Planning house construction and considering the desire for children

I agree with HilfeHilfe for once.
Should that make me think now?

I have to observe that the children (nursery and kindergarten) who are covered with branded goods and toys are not the children of the well-off.

A few sticks, a stream, mud, and children are happy up to a certain age. Jumping in puddles is fun - for me too.

Education is a thing
- one takes books, explains, draws, shows
- the next uses YouTube
- the rest don’t care, that’s what daycare, school, etc. are for.

Anyway, I’m off now. Picking up my little one and we’ll see what we do. Feeding ducks, playing in the mud, playground, unfortunately the snow is gone again, or baking pancakes, bakery and butcher, library

Please explain to me what "offene Ganztage" are.

There are schools here, in this particular case a comprehensive school, with which I work, where children can be cared for on the school premises beyond regular school hours. For this, there is lunch, various clubs, homework supervision, in short: activities until late afternoon. It is called "open" because it is not compulsory. This is not necessarily reprehensible and is meant to help parents more easily work full days while the child is still cared for. Sounds good, and often it is. But often not. I have noticed two things: First, the 5th-6th graders are so far apart in their development that for some, detaching from their parents on several full days per week is initially too much. With older students, everything is much more relaxed. But sometimes I have a few miserable little groups sitting in the club activities, let’s say: homesick. Second, and much more decisive: to alleviate the "homesickness," smartphones are consulted. Facebook instead of real other children. WhatsApp with mom instead of fooling around with Kevin and the teacher. The effects on the kids are serious — and negative. Sad story: when I later want to integrate them into groups at the club, their social skills are far behind. From positive experience, I know that this condition can be treated over 1-2 years in 11-14 year olds. Provided you manage to enforce separation from smartphones for long continuous periods, which in turn only works with the parents as partners. And unfortunately, they are often more of a problem than a solution. I enforced a one-week youth trip for 12-16 year olds with a smartphone ban(!). It nearly cost me my head. The kids themselves saved me, and that from their own parents. They wanted to try out completely analog coexistence, because they had already experienced it in phases. Two then were not allowed to come along. Not being able to control a 13-year-old son for a week (officially: to look after his best interests...) caused some hysterical project parents to mentally shut down. The poor children! This was completely off your original question and totally OT. But I just had to get it out.

I have to observe in our case that the children (nursery and kindergarten) who are covered with brand-name products and toys are not the children of high earners.

Interesting, isn't it . Up to a certain income, this broad "mass" defines itself through outward appearances (cars, clothing, technology, etc.). Above a certain income, less so, because you no longer think about (at least that's how it is for me) how the environment perceives you. But in the next higher income bracket, the drama starts again in a "smaller mass." Thanks for the story about the helicopter parents. Crazy....really.

Thanks for the story about helicopter parents. Crazy....really.

It would be "crazy" if these were very rare individual cases. Unfortunately, it has been happening with increasing frequency over the past 10 years. Specifically: I advocate for largely media-free spaces because we do sports and community face-to-face. Phones and tablets just get in the way. They are not only unnecessary but harmful to the goal of our activities, namely promoting real community, social skills, and of course athleticism.
Because anyone who retreats into the vastness of the web at every personal difficulty doesn't learn conflict resolution, doesn't develop solutions for such situations, simply does not develop socially. Also, concentration suffers when you check something on your phone every 10 minutes. It's a big problem: children who at first cannot concentrate on one thing for even 20 minutes. Things don't go well for them at school either, how could they?

And what do more and more parents say? "That's just the youth's medium; they can learn everything with it just like we learned without it, no difference, and anyway, you can't send your child anywhere without a smartphone, they'd get bullied as outsiders!"
I want to grab those parents and shake them to see if they notice anything at all. And I find: these are all excuses. In truth, they themselves are addicted and conditioned, and what they really can't stand is the loss of control when the digital 24/7 connection to their own child is cut off because the child is doing something without a smartphone.

As I said, unfortunately, this isn't "crazy" in the sense of "insane but rare." It's just still "insane."

I used to be able to disappear to a tent camp deep in the Westerwald for 14 days at the age of 10. We called twice; to get to the phone booth was a little hike, 6 km.

Today, older kids don’t go to connected log cabins for training camps for a week anymore because parents don’t support the phone ban.
By the way, nowadays I even have to discuss phone-free training days lasting just one day, where we conduct courses from morning to evening. 10 hours without a phone. Several (!) parents show up to try to talk it out somehow. But they simply can't grasp why their kids have concentration problems and can't keep up at school with analog bullying victims (exaggerated, but that’s actually how they see it).

I stand there, just furious, trying to keep my self-control.
That’s probably why I never have problems with weird neighbors. When you go through that, you become very calm about the smaller problems.

A really terrible thread ...

Anyway, one more factual point: Even if I were building a house for myself (or my family), I would still make sure that it basically has a standard market equipment and floor plan. Simply put, so that in case of emergency the house can be sold again at market value. I don’t want to limit myself by not having additional rooms that could be used as children's rooms and thereby exclude two-thirds of potential buyers.