At-home actions discovered to be as helpful for teenagers as expensive leisure actions | 7NEWS

7 thoughts on “At-home actions discovered to be as helpful for teenagers as expensive leisure actions | 7NEWS”

1. I grew up in the bush. Poor. No toys. Even the rich kids had few if any toys etc because there was nowhere within hundreds of miles to buy any, so we made our own good fun and had tons of fun. All the games, both traditional and new ones we made up, climbing trees and also other places we were not allowed to climb,exploring the bush eg looking for dinosaurs (and getting lost which typically resulted in severe punishment because the entire local community had to form search parties to anxiously try and find us,usually alive and OK, in some bat I feared cave we were positive was where the dinosaurs hid their babies….).Little girls played "Mothers And Fathers" pretending to have a baby, get married etc but some of us got left out so we invented our own girls' game called "Film Stars And Modelsl" and strutted around dressed up in oversized old mother's ball gowns, wattle etc ripped down from the forests, painted our nails and lips and eyes with red indelible pencil etc and got into heaps of trouble for that… Some girls did gymnastics or dancing or sang and we out on "concerts" and shows, fashion parades etc. Boys often loved playing sports, especially Aussie Rules football and regularly trained hard in often subzero winter temperatures in just their bare legs in football shorts. Little weedy young boys, puffing and panting, some with asthma but they were told to not whinge and just "man up", toughen up. They looked so pale and blonde and fragile among the adult males training them. But they loved being challenged..Some kids, desperate for toys simply tried to make their own out of discarded scrap timber, match boxes, used matches etc. They built Billy carts, match stick railway lines all over the place, made little wooden trains etc. And then there was skipping for girls, including elaborate French Skipping with two ropes turned at once in a very synchronised manner, very hard to do or skip to because the skipping had to be done involving fancy steps and to a sung rhyme or poetry etc they invented as they turned the rope and the skipper girl had to obey the instructions the poem or rhyme or story gave her. There were numerous juggling and stepping type games and, of course, the old HopScotch with patterns drawn on the ground and using a bit of old crockery or glass chip to mark bases etc.Boys typically played marbles and a couple of rough wild boys' games, like Cowboys and Indians or Cops and Robbers. And both genders played Hide And Seek or games like I Spy With My Little Eye. Long trips across hundred of bush miles of highway to teach Melbourne or main towns were so long and boring and kids would become very annoying, continually asking "Are We There Yet?", With still a few hundred miles of monotonous flat country to go. Parents and adults typically hot annoyed and would snap and snarl at us and a deathly silence would prevail as we sulked. We coped with "parental abuse" for being annoying kids, by counting all the telegraph line posts or white broken lines on the main highway, as we tried to soothe chooks, ducks, cats, dogs, hold fish or whatever else was travelling with us, so they wouldn't start squawking, barking, snarling etc to further aggravate already angry adults sick of us. We knew they had lollies and we wanted some, so we had to try and not annoy them too much, if we wanted to score dome lollies mother's typically carried for these long boring journeys. As kids, we did a lot of spontaneous singing in groups because it was a very long journey by bus and on foot every day to/from school, like about 75iles each way plus about a 5ile walk to the bus stop, typically alone, as our parents had no cars and had to go to work, anyway, though some kids rode bikes or horses. So, we passed the time on these long boring daily school commutes by di gi g at the top of our voices, causing bus drivers to get fed up with us and sometimes even tipping us out in the middle of nowhere, for being so annoying and loud. We were pretty scared as night fell over the dark forests and winter night temperatures plummeted to near or below zero and the prospect of having to "camp out", with no camping gear. So that is when we tried to remember and use our "bush survival skills" we had been taught at school. But, after we had suffered enough fear, for punishment, some local father would come and collect us and make fun of us for being so scared and wimpy, crying etc and telling us it served us right for being such a pain in the butt to the bus driver etc etc. We got the message after such episodes. Although we had no toys and life in remote Australia gets pretty monotonous and lonely, we were never bored as kids. There was always fun to be had, though sometimes the fun seeking did get a bit too adventurous and dangerous and out of hand, especially when kids wanted to explore areas declared out of bounds (due to danger there) or they wanted to know why we were not speed to talk to some stranger offering us "toys and nice things from Melbourne", things we all wanted. It got too hard to resist for some girls who would accept and there'd be serious trouble for doing so, from parents, teachers etc. We were "drugs and danger proofed" by adults from a very young age. So, basically we were pretty free and safe to do whatever we could dream up, to amuse ourselves and we roamed around all over countryside, exploring, adventuring, looking for fun, thrills, new experiences etc. Sometimes kids, typically boys, did naughty things eg torture and provoke angry bills in paddocks and try to ride them like horses and seeing how long it would take for them to be thrown off by angry bull and barely miss being hired to death. Ten seconds bull ride was the record time. Girls did a female version of this silly dangerous game with bulls or wave a red rag at them, get them all revved up until they chased them, then try to get away before the bull could catch them. Pretty silly but it got the adrenaline going and some kids loved it, mainly because it had been forbidden by concerned adults. Though nobody ever got gored by bulls. However some kids tormenting native wild life, like kangaroos did cop a few attacks from angry father roos defending their tribe or mother roos with their Joey's that kids loved trying to play with, but mother too was not happy about this.

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2. New speak

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3. It’s about how interested the parents are in their own children, not about how interesting the event is that they can buy

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4. Great story 🙄

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5. Parents need instructions these days? What happened to the days of don't come home till the street lights come on and don't come home in a police car

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6. Totally agree.

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7. School goes back tomorrow.
   7news be trolling…again.

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