Childhood Memories

I was born in the late nineteen eighties and grew up in nineteen nineties. At that time, the computer technology was just at its beginning stage, there were TV games and computer games, but not as common as now. At least we would not sit in front of the computers and play with them all the time. In fact, my elder sister and I only got our first computer when I was eleven or twelve, and the major function of it is for doing homework. We had lived in a different world compared to the kids now; we had a much bigger and wider world than they do!

Instead of playing computers, we spent our time in wide variety of activities. In Hong Kong, we live in tall buildings rather than in houses, maybe it is the reason why most of the time children are not allowed to leave their homes. This phenomenon does not change until now. We spent most of our leisure time at home but during that time we could still enjoy ourselves in a small room without computers. Besides watching TV, we also played games together with our siblings. Not only those board games like Monopoly or UNO we would play, but also some games we invented on our own. We could enjoy a whole day simply playing with some handmade paper swords or paper guns. Even if I was alone sometimes, I could also play happily with Lego and making up stories with them.

Sometimes we went to the park next to our home; you can always find a park nearby in Hong Kong. We could play sports like basketball, badminton and so on. We could also play on the swings and slides in the playground there. But more than these, we would join with other boys and girls there to play some group games. There were often more than twenty of us because many parents brought their children out to playground too! We played hide-and-seek and many other interesting games together. We ran and jumped, laughed and screamed. The time there was really fun! However, I no longer see this scene in any park anymore now. Children don’t like to go to parks anymore; they only go there with their parents when they are small. Some of them may still go to the park, but they just “play” with other kids with their PSPs or Nintendo DSs! The purpose of parks and playgrounds seems to be fading as time passes.

Of course we had thousands of games we can play at home and in the park, but I cannot write them all here. What I want to say is that computer games are not the only games in the world now, children should not play with them all the time. They play ball games in computers virtually, why don’t they just go to the court to play the real one? Children are supposed to be active; they should running and jumping all day. I really wonder if their fitness is still fine by just exercising with their fingers only. It is not healthy to them! Moreover, they cannot learn the communication skill and they don’t know how to co-operate each other, which we learnt from playing group games unconsciously.

In my opinion, the most important thing for a child is their happiness, in condition that things are good to him or her. Maybe children can also enjoy their time now and feel very happy to play with their computer games, yet it is not healthy to them. I am not telling all parents to throw away their kids’ computer games and tell their children to live without them just like what the children did twenty years ago, but they should control the time their kids spend on them. Parents should also encourage children to go out to play with friends in the park, so that they can do some exercise and breathe in some flesh air there. Furthermore, they should buy or make some games (maybe those they played when they were small) for their kids, spend more time with them and play with them. Then children would not spend all of their time with computers again. Finally they will be able to see the big and wonderful world which they could not see before.