I don't know if it is good or bad but generation of children now are just focused on their own Smartphones already, even babies are now introduced with a smartphone so that it can be appeased with videos to keep them preoccupied. As soon as they can talk they would already given their own gadgets depending on the capability of their parents to provide them such gadgets of entertainment and communication among other things. Now, comparing my generation, we have our own set of things to make us entertained and these are the traditional games that we would play almost everyday even at school at break time or recess. I should say that being with friends and spending some time with them after school before the sun would set is one of the joyful moments of my time as a kid and I remember it until now even if we do not play and just hanging out, it is still fun to socialize with other kids which leads to talking to each other and then it would resort to playing traditional game of the usual hide and seek which is a basic game because it can involve both boys and girls because it doesn't require much of a skill to play it and can be done easily.
There is this fun activity which we do after harvest season of rice and it is flying of the kites. My eldest brother among my siblings does it and it just requires some skill of fashioning the sticks as a frame of the kite to make it balanced when flying so that it would be more stable and not spin around and eventually crash. The other requirement is just a plastic bag to serve as the kite's skin so that it can fly with the help of a tail so that when you lift it off, the kite would face towards the air to make it soar. Then also we needed a very long string so that we can make it possible to make the kite soar as high as we want it to go. My brother would just use the fibers of an old folding bed and it is enough to do the job. Other kids would do the same when they sees you and there is nothing much to do if the kite would be stable enough for it to stay afloat based on the wind and if the kite can get enough wind from the sky, we are just contented to see it up in the sky and being fascinated that we eventually make a thing that rather floats up above. That is one season for that fun activity and we do it gain next year. The kite flying season ends with the line giving up and snaps with the kite falling near the highway past the savannah section of the rice field, far enough for us to try and retrieve the fallen kite.
One memorable childhood game was the game of "Texts", not text messaging because there are no texting with a phone in those years a few decades ago but rather, a literal small cards of narration of the past movies similar to comic strip but is longer and divided into small cards which we do not read but play it by betting some of the cards with other kids where if we win we would get their some of their cards. The mechanic of the game is that both kids would take some of their cards as a bet in equal proportions and then would agree to each other who will flick three cards in the air. If all the cards would fall down facing up or down or the card of the opposing kid would be the only one facing up and the rest of the cards are facing down and vise versa, it will determine who won the battle and collect their prize after which they will be the one who will take the turn to flick cards until both of them decided or agreed to call it quits. Again it was only my eldest brother who extensively played the game of "text" until one day he brought home a big stash as if it is a stash of money. It is fascinating to see those specific old text cards which had been around circulating for a while. A spoiled card are those pieces of text cards with the center of it torn and is not used as a card for flicking in a battle competition. All of these traditional games are seasonal and gets on revived because some stores are selling the text cards which kids would buy and then eventually play with them along with other kids with playing text cards.
Playing the "Tops" is one seasonal game that we enjoyed playing because to make it spin using the string string provided after you purchased the wood-made top with a nail as its feet. Playing it is made fun by agreeing with other kids to hot your top to see how much damage that they would create and then you would also do the same. The "tops" season is also initiated by stores selling them from time to time, it happens yearly until the kids no longer are interested in playing because they have all grown especially before they go to high school where they get more busy in studying rather than playing.
The playing of the tops season is ended with the final battle of putting the owner's top on the ground by failing to get nearer to the drawn-out line and placing the top within the encircled ground. The one who's top gets nearer to the drawn-out line will be the first one to get a privilege to knock the other contender's top out from the circle. If they would knock one of the contender's tops out from the circle, then it will be subject to be literally whacked by a machete, if the top is fatally damaged, then it is done for good. After that, the same person who was able to strike one of their opponents would do it again and if he failed to do so, his top would have to be placed in the circle among the tops which are laying there. The next person who will get the privilege was the one that had gotten 2nd nearest to strike the line as mentioned above and do the same thing until none of the tops are left as even the survivors top is also chopped by a machete and thus marking the ending the playing of the tops season.
One game which is unique in the section of our barrio was this game we call "Palmo" and it requires a big one peso coin which was still in circulation in the 80's. The term Palmo was just coined by one of the players just to give it a name. That game is a competition with monetary gains and the mechanics of that unique game is one would take their coin and throw it in the fashion that it will roll as far as the person can do it. The other kids would do the same and leave their coins where it landed. Then the one who made their coin roll the farthest from the wall will try to strike the coin nearer to it. They have a piece of small stick or a match stick cut to a shorter t=length which determines the qualifying distance which the striker would get near to collect the coin and proceed to the next one. There is other way for the striker to do that if the coin that he is striking is nearer for him to tap the other contender's coin using the striker's coin, if done successfully, he can also collect the contender's coin. He can continue to do so as long as his coin lands near the next contender's coin with his coin but he failed to do so, he will lose his coin and then the next contender will do the same. It is really a game with monetary gains and turned it to basically gamble but with skills involved and it is a game made and unique for our section of our barrio.
There is also this exhilarating game of what we locally call "Harangang-taga" or the "Patintero" which literally means that to obstruct and chop where vigilance and quick maneuvers will determine your team's win or defeat. The game requires drawing a set of lines done on the ground within a rectangular shape and is good enough for the players to be on the safe zone if they would stand face to face with the opposing team between those lines where a member of the opposing team can easily tag them. However, they can easily be tagged if the contender would be able to tag them if they decide to pass the series of horizontal and vertical which is manned by the opposing team. It is really an exciting game because it is full of fun and laughter along the way. It not a pure fun because of cheating like tagging by not being inside their designated lines of responsibility or refusing to accept being tagged or if frustration would set in leading to confrontations and petty fights. I remember this instance where the rules would include to not touch the neighbor's fortune plant's leaves because it gets torn as the playground for the said game is near to it and the contestants would often inadvertently hold on to the leaves, so if they do so then they would turn into the defendants of the lines and the other team would be the ones that will get the chance to pass the lines. But which ever the teams would do, it is still fun to play it.
These are just some of the games and activities that we played in my time as a youngster. It is of course of lack of ways to have some fun and these games and activities made us more social and physically active and this practiced our sense of obeying rules, getting disciplined, and some of the good traits that in comparison of the negative traits of being isolated which would negatively affect our way of life and thinking if we were like kids of today which I can say are very different compared to my generation. The health effects for the eyes is one that I am afraid would debilitate the young generations now aside from the other health repercussions of being fat because of being more idle and not playing physically with other Kids of their age. But the die is cast and I guess that we have as parents have the task of controlling our children's activities in that regard so that they would not develop the negative effects of being exposed in using Smartphones which is now a part of their lives to fulfill their need to play and not playing physical games anymore.
I really liked this publication, because I was able to learn a little about the traditional games of another country, I think that worldwide children have changed the way they play due to the arrival of technology, many prefer to be on computers, phones or televisions and they no longer share with other children, this makes them less sociable and less active, I think the games before were better and very fun, in my country we also flew kites, we played tops, pinwheels and we played hide and seek, to To me those were memorable times.
I agree, one factor of children having an easy access to using Smartphones will get them more susceptible in being exposed to sites that will effectively corrupt their minds once they learned about googling things which they should not see or view. Which is why raising children gets more complicated because of the negative effects of easy access to the Internet where the invention of the Smartphone wasn't even in my mind about two decades ago but now its use had turned into a right already more than a need and now even a young child owns one as I already stated above.
Definitely, technological advances are greater every day, and children increasingly have more access to new technology, but parents must be vigilant with their children, and educate them to make good use of said advances.
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