I have seen some kids have great experience while growing up while others seemed to be bored to hell.. fortunately when we were kids growing up in Lahore I had a great life.. my brother , my sisters and myself always had a buch of friends from our neighborhood along with scores from our school and an army of cousins.. and we were always on the move and plyed and went out in a hellish way.. I noticed there were few families who would never let their kids out to play or even meet their cousins.. they were always inside their homes and in extreme cases I have seen they never even meet their cousins and family (not due to any infighting in family) but due to over protection.. I think its very important for kids to have some time to play or meet other kids than being too strict.. how was ur time as children…
used to live on airforce bases. they were pretty safe. always used to be out of the house playing at the officers mess (tennis, squash, swimming, taekwondo, skateboarding, etc. fun times.
sometimes, bijli used to go out at night, and it was like pitch dark, but we knew that all the friends will be outside, so we walked to the closest friends house, he was outside, then walk the next, .... pretty soon it was 11pm and there were like 15-20 of us..
i was one of the 'few' families.... but i made up for lost time later in life..
over protective ?>>>>>>> my family.
have never attended any formal or farewell.
all the kids on my floor when iwas younger were family friends so it oculdnt have been better
there were huge gardens by our place so we used to be playing all the time,
i remember burrying a goldfish, going to school with them, watching TV. going on 'adventures' the works :)
but the effects of being overprotective esp. in places like UK are terriable on some kids, they go out and do worse things than theyre parents can ever imagine and these r the parents that dont even let them mingle with their cousins/friends
ide say in a way the parents deserve it bcos they try to contrlo every aspect of their childs life and to relieve themselves of the invisible barrier the first the kid tries to do is break it, with devastating consequences in some cases
my time as a child was filled with moj masti, tons of friends, my best friends, my cousins, my relatives…my nani…Allah un ko jannat naseeb karay 
…
and some hard core parhai too… 
used to play everday with about 10-15 kids form our appartment…pakram pakrai, chor pakram saathi, baraf paani, chupan chupai, khokho, pittu, cricket, matti ke ghar banana…and so on…
khedne ka time par fixed tha, 5 o clock se maghrib kee azaan…
kitnee jaldi guzar gayay woh din
it was lots of fun…
thats one thing kids growing up in the west miss out on…
Yes, my brothers and I sure missed that! I always longed to go to Paksitan, even as a small child. We had Urdu text books to learn Urdu, and in it were pcisof Pakistani children, in uniforms going ot school together. I wanted to be around people who were like me, I wanted to be accepted. I always was the only Pakistani here and the only one of course with shalwar kameez, and always teased by the other kids, hey look at her, she's wearing a pant and a dress..... Up until I was 16 years old, I was teased and often a loner at school. Not many friends, only other ones that were 'weird' too, like a girl with red hair.... I did have many friends apart form school in myown street, but most of them were gauri's, so my parents were afraid they would 'ruin' my Paki character and make me too western and I was forbidden to play with them. We idd have some family living in our town, but the realtionships, as they are today, were not so good, so forbidden to play withtheir kids too...
My parents did compensate it, they would take us to playgrounds, the zoo, stuff like that. Adn we travellled a lot in Europe, but still, I did miss hangingaroudn with other children. My escape was books.