Trend of child images

Under assumption, we, human grow through influences of what surrounds us, it is important to consider about how they have been viewing 'us' when we were children. The way children were viewed in different time, sometimes or more frequently restricted, guided, opened or closed the pathways they grow, lived and experience and mature out. (the following factors written below purely rises from author's assumption from different readings,
hearings and thoughts)

children in 1800s

Long years back in 1800s for example, children were considered 'sinful', and 'filthy'.  Families and society thought it was their role to cleanse their soul and ensures they are brought up with 'manner' and 'moral' attitude. In this way, children had strict expectations on the way they behaved. While that was going on, children were exposed to unassisted casualties of war, diseases and crimes. Thinking about the limited technology in medicine, media and investigations  children back then would have been in more harsh physical condition than now.

children in 1900s

Moving on along in 1900s industrialization began. This meant the more mothers were to move to workforce and children were left in the house by themselves or sent to 'nanny' (not necessarily pre-school like system in nowadays). Yet, theme that children should be in 'good behaviour' like little adults still remained here. This meant that children were to be part of the responsible for housework such as cooking, cleaning, looking after youngsters and teaching them manners, and sometimes also making money out in the workforce (which still is remained in the developing countries back in 21st centuries). Look at movies like Sound of Music and see how these children are treated and think about the expectations of them back them.

These days there are excessive pressure on study with children

With the millennium along with development in research of education, pedagogy, child psychology, and sociology, the image of children became less solid. There are people who see them just very capable, while some may still see them 'naughty' or 'teach-able subjects'. However coming into 2010s, one common factor seems to be valid in general public. Globally speaking, there had been an increase on academic value of childhood, for example in Australia, now parents are raising their children to write and mathematically operate before primary school, get ready for NAPLAN, then Selective high school test, and then? HSC? These demands had been accelerating the time children spend with tuition or 'studying' time. While Australia still, luckily, is not that 'fussy' with studying (not as much as America or Asian culture these days), as well as technological development childhood that people in 20s or 30s enjoyed, appear to be disappearing.
May be children who grow up now, will think that they don't know where the childhood is heading when they reach 20s or 30s but I personally prefer the way I was able to enjoy both natural and physical plays with hands-on experiences as well as early development of technology (although this was much limited).

Dad, can we get Wifi here?

Nowadays, the buttons have disappeared leaving toys and gadgets with colour touch screens and Wifi. Have you ever been on a train or a bus and sat near a kid aged from one and a half to four years old playing a game on their parent’s phone or iPad? I’ve been in awe of young kids around two years old playing Angry Birds so well like it is no one else’s business. Seriously, the kid knew what he was doing (I would have failed on sooo many levels). 

So, what do kids play with now? Well, not only do their new shiny toys now have batteries, colour and flashy lights (from the screen) but the gadgets are even connected to Wifi. Games as apps and on Steam, TVs and even DVD tuners are connected online via Wifi. Also, you can’t forget the mobile phones either – a screen ever growing and taken with you everywhere lent to the kid to keep them quiet and engaged either through apps or downloaded songs, videos of Dora the Explorer, and the camera capturing their silly faces and voices you name it. Oh, and laptops with more games and multimedia + maybe even schoolwork – no internet data? Are you kidding?! What happens next – we can’t survive without Wifi!! Ok, so maybe that affects the older teens more but you get the picture. It used to be about batteries (issue still exists but we recharge them now) and now maybe it will be more about disappointment with no internet connection.

By the way, Tamagotchi (mentioned in my last post) lives on as a free app on iOS and Andriods and also as a video game on iPod and iPad + how can we forget the Nintendo DS (Side note- I honestly didn't know this until Wikipedia told me =P).

My childhood and K-pop

This morning I was listening to one of old K-pop idols latest released from long time (they disbanded and had recently came back to revisit their fans and started singing again.. about 5 months ago from now?). Listening to their songs, I became moody at 6 in the morning, going through those memories I had with me, thinking about really, what was surrounding my childhood.
I was raised in South Korea until I was 11. Now I can say I wasn't raised quite typically. At the time, there had been an initiation of boom of private tutoring, but I was never forced to go attend such ever in my life. My parents used to run fried chicken restaurant, and I and my big brother would go out from the chicken place in winter, look at the icicles hung on the pipes of the shops and throw snow at each other. In summer we would visit the nearby mountains or ocean, swim at the beach or riversides, camp, go out with other relatives and such. These, I am quite sure still occur at occasions for families and children in this day.
As I entered primary school, (this is where things may sound a bit different to those children living their childhood right now) idols of current K-pop started popping out. If you have ever heard of them they were H.O.T, g.o.d, S.E.E, Fin.K.L, Seo Tae Ji, Shinhwa and more if you can name it all. I used to be in lovvveee with songs of g.o.d. I listened to them all day in cassette tape then, to save the tapes loosening, I would turn on the radio (antenna raised up near the window) at nights. I would also bring 'writing pad' that had pictures of g.o.d (or other famous idols around back at time) to school to lean against it to write or to have look at it every now and then during break or class lesson.
This is what different writing pads look like this (AND YES!! I had the pink one on the bottom left)

Well now, I can see children going up in Tumblr or Instagram to keep up to date with their stars but this is what I used to do. Their latest release had been re-making their old songs so I took some moments of reminiscing old habit. May be there is that benefit of instantly keeping up to date with you stars these days, but I think keeping few pictures or 'writing pads' in front of you also have a goodie to keep you heart consistent. Oh good old writing pads.
With recent boom of K-pop, it is cool to see what is out. However to me, old K-pop songs were rather slower and more emotional than nowadays' K-pop songs (that are more stimulating and vulnerable). I feel I am getting old honestly!

Some things that kids today are missing on

Getting lost

I'll admit this still happens to me, but mostly because my on-hand portable technology is far behind the curve. For the majority of us, finding our way from point A to point B is as simple as inputting the destination address and letting a robotically polite voice do the guiding. Even the worst case technological scenario involves a printout from an online map service. It's tough to recall a time when we relied on the more primitive "Take a right on Main Street"-type directives scrawled on scraps of paper during a phone call.


Looking something up in the Encyclopedia 

 Before the days of the internet, this seemed like a high-tech research breakthrough. We could search for articles, watch videos, listen to sound clips...you know, like what we do now every day with the internet.

Back in the 90s, when we had a query, it was actually possible to come up empty on an answer. A frightening notion, really. There was no Googling to get us out of a quandary. We could go to the library or phone a friend, but failing those options we might actually have to have to write things off as a mystery. When I think of how frequently I type into Google a question about how to get my dog to sit still (positive reinforcement and/or high-grade tranquilizers) or why I'm tired all the time (possibly anemia but more likely daily caffeine overdose,) it's frightening to imagine a time when I'd be resigned to not immediately identifying an answer.

Parents' Expectations for Children - part 2

From my perspectives, one of the biggest differences between Asian and Australian is that Asian parents usually push their children too much compared that of Australian parents in terms of parents’ expectation. Take school's homework for instance, especially for Chinese kids, they usually get considerable amount of homework from their parents after school time at home, which make them feeling so stressful.

On the other hand, the kids who grow up in Australia usually have plenty of time to do what they like, such as basketball, going fishing as well as going gym, which gives choices to children and let them explore what they excel at.

How did children until the 90s spend their childhood

If our current addictions to our iPhones and other tech is any indication, we may be setting up our children for incomplete, handicapped lives devoid of imagination, creativity and wonder when we hook them onto technology at an early age. I wouldn't hesitate to say that our generation was the last generation to play outside precisely because we didn’t have smartphones and laptops. We learned from movement, hands-on interaction, and we absorbed information through books and socialization with other humans as opposed to a Google search.

Learning in different ways has helped us become more well-rounded individuals — so, should we be more worried that we are now robbing ourselves of the ability to Snapchat and play “Candy Crush” all day if we don’t use a smartphone, or should we more worried that we would be robbing ourselves of a healthier, less dependent development if we do use a smartphone?

So the next time you think about how you will raise your kids, you may want to (highly) consider not giving them whatever fancy tech we’ll have while they are growing up. Play outside with them and surround them with nature; they might hate you, but they will absolutely thank you for it later, because I’m willing to bet that’s exactly how many of us feel about it now that we are older.

Parents' Expectations for children

Unlike the Australian children, the children who grow up in china are expected to have a lot of tutoring when they start the primary school. Take my own experience for instance, I have had four tutoring class when I was a primary school student, such as piano, drawing, basketball as well as the saxophone lessons. However, I was only interested in playing basketball at that stage, and I had no choice to pick up my hobbies, since my parents asked me to follow what other my classmates did.

On the other hand, I found that the children who grow up in Australia can do whatever they want to and they do not have lots of tutoring, so they usually have plenty of spare time to play with the peers.

From my perspectives, I think that the parents’ expectation for their children play a vital role in childhood of their kids, as Chinese parents believe that tutoring is an effective and efficient way to improve the skills and knowledge of their children.

Do we have batteries mum?

Back in the day, the newest toys with batteries, colourful buttons and flashy lights. We played with a sense of wonder and amazement - not really sure how the buttons and batteries really worked (until we got older). Our portable toys came to life of sorts when batteries were put into them and all we used care about was “do we have batteries mum” when they stopped working – as simple as that.

Remember that Tamagotchi (たまごっち) small egg shaped collectable digital pets’ game kids used to bring to school. 

Remember the Nintendo Game Boy that kids played with in the car, during meal times and under the bedcovers? Sigh…the good old days with the classics Mario Kart, Donkey Kong and Pacman. Oh and don’t forget the remote control cars, we all have secretly hidden somewhere, from the huge batteries to the small AA and round discs. Actually before remote controlled cars, we had cars with huge batteries and a black cable for steering and haha before toy cars with batteries we had classic wooden wheely cars! =D 

Being 5 and being 19

As a kid I had my select few friends who I’d hang out with all the time. I still have the same friends but the way we communicate has changed so drastically it’s like the past 15 years was a different era rather than a different generation. 

I remember being 5, and my mate Bri and I being completely inseparable, we’d hang out everyday as long as one of our parents was able to drop us off at the others house. And we’d always communicate through the landline phone, because that was all we had at the time, and it worked. We had memorised each other’s numbers because our numbers were only two digits different, which we found awesome and a reason why we were destined to be best friends. We’d call each other mainly to figure out a time to meet up and then just meet up and spend some awesome time together. It was great, and really some of the fondest memories of my childhood.

But now, we’re both 19, not 5 anymore, and we’ve got things like smartphones, texting, Facebook and What’s App, and things couldn’t be more different.
Phones were what we used to organise a time to meet, not the actual medium through which we would meet. But that’s mainly what we do now. Rather than calling and scheduling a time to meet, most communication and time spent together is on this smartphone via texting, tweeting and Facebook messaging. We still meet up of course. But why meet up everyday when you can just speak to each other from the comfort of your own home, without really having to leave the house? I wouldn’t say the change is bad, it’s great being able to communicate so freely and easily, but the best part of my time with Bri when we were 5 was the physical and real hours we spent together. Communicating through technology, so detached from reality, isn’t the same, and I long for those days in my childhood when it was just Bri and I hanging out in person for hours on end.

A picture Bri drew of us when we were 5 (:

Welcome to CM Grew and Gone!

 Welcome to our new blog - CM Grew and Gone. CM are our childhood memories, centimetres of how tall we grew and bits of nostalgia to be shared with you.  Here's a poem by T to start things off...

Take me to my childhood,

An unforgettable moment.

A time of careless pleasure,

With no thought for what should be.

Hours of carefree happiness,

With joyful giggles and laughs,

And easily moved by all.

Days of selfless delight,

Weeks of fun,

Years of trying to grow up,

But just under a decade long.

Take me back to my childhood,

filled with unforgettable memories.

A moment grew and gone….

A few nostalgic moments to be shared with CM.