Children & Leisure Activities

The advert on television, for a certain kind of bread, showing a delivery boy pushing his bicycle up a steep cobbled lane, with a background of slightly melancholic music, conjures a nostalgic sepia-coloured picture of where and how, but for a chance of time, we might imagine our own childhoods.

Changing days and generations make their ways down the years, and there are those who will say “we had it hard, not like the kids of today”, as in all likelihood, they were told by the generation before, as they themselves were, by the generation before that.

The important issue to grasp is that the childhood years of between say, 5 and eighteen, are the oh so important formative time when the body will grow as the body will, but the nature and character of the forming personality are on a once in a life-time journey, which for them is an experience without comparisons to days or years gone by, these ARE their days and years.

Times, of course, do change. Boys would have a hairy time trying to play football in the streets around most homes, and hopscotch for girls pretty suicidal too, but these days the scope of leisure activities available for young people is a lifetime away from that of the generation before, as needs and opportunities change with the times.

There are some parents who could be described as “over protective”, there are some described as irresponsible, but for all, these days are not the days of any other generation but the ones now growing and developing in it. Kids Clubs can give you a sense of control when you need to work and your children need supervision, ask about the holiday clubs they run for children.

Without doubt there are dangers for children that the modern society has bred which could not have existed before the days of the internet, but ill-intentioned individuals have existed in differing manifestations, down through all the years.

Upgrade your TV with a professional satellite or freeview aerial installation and access a wider range of channels than ever before.

Leaving the television, computer-based entertainment and associated social interactions, there are opportunities out there for some real adventure, strictly supervised, mildly supervised or put the responsibility on your shoulders, type of engagement with the great outdoors.

Sports and challenges that may scrape a knee, or end up in mud, can bring a sense of achievement, exhilaration and self-confidence that are part of the blocks that go to building individual characters. They’re out there, just look!