what that means?  Listicle time!! :)

I'm sooo very excited to feeling like I can jump back into this so here goes...

Childhood differences from then (70s) and now:

1. Sibling rivalry. I was the youngest of three, born in the early 70s; Lovie is our one and only and there are no plans to have any others. This will probably be the biggest difference in our childhoods. She won't know what it's like to be teased and ridiculed, yet always protected by her siblings. It kind of makes me sad when I do think about it, but I know she's going to get the best of us, her parents, all the time so that kind of makes up for it, I think. (At least that's what I tell myself.)

2. Close-knit family. This is another sad difference to me. Growing up, we always were visiting with family or they us. Every single weekend (it seemed) was spent with grandparents and/or aunts and uncles and cousins. Every single weekend. Even some summers weeks were spent with them. Now, it's not anything like that. My nephews and nieces are all grown and my husband doesn't have any nephews and nieces so Lovie has no cousins (my BFF is one of my cousins). And while we try to visit with family at least every other weekend, it's super hard to do since we live in the city and most everyone else lives an hour away. That, and our parents are aging. It's sad really. Family meant everything to me growing up. Everything (even when my parents split when I was 9). And I just am not sure Lovie will ever feel the same. And that, to me, is incredibly sad.

3. Materials things. For me growing up, we didn't have much as far as material objects. Of course back then, I wanted more; but now, as an adult, I'm so glad I didn't have more. It kind of made me use my imagination more, made me want to get on out there and actually play and do things. And I also believe it made me really appreciate things when I did get them. Today though, holy crap is there a ton of stuff most kids have! I've talked about this before here, but Lovie is an exception to this. If I could remember back to when I was 20 months old, I'd guess that Lovie has more toys than I did, but compared to most other kids (that I know) today, she's got very little. And I'm totally OK with this (most days) and don't plan to change this up any time soon.

4. Food and drink. Back in the day, we'd stop off at McDonald's nearly every weekend on our way home from visiting with the grandparents. It would be late in the day on Sunday and we'd always hit up the drive-thru and bring home our cheeseburgers and fries and chow down. It just wasn't a big deal. And once a month or so, my dad would bring home bottles of 7up (back when the 16 oz bottles were sold 8 to a pack- anyone??) or Dr. Pepper for us to drink on a Saturday afternoon.

via google images

It just wasn't a big deal. We didn't live on junk food and pop, but we didn't avoid it like the plague or like a lot of new parents seem to do today. And "organic" surely wasn't a part of our vocabulary.

5. Movies. Now this was a big deal: going to see a movie. We didn't have cable, we had to get up off our asses to manually change what little TV channels we had on the TV, and kid-watchable movies never aired on TV. We actually had to leave the house to go to the movie theatre to see a movie. I remember seeing Bambi with my cousin and her dad when I was very young, and then when I was a bit older, I remember seeing Rocky in the theatre with my brother and sister. Today?? Pssshaw. I hear of kids Lovie's age glued to the TV watching DVD movies. I'm not saying Lovie doesn't watch TV because she most certainly does, but I have yet to pop in a movie for her.  To me, it's kind of like the materialistic thing... if you give too much now, there's less appreciation for it later on down the road. But maybe that's just how my mind works.