Reclaiming the Joy of Childhood

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So this board is still one of the better venues for “Deep Thoughts” type musings. A few months ago I posted a thread about “child-life stuff you still do” that got a lot of resonses. My moods are unstable in the spring and recently I feel enveloped by gloom, but life goes on so I was out going to an estate sale. Stopping at a red light, the sun was out after rainging alll morning, a church had let out and a family was crossing, and a girl about 12, dressed up in her nice white dress, was joyfully skipping across the street while her parents walked. Then I though about a few other things I’ve witnessed:

My nephew wasn’t able to make it north for Christmas this year, but he sent my sister and I a video of his 8 year old daughter opening presents. The was some sort of certificate they made up saying she could get her ears pierced, and she was so flooded with joy she was jumping up and down screaming for the next two minutes. I saw a similar video on YouTube where a boy unwrapped an Xbox.

We were at Valleyfair when it started to rain hard. My sister just had a day ticket so we decided to wait it out to see if it stopped under a roofed dining area with a bunch of other people, cold and bored. And we saw a lot of kids absolutely delighted in the rain, running out in it and jumping in the biggest puddles they could find.

I do adult things of course, I drive a car, I go on vacation. I’ve been to 33 states, seen the Golden Gate Bridge and the Redwood Forest; Key West and the Outer Banks, Green Gables, ridden Kingda Ka.I have collections of stuff worth tens of thousands of dollars. But they still seem to come up short compared to the kid getting the Xbox.

I mean, I could go out and just buy an Xbox or whatever game console is out there today. As a 52 year old guy if the mood struck me I could just walk out and get my ears pierced if I felt like it without asking permission of my parents or anyone else. But there’s be nothing special about it because I can just go out and do it. Just go out and buy stuff.

I suppose I could go jump in a puddle or skip across the street, but would it have the same resonance with my father dead since last summer, my mom diagnoised with ataxia and losing her voice forever, dealing with the adult consequences of a 5 second lapse of judgement behind he wheel, in constant pain from ]migraine related symptoms and degenerative disc disease to say nothing of my mental health issues.

I don’t even know my actual question, just musings of Miscellanous and Personal Stuff I Must Share

2

There’s something magical about the safety and innocence of being a child. We lose that as we become adults and our traumas accumulate and we understand the mechanisms behind the adult world (all the unhappy obligations and dangers of life), Plus stuff stops being exciting or our first time experiencing it as we get older.

It reminds me of something I saw a person post in response to the question ‘what do you miss most about your childhood’. Other people were talking about the sense of safety, innocence, excitement. But one person said ‘I miss my back not hurting all the time’.

3

Since we are just musing here… I don’t think I had that kind of joy in childhood. I had a bad experience when I was two and it led me to never trust my parents, and never to feel safe. I’m an only child and my father was in the military so we moved a lot. There were no continuous adult anchors in my life. My parents were not physically abusive but without going into nauseating detail, I just didn’t trust them. Holidays were not joyful times, and we did not have parties or go on vacation. I had no pets. I spent most of my childhood being afraid.* I did love school, and I was an excellent student. That was a world where I understood the rules and felt safe.

Now, at this point in my life (age 76) I feel that I am finally carefree. I truly do not have a care in the world. I’m not wealthy, but I have enough money. I don’t have to work. I’m completely safe. My health is still good. And I can get that little frisson of joy on a beautiful morning, or just having a day to myself. Or meeting friends for lunch or something simple like that. This is the most joyful time of my life.

It’s not that spontaneous surrender to joy that is the outburst of a loved, happy, safe child. I missed out on that back then. But where I am right now is pretty good. I do miss being in love.

* And yes, I’ve been in beaucoups of therapy and it has helped.

4

Well said @ThelmaLou. My childhood wasn’t nearly so bad as you say of yours, more the typical experience of highs and lows, at least as a little kid. By tween-time the gloss was off the family apple and my tween through teen years were pretty rough.

But yeah, I think now is probably the most joyful era of my life too. Retired, vigorous, carefree, pain-free, responsibility-free, have a great GF, live in a easy and fun-filled area, etc. We joke it’s like being a kid on summer vacation again, but this time it’s year-round with a driver’s license and a credit card. Yee-haw!


As @Wesley_Clark said so well, kids are exuberantly led by their emotions. Exuberance for good and for ill, but here we’re talking about for good.

Kids also have the lowest lows, and frankly I don’t miss those a bit. As adults we snicker a bit at teen angst, but that’s exactly the opposite side of teen joy; over-feeling negative emotions as they’re still learning how to regulate them.


Part of the source for exuberance is novelty: Everything about the world is so bright and shiny and new. We as adults can seek out novelty and try for a nostalgia-tinged echo of that long-ago joy of discovery. It’s out there and doesn’t need to be a big novelty like visiting an erupting volcano.

Sometimes I drive down different streets just to see what’s there. Or duck into a strip mall I’ve driven past 100 times but never really looked at the stores. Often the result is humdrum, but once in awhile you find a gem. If opportunity favors the prepared mind, novelty favors the inquisitive mind. So go out and inquire. Happy kids are famously curious. A form of novelty we can enjoy that kids cannot is the “Wow, I haven’t seen a [whatever] in years. And here is one, right in front of me.” e.g. When I see a car like the one I drove in high school I can’t help but be brought back to some of the excitements of that era. At least briefly.


I’ll also say that as my own life has had some roller coaster over the last ~10 years I’ve learned that having fun is a habit. It’s either a habit you have, or one you don’t. Adulthood, whether working or retired, can be mostly drudgery, or can include dollops of fun. But you have to make it, because unlike being 8, your parents aren’t going to plan your birthday party or that trip to the zoo on Saturday for you. You have to plan that zoo trip or it ain’t happenin’.

I just reminded myself. There are two zoos in my metro area I’ve wanted to visit at a time of year that’s warm but not hot. That’s right now. I’d been casting about for ideas to entertain myself this week. Today I’ll visit the closer of the two zoos. I’m sure I’ll see stuff I’ve never seen. And probably even a critter I’ve never seen.

Fun is a habit. Practice it consciously and diligently until it becomes a habit. Then it mostly practices itself and you get to ride along with it. Sloth or trudgery are habits too. Bad ones.

5

During my surrender and seeking God time in my life, something amazing happened which ended up to be what I call a rewriting of my childhood through being made to live as a child again by God.

Praying about why things were not working in my life and asking why that was so. I believe I got my answer that things that go back to my childhood are preventing me from having a happy life and I didn’t even know what happiness or love really is due to my childhood. I got the message that the Lord is going to treat me as a child and I could either accept it, or not, but either way it was going to happen.

As life went on I started to notice some unusual ‘favors’ that I started to receive, and started to realize the meaning of ‘treated like a child’, which we normally see as a bad thing, but the word ‘treated’, actually was what I was receiving. I was receiving favors and being appreciated for who I am, and my feelings were greatly honored. I also learned to ask for help instead of trying to do everything myself, and I normally received it.

To add some weird stuff happened during this time, things I credit to God. When I went for my firefighter physical, which all of us firefighters went to, and I was in the middle of the pack, cycling through the stations where either a nurse or doctor would do a portion of the exam. When I was done I (and only I) was asked to come back in as the computer would not accept my pediatric EGR test and they would need to do the test on the adult setting. And my dentist had 4 examination rooms, 1 was for surgery, 2 were normal exam rooms and one was for kids with brightly colored walls and happy tooth characters. When I went to my dentist during this time, multiple times, I would always be taken to the kids exam room. I didn’t ask for it, but was comforted by it. These were not the only things, but some of the most notable ones.

This eventually led up to me thru hiking the Appalachian Trail, which on its surface doesn’t seem like a thing a child does, for an adult level child, it seemed exactly that. And I did feel very child-like on that hike after years of accepting child-like treatment. After all hiking the trail is a very simple task, it’s simply to walk to follow a path. My adult world of self directing, driving, things of life all stripped away to what I can carry and a given task to complete. I had to get rides into town for resupply. The amount of appreciation I received for who I was and what I was doing was enormous. People went out of their way to help me in whatever way they could. Also when I received anything, for the most part, it was either exactly what I needed, or was wonderfully more than I needed, so much so that I couldn’t even have thought such a thing would be possible.

During this time, I had a very close friend who is a very devoted follower of Jesus, and that allowed me to tell her what I see Jesus is doing for me. She confirmed that’s what she believes He is and I am very wise to go along with it and to trust the Lord for the work He is doing in my life. With her I could act like that child I felt a am directly and she understood.
After this time, I look back as to how awesome it was and the adventures I had, but also I started noticing something internally was different and really important. My heart was changed. I noticed when I approached a situation, I realized my points of reference had changed. I realized that I used to think back (on an almost subconscious level) to points in my actual childhood (which was unpleasant), but now I was referencing points in my ‘born again’ childhood, which gave a very different outlook on the situation of love and support. The only reason I noticed it was because it was different then it used to be. It showed me how important childhood is in our lives, and how directly it is with us all in our daily lives.

Going forward I miss that time, but realize the value of those moments when I could, just for a moment, be that child again. No it’s not the same, but it’s also a mindset and still possible to grasp today at times.

6

We’re at the same point in life and it’s basically stress-free unless the heat goes out. :smiley:

As for when I was a child: growing up in Alaska was a pretty sweet existence. Summers were an endless adventure. I could go where I wanted and my parents didn’t have to worry about me. Life until the angst of teen years was a joy.

I look at my eldest boy’s kids and feel badly for them. They have not grown up with bicycles or the other freedom-making items of childhood, and their time outside of the house is strictly monitored. Their mother is the worst sort of helicopter parent and is paranoid about the possibility of her kids being “taken”. The youngest is sickly and pale. They will likely resent this upbringing when they are adults.

7

It’s funny, I just said recently that retirement is like a second adolescence but better - now I have nowhere I have to be and I have money to do what I want to.

I’ve lost novelty to a great extent. I go new places and do new things, but they are not nearly as “new” as when I was younger - a trip to a new zoo/museum/whatever is not the same as the very first trip to the zoo/museum/whatever. And what I really miss is that time went slower - not only did summer vacation seem to last forever, so did Saturdays and Sundays. Now , every day flies by.

8

When I was young we moved to a house next to an undeveloped field with a big hill. I remember walking out there the first time, holding my little brother’s hand, awe-struck. (He’s 70 now and in a nursing home :cry:). It was a wonderful, magical place, all kinds of flowers and plants and insects. We played out there with my cousins as only kids can, collecting rocks, making ‘bouquets’, sailing stick boats in the ‘pond’. The hill was a ‘mountain’. There was a big deep puddle that was a ‘pond’ after some rain… It gave me such a deep unending love of nature, of the wild, that carries over to this day. I live in an inconvenient apartment simply because it overlooks a quiet patch of woods filled with birds, and a small brook. Right in the heart of a busy village! My cat and I look at the birdfeeder I set up every day, grateful for any feathered visitors who come by. I can’t walk very far now, but on a dull Sunday I will go to a park and do my best, under the towering trees, and looking at the lake. Peace!

9

Was born in 1967. I have (mostly) fond memories from when I was young, before my parents divorced. I grew up in a house on two acres of land in a rural part of Ohio. Spent my summers walking in the creek, climbing trees, riding bikes, and building tree houses.

Our property was my “world,” and I was exploring it nearly every day. I remember my father tilling the ground for a large vegetable garden, and planting the seeds. Us kids would fill up old coffee cans with water from the creek, and then pour the water on the seeds.

A farmer owned a big cornfield and huge woods at the back of our property. On some days I would walk all the way back to the woods and spend hours exploring it. The woods contained the remnants of an old log cabin.

And then things took a turn for the worse. The cornfields and woods that surrounded us were sold to developers, and large plats of homes were built. Mom and Dad started arguing a lot, and they divorced when I was 12. Dad left, and we (Mom and siblings) lived in near-poverty for a number of years. It was somewhat traumatic for me, and I don’t think I will ever fully recover from it.

My mother died a couple years ago. She was still living at that house. My brother now lives in it. The house is in poor shape, sadly. He and his wife don’t have the money or desire to fix it up.

10

I loved your whole post. :slightly_smiling_face: This comment is especially important.

For all my ups and downs I’ve never lost my ferocious curiosity. Here at The Home, I’m in daily (if limited, by my own choice) contact with more people than at any other time in my life. Even when you work full time, you saw people in the workplace and then everyone departed for home. Now WE ALL LIVE HERE. It’s a community and truly weird, when you think about it.

Anyhoo, the point I was about to make is that I am astounded at how little curiosity regular people have about… well… anything. Whereas I am and have always been curious about everything. I’m like Hermione, sitting in the front row with my hand up. From first grade through graduate school to now.

People don’t ask questions, they don’t speculate, they don’t wonder or inquire or pursue “lines of inquiry” (as they say in the murder mystery novels that I like to listen to). They don’t have ideas and reactions. Their thoughts are not provoked by even the most (to me) thought-provoking questions. There’s a dearth, not to mention, a downright paucity (if any at all), of curiosity and imagination. To what I consider a thought- and conversation-provoking question, they’ll say some variation of, “I don’t know, I have no idea, I never thought about that before, I can’t imagine, etc.” I’ll say, “Just speculate, make something up!” but people can’t or don’t want to.

Yeah, this kind of thing really makes me sad. In our day, to be kept in the house was a punishment. We ran around loose basically all day. At different places where I lived growing up, it might be a regular neighborhood, or at one place, new houses being built with partially framed structures to run in and out of, or on Cape Cod, hundreds and hundreds of acres of forest that were supposed to be “off limits.” :wink: One of the upsides of having fairly neglectful parents is that they were not interested in what I was up to, who my friends were, and what was going on inside my head. Fortunately I was smart enough (and scared enough) to be completely law-abiding.

I have to say that this is one guaranteed source of JOY for me every day. There’s a bird feeder in front of my second-floor living room window and I stock it every day. The birds (and a few squirrels) wait for me and descend on the goodies as soon as I put them in the feeders and scatter them on the ground. Standing to the side and watching them gather in noisy flutters makes me very happy.

I am so sorry. It made me sad to read that. No doubt the event shaped you permanently in some way. Sigh. Will you accept a hug from a stranger who feels for you? :people_hugging:

You were so right! Thanks for this thread. :+1:t3:

11

The house I grew up in was on a street that cut through a forest. So I could go out into the backyard and then into some woods or cross the street, cut through the neighbor’s yard and go into some other woods. I spent close to each day out there regardless of the season. I was a weird nerdy kid so the woods offered both solitude and plenty of stuff to explore and look at. Times when I was playing with other kids in the neighborhood, it was an easy pick for something to do: climb trees, walk the creek, etc. Cue all the usual memes about growing up in the 70s/80s and kids leaving the house after breakfast to run feral until after dark. That was me in the woods.

The woods behind my house were privately owned and, by the time I was in high school, were being leveled for a housing development with an ironic name like “Oak Fields” or “Wooded Glen Estates”. But the woods on the other side were park district property and still remain. A couple of weeks ago, my wife wanted a flat stone for something and I suggested we drive by there and look in the creek. It was both interesting to see how small it looked now compared to the vast expanses of my youth but also gratifying to see the same paths and creek features as I walked on forty plus years ago. There was an exposed bit of earth along the creek where I remembered digging out a hole to hide some stuff (now long gone; it was gone days after I ineffectively hid it) and being there really brought me back.

My kid is in middle school and I wind up parking daily to pick him up and seeing various students walk by the car or some in from outdoor PE. It does my heart glad to see the number of them still often acting very much like kids, skipping or turning cartwheels and otherwise goofing around in a youthful manner. Media would have me assume they were all jaded, old before their time and caring about nothing but their corruptive phones but there’s still a lot of “kid” left in them yet (barring individual traumas, of course).

12

I think the Dope is where all the weird nerdy kids wind up. :waving_hand:t4:

13

The result is that these two kids tend to look inward. They participate in band endeavors, but spend a lot of time in their rooms. The youngest, a boy, has stated that he wants to live at home forever. The contrast is my other son’s girls, who are lively and chatty and would rather be outdoors.

My first ten years were spent in Juneau. I thought everyone grew up seeing whales and glaciers and lived on the side of a mountain.

14

Same thing for me. The big woods that used to be behind our house is now a plat of homes called “Timber Park of McEwen Woods,” and the woods & cornfield that used to be in front of our house is now called “Oak Creek South.” :roll_eyes:

When my wife and I bought our first house, there was a large, wooded area a couple blocks away. I used to hike in it. It was beautiful and full of wildlife. Developers bought it, cut down all the trees, and called it… The Greene. They should have called it “Used to Be Green,” instead.

15

The other thing we often do as we become adults is forget that when we were children we actually were afraid of the dark; that we believed the story in the old Reader’s Digest about the mammoths having been flash frozen by an instantaneously-occuring Ice Age and were afraid the same thing might happen to us and everybody we knew at any moment; that a lost friendship or an enmity from another kid could feel like a total disaster; that we thought the counselors joking about tossing a child camper into the fire might not be joking; etcetera. Fill in your own childhood terrors, they were probably different from mine. But most kids had them. Because they were fears of things we’re not afraid of as adults we now think they weren’t real – but they were real enough at the time. (And for some children they were real at the time in all senses. I wasn’t entirely sure the counselors were joking because I’d picked up enough information, despite my parents trying to shield me, to know that adults sometimes did do such things to children.)

16

I’ll take those fears over adult fears any day.

  • Your health failing and you not being able to support your family.

  • Chronic pain.

  • A family member having an addiction or mental illness.

  • Losing your job if you don’t have savings.

  • Losing your independence due to illness.

  • etc

I don’t know how to describe it, but its like the difference between watching a scary movie as a kid and living a scary movie as an adult.

17

Of course you will. You’re an adult. You’re not afraid of any of those things anymore; and you’ve probably forgotten what it was like to actually be afraid of them as a child.

18

Oh, let’s not do a “whose fears are more realistically scary” contest, okay. Big glass, little glass-- when the glass is overflowing with terror it feels the same for the one who is frightened. Whether the threat is real, imagined, physical, or emotional, for yourself or someone else.

ETA: Sorry. That sounded a lot snarkier than I intended. I still suffer from panic attacks as an adult. I think it feels the same as when I was a kid, even though I know I’m not in danger. A tender subject. Again, sorry.

19

Something I have done that takes me back to my childhood is catch tad poles. I can’t describe the feeling that seems to overwhelm me. I have probably only done this 1/2 dozen times in my adult life but the feeling is just pure happiness. I used the excuse of taking my kids out, or my grandkids.

20

The only thing that ever helped me reclaim the sense of happiness and safety as a child is recreational drugs.

That and spending time with nieces and nephews.

However just to clarify, I never combined the two things at once.