Memories of our childhood

It is amazing! This theme „childhood“ has crossed the minds of some of us in the past two days, traversing across time and space. This coincidence has become the occasion to start my blog here, intended to be a place of dialogue with parents and others concerned about children. As a paediatrician, I have been fascinated by children and talking to parents is a good part of my work with them.

An old friend posted in “what's app” this video presentation “Our Childhood”, Hong Kong in the middle of the last century, a portrait of those times when we were little. Children were wandering around barefoot, selling newspapers in street corners. Elder siblings were carrying and caring for younger ones, sharing things like popsicles. Children were helping out with household chores, even doing work disproportionately heavy for their age. There were happy smiles as well as sad faces. Children were part of the struggles in life.

My brother sent through E-mail a few photos he found in Internet, old photos of the low cost housing estate our family used to live in around the same time, the 1950 – 60's. These apartment buildings which do not exist any more look charming in these old photos. My Mom used to say it was our greatest luck to be able to live there, having literally won a „lucky draw“ among many families applying for low rent housing. Indeed, compared to the children in the video we had a comfortable and very happy childhood. We remember well the little green lawn in the front which we were not allowed on and the stony playground at the back of the building.

After a weekend visiting an old friend in Saarland (the western most German province bordering France) where our young family lived during the first eight years (1980's) I was writing to my children about the places of their childhood, enclosing the photos of our houses when they were born. Inspired by one of the photos in the video presentation “sharing popsicle is joy” I looked up a photo of my kids sharing an ice cream cone more than twenty-five years ago. They were playing outside on the large balcony of our old house, one of them on a tricycle. There were no electronic games at that time.

The private world of the child has been the same, his family, work and play, learning and school... but the contents have changed tremendously because the outside world has changed so much and so fast.

Dear parents, we all have been children once. Do you also have your childhood memories to share?

Let this be an open space here like a garden or a Cafe for parents where we can exchange our stories, questions and thoughts about ourselves and our children.