Childhood Memories

I believe that I had a very safe and secure childhood. I grew up in a so-called nuclear family, at least from the nineties' point of view. My parents still live together and I have two siblings; a brother who is two years older than I am and a sister who is six years younger. I have always felt very secure in the society where I grew up. Old and young people meet on different occasions, which secures the connection between the different generations. What I believe affected me the most while growing up are three different aspects; the way my family looks like, the fact that I am the second out of three children and the natural connection between young and old people.

As I wrote above, my parents have always lived together and naturally, that is my idea of a normal family. Today, though, many parents are divorced, they may not be married at all or a single mother can have a child, for example. Of course, all of those aspects of a family are just as "normal" as the kind of family that I grew up in. I believe, though, that when I will have a family of my own, I will do everything I can to make that family look a lot like my family. That is completely natural; that is what I am used to and it makes me feel safe. Everyone looks for things that make them feel secure, that is a way of surviving, I suppose. And, of course, the love that we have in my family has greatly affected me. That love has made me the person that I am today, a person who wants to love everyone and who wants everyone to be friends, no matter what differences there may be.

When I was a child, I played a lot on my own. My brother did not want to play with me since I was a girl, and I did not want to play with my sister, since she was so much younger than I was. Of course I had friends, but I liked playing by myself. This, of course, was helped a lot by the fact that I have always had a great deal of imagination. I could easily come up with different stories and I could keep myself busy for hours. I am afraid, though, that children today do not use their imagination in the same way that my generation did. They do not need to. Everything is already fixed. They can watch television programmes all day long if they want to, or they can sit by their computers. They do not need to come up with any characters or imagine what a person in a book would look like, since all books today have a lot of pictures in them. All the books that I read as a child were books with almost no pictures at all; I had to imagine everything. Hence, I want children of today to use their imagination more. I do not believe that children have the time to dream or imagine anymore. They are too busy watching television or playing computer games. That is what I want to give them; the opportunity, and the time, to dream.

Axvall, where I grew up, is a small village where everyone knows everyone and old and young people easily talk to each other. Of course this makes Axvall in general a bit conservative (if you are not from here, we do not want you to live here) but it has also made sure that the memories of the older generation live on. I have always loved listening to older peoples' stories and we got used to it, my friends and me. I remember an old woman who some friends and I used to visit. I cannot remember what brought us there in the first place, but I remember that we sat very silent when she told us about her own childhood. I hope that old people and children will always make use of each other. I think that both parts will learn a great deal from each other.

Your childhood affects you more than anything. As a child, you gain a lot of values and as you grow older, it becomes harder to change those values. I strongly believe that teachers and parents are the most important persons in a child's life and to make good, intelligent and loving citizens, we have to start working as soon as possible!