Bring back 90s parenting
A nod to boredom.
90s nostalgia is literally everywhere right now and has somehow seeped into every corner of the culture. And I, for one, cannot stop consuming content on the topic. From fashion to television, technology, and now, apparently, parenting. The 90s are back, big time.
The memes poking fun at this trend are outstanding, and what they all seem to capture so beautifully (and what I try in vain to explain to my six-year-old when he complains that he is bored for the 597th time in a single hour) is that when we grew up, we were dressed, fed (usually a slice of dry toast or a half-baked Pop-Tart straight from the packet) and then sent on our merry way, shuffled out the back door only to return if we were a) bleeding or b) if it was dark. That was it. He maintains I must be exaggerating for effect. I PROMISE you I am not. Some of my core childhood memories are of me and the neighbourhood gang of hoodrats running amok in the empty fields near our home. We lived up in the hills in New Zealand, so ‘nature’ was very much on the doorstep, and, honestly, we’d only turn up again once we heard my dad’s wolf whistle belting out across the valleys, the universal signal that dinner was ready.
What’s even more mind-blowing to me now is how young I would have been. As one of the youngest of the neighbourhood kids, it was simply assumed that the older ones would look after the little ones. They did, for the most part. But often my friends and I would disappear off to make our own fun, the only expectation being that we didn’t get up to too much mischief and that we came home when the whistle blew.
Even the parents in my orbit now share similar tales of gloriously hands-off 90s parenting, and while it’s lovely that we’re all so much more present in our kids’ lives these days, I do wish we could reclaim a few of those core 90s philosophies. So, in no particular order, here’s what I think we should bring back, ASAP.
The home phone (and the answering machine)
Every single piece of content I’ve consumed lately is in violent agreement: there was something wonderful about the home phone. That feeling of it ringing and simply picking it up, with absolutely no idea who might be on the other end. To today’s kids this is a nightmarish concept, having to make polite conversation with an unknown adult (likely one of your parents’ weird mates) before passing the receiver over and bellowing down the hallway: it’s for youuuu! No caller ID, no screening, no read receipts. Just you, a curly cord, and the low-grade terror of the unknown.
Boredom itself
Are we ever actually bored anymore? I’ve been so thoroughly therapised by social media that, despite never once putting my hand up for the role, I’ve somehow become the project manager of my children’s lives. There’s an unspoken expectation that every minute of every day be accounted for, optimised, enriched, and heaven forbid there be a gap. But boredom was the whole point. Boredom was the empty field. It was the flat afternoon that forced you to invent a game, build a fort out of couch cushions, or lie on the carpet staring at the ceiling (or speaking into a fan) until an idea arrived. Nobody was coming to rescue you from it, and that was precisely the gift: you learned that you were responsible for your own fun, and that your own imagination was the only equipment required. I’m trying, very hard, to sit on my hands and let my kids be bored. But it is, I’ll admit, far more uncomfortable for me than it is for them as it’s like we’ve simply erased this skill entirely.
Free-range weekends (and a healthy dose of unsupervised risk)
Playgrounds these days are great, sure, but nothing compares to scaling a ten-foot ladder and hurtling down a scorching metal slide with no barriers whatsoever. You were almost certainly going to sail off the end, most often onto concrete, but that was the point: we learned to weigh up risk and gauge our own abilities at speed. We were not wrapped in bubble wrap. We were barely covered in sunscreen (which, yes, is its own problem). But we found our limits by, well, occasionally finding them. My kids are pretty wild, and yet I still catch the flash of fear in their eyes at the top of the big ropes at the park, when they realise nobody is going to lift them down and that the only way out is through.
The shared computer
How good was having zero privacy around our screen time? First you had to wait for the dial-up to decide whether it fancied showing up at all (that shriek and hiss like a fax machine having a breakdown), and then you got to have gloriously semi-private chats on MSN with the boy from the neighbouring school, all while knowing full well a parent could wander into the family ‘computer room’ at any given second. This was the definition of living on the edge. And let’s not forget taking turns with the latest edition of Encarta. To think we simply accepted that a brand-new encyclopaedia was released each year as the complete and definitive record of all human knowledge. WILD.
Watching the same VHS on repeat
Streaming has quietly broken our brains, and the instant gratification our kids get (skip the intro, skip the episode, switch shows mid-sentence, all at the tap of a button) has stripped the joy right out of watching telly. There was nothing better than tearing inside at the end of the day and collapsing onto the couch while the afternoon kids’ shows played out in their fixed, unskippable order. And better still? Waking early on a Sunday morning, wandering out to the TV room and slotting in your favourite VHS, then holding down the rewind button for roughly seven minutes to get the thing back to the start. We waited for everything. And somehow, the waiting made it sweeter.
I know I can’t actually recreate any of this for my kids. The world has moved on, and I’m not about to disconnect the wifi and post them out the back door with a Pop-Tart and a prayer (tempting as it is). But I can loosen my grip a little.
This past weekend, a great big bunch of us went down to our local cafe for a gig where our extremely talented neighbour had been invited to play. And it turned into one of those delightfully spontaneous Sunday afternoons with a few too many wines, a few too many bowls of fries, and lots of laughter and singing.
Given all the neighbourhood kids were there, everyone had a little mate to hang with and as soon as they recognised that all the parents were, effectively, ignoring their demands because we were having our own fun, they began to venture a little further afield, beyond the edges of our table, to the corner of the road, or around the back to play on the soft grass. Sporadically, someone would pop back to the table to check in or a parent would slip away to keep a watchful eye. But it was hands off in the best possible sense, a real community vibe where the little ones were able to be bold, the older ones were trusted to keep a close eye and the only time anyone complained was if they’d scratched a knee and needed a bandaid.
I’d love to tell you that we all planned it, or that we’d project-managed the whole delightful afternoon into being. But we didn’t. We just turned up, poured the wine, and got out of the way.
Turns out that’s the whole trick.
