What Do You Miss About The Childhood Years?

[A Link In Time]

The childhood years are often referred to as the “good ol’ times” and whether or not this statement has merit, the younger days are traditionally laxer than the later years with few major responsibilities.

I remember those worriless Saturday mornings watching cartoons and/or anime as well as sleeping in late without worrying about responsibilities and leaving myself less time for work.

Collecting Yu-Gi-Oh! And Pokemon cards was another favorite activity of mine. I no longer feel like I have time for my hobbies. I’ve shed more than half of them and hardly partake in what once more my favorite past times.

What I miss most about childhood is innocence. There is an unspoken truth to this statement and I don’t have to explain myself for you to understand what I mean. As we subject ourselves to a greater input of info, we find flaws in others and subject ourselves to more “adult themes.”

But with age comes experience and greater opportunity. People can do more as they grow older even if greater responsibility accompanies this.

What do you miss about your childhood if anything at all? What benefits do you find in aging?

 

[Mudora]

Two big things I miss are: never being worried/stressed and finding enjoyment in the simple things in life. I miss the days where you could just spend an hour watching the clouds pass by, or enjoying a good sunset. Now it's hard to find time with everything going on. Of course, with age you gain wisdom, and learn how to balance work and play. I just miss those kindergarten days where you could run up to any kid, ask to borrow a crayon, and then immediatly become friends.

 

[Castle]

Ignorance... unlike too many adults. I can see why it is so appealing to so many grown men and women.

Ironic how kids seem to think how awesome it'll be to grow up. I pity them. With age comes the realization that life is unfair, harsh, and not always rewarding or satisfying. And ya gotta work hard at it, even when there are others intent on making it as difficult to get by as they can.

I was a far more sociable creature in my early youth than I am now. Just because I didn't know any better. Relationships are hard now. There's a catch to them now that doesn't exist for children.

Life is so much simpler through the eyes of a child. Growing up makes life complicated.

 

[Wolf Sage]

Nothing... for within me lies an inventive, awkward 10-year-old kid with a big imagination...

...but seriously, what I miss the most about my childhood is, ironically enough, conquering the path to adulthood.

 

[GirlWithAFairy]

Honestly, I dont miss much about my childhood. The more I look back on it the more I realize how ignorant I was to the crap that was going on around me. The people my family associated with, the horrible things that were said and done to us as kids, the neglect we experienced... Ya we had some good times but if I had to go back and relive it, I would prolly go postal on someone knowing what I do today. Im so happy to be an adult and to be able to control what goes on in my life rather than rely on someone that I know has and will fail me again and again. All I use my past as, is a reminder of what I will NOT be as a parent/friend/family member.

 

[Austin]

Honestly, the more I grow up, the more freedom and resources I have to do all the things I wanted to do as a kid. I don't miss much.

 

[OcarinaBoy]

What I miss most is my blissful ignorance of the world. I've come to know the world for what it is, which isn't always a good thing. Specifically, I've learned how the people who inhabit it are. I've seen people that I thought of as heroes degenerate into nothing more than beasts, some of them my own family. I saw no one as such when I was a child. But with age comes knowledge; the knowledge of what really goes on past those shrouds of ignorance. There are some truly wonderful people in the world, just as there are truly malevolent ones. As I've grown, I've begun to accept these truths about the people around me.

Unfortunately, with that state of bliss also comes a barrier to discovery. A barrier to the learning of things that your childhood self could never comprehend. I love math and science, and those two subjects leave me awe-stricken with each passing day. I've come to find the emotion in things that I never would have expected to as a child. Music, for example, has become a powerful medium in my life. I can now "see" music, if that makes sense to you. I now understand the true weight of certain events.

In a way, I both do and do not miss that period of my life. There a some aspects of childhood that I would gladly take back, and some that I wish to abandon.

 

[Curmudgeon]

Pickup baseball, watergun fights, and general neighborhood terrorizing.

 

[Killjoy262]

What i miss the most about my childhood was having enough time to spend with my close friends and still having a crap load of N64 games(I have Hurricane Katrina to blame for that though.)

 

[theoathtoorder]

This is a pretty vague answer, but I miss the innocence. I used to look at people and only think the best case scenario. I wouldn't describe myself as jaded or pessimistic, but as you get older, you see the uglier side of humanity. That is why it makes me so mad when someone takes a child's innocence away. It is a precious part of growing up you will never get back.

 

[Ventus]

What do I miss about my childhood? Well I miss two things in particular: the lack of responsibility and being ignorant of the world at large.

For the first, I just hate that I *have* to go to school, that I *have* to get a job, that I *have* to work to get the things that I want. I miss when my parents WOULD pay for my things; they can right now but they mostly refuse to. Yeah, I don't have to pay for dinner atm (I'm 17) nor do I pay for electricity, Internet, gas or any of that. But, paying for some games really sucks when you don't HAVE a job. And working sucks regardless. :I

For the second, I remember when I used to think the world was all flowers and sunshine. There were of course the "bad guys", but I didn't know what horrors they committed and honestly, I wish I don't know now. Oh, another thing about being ignorant of the world was that I used to have a very secluded group of friends. We all had the same interests. We weren't perverted (okay maybe just a little, but how far can an 8 year old child really go?), we all loved sports to some degree and yeah. I miss hating girls for irrational reasons, having sleepovers at friends' houses and all that good stuff.

As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing good about being an adult unless you are absolutely cemented in the ground. :/

 

[misskitten]

I miss the unconditional positive and hopeful way I viewed my future. When I was a kid, I was so absolutely certain that good things were coming my way to make up for what I was going through. I've lost that ability since growing up and I really miss it.

 

[bunny]

Well, there are a lot of things I miss about being a kid, but two of the largest ones are these: ignorance and innocence.

As a child growing up in a Christian home, my parents shielded me from a lot of what goes on in the world. There was never anything bad on our TV, my parents never drank, they never smoked, they never cursed, and they most certainly never ever hit me or my siblings. Life was very peaceful and tranquil. People in public kept their dirty mouths to themselves for the most part around me, because well, I was just a kid. People don't do that anymore. I can go to a public store, and I will overhear the most disgusting, horrible, godless things from people. It pollutes my mind, and I don't want it there! It makes me absolutely sick. I really wish some people would be considerate enough to acknowledge that not all people want to hear those kinds of things. When I was a kid, I thought all people were kind and considerate. I didn't know any better. The only things I'd see on television was Sesame Street and Barney. I only interacted with other Christians. I had no idea what the world was really like.

The other thing I miss would be my innocence. I wish I could hang onto it forever. The first time I heard a dirty joke, of course I didn't get it. When it was explained to me, I was in awe. It was so gross. Where did that come from? The dirty minds of mankind. I really don't think about this very often, but hearing a dirty joke and understanding it is just awful. To me that means I've lost yet another bit of my innocence. Sadly, I've become used to such things. In my childhood, I had absolutely no exposure to anything crude. Now my innocence is slowly fading away bit by bit. I'm trying to cling on to what feels like very little, but unless I want to shut myself out of society, it's an almost impossible task. I miss not understanding dirty jokes, or what certain words mean, or where we came from.

 

[octorok74]

If there is one thing I miss it is doing stuff with my parents. I'll give one example here. Every year around Christmas time we would wait for my mother to get home from work. She would relax a bit and then we would go out for dinner. After dinner we would drive for three hours just looking at the decorations people put up. And we had the radio on and we would sing with the Christmas music. And my brothers would all fall asleep, but I stayed up and looked at the lights. It was so much fun. I would do that now, but no one wants to go with me and it's no fun going alone. So that is one thing I miss.

 

[CynicalSquid]

The thing I really miss from my childhood is thinking girls were icky. Those were good times, but then I started talking to them... and liking them