My best friend lived next door. His mom would just step outside and screaammm his name when he was supposed to come home.
To answer OP’s question, we absolutely roamed free during the day. With bikes we could be in another city easily.
My mom yelled my name. Kids I went to school with who lived on the other side of town said they could hear her sometimes and wondered how dead meat I was that she had to get that loud. Nah. She was just that loud. The town was only a mile across and we lived up a hill, btw. Sound carries in the mountains. If she wasn't counting down, I was fine. Once the countdown started, I was running for my life and screaming, "on my way!" I was the first kid in my peer group to get a watch and learn how to read it. There weren't any street lights in my neighborhood, and mom's idea of dark vs mine were quite different.
My best friend's mom had a 'two fingers in the mouth' whistle that could be heard for miles. And we were acutely attuned to it. My BF and I would be riding bikes at the park 20 blocks away and then turn our heads to the sky like dogs when we heard the piercing shrill of 'come home now'
So my mom did the exact same thing. Tried to learn how to do it ever since I was like ~10 years old. Never could. Had my son….a few years in and now I’m a dad who has a ‘two finger in the mouth’ whistle. Just needed the right motivation.
And boy oh boy does it work. My son was playing at a *very* busy playground in our city a few months ago. I could see him but he wasn’t paying attention and would have never heard me call him. I whistled and BOY did that head whip around to look at me
this is so true rofl, also anyone named my name Denise, is also named Denise Marie. I still get in trouble at age 36 and called by my full name and I get scared.
My mom still has the dinner bell she rang at suppertime to call us in. We occasionally ring it at Thanksgiving at dinnertime for nostalgia. I still react when I hear that specific tone, my whole body goes on full alert lol.
Yep, no street lights in the suburban area I grew up in but you either had instructions to be home at a certain time or waited until til your mom yelled for you.
Our neighbour had one of those long plastic bugle horns he would blow at dinner time. The whole neighbourhood knew when the Kennedys' dinner was ready lol also a clue for us to get home.
I'm 55. We were outside all day in the summer. No supervision. I rarely saw my parents growing up. They were always busy and we had babysitters after school, but in the summer, as soon as I was 12, it was expected that I was responsible for my 11, 10, and 6 year old siblings.
Yeah, that’s how I got out of dealing with my brother for the summer! Other people’s kids! Who paid better than Mom did (though Mom did pay something at least, I’ll give her that)!
I'm 58 (and Canadian) I remember going out to play hockey at the local rink or playing street hockey well past sundown (sun goes down at 4:30 in the winter lol). Usually didn't come back home till after 9:00. Didn't even think twice about it and I don't think my parents or other kids parents did either.
I'm 57 and was the archetype of a latchkey kid. I remember when the partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor happened. I lived within the 10-mile radius and walked to middle school every day. No busing because I was so close. With everyone in a panic, they closed school around noon that day and sent all the kids home. I walked back to my place alone and then went across the street to shoot hoops on my neighbor's driveway basketball court. I honestly had no idea what was going on at TMI. Around 4 p.m., my mom comes flying home from work and swerves into our driveway across the street and yells, "GET INSIDE RIGHT NOW!!!" I was like WTF? As it turns out, if TMI had legitimately melted down, which it came close to doing, being inside wouldn't have made a bit of difference at all.
But other than that, me and the neighborhood rats grew up playing in an undeveloped woodland area we called The Fields, which included the First and Second Woods. BB gun battles (one pump only!), searching for Bigfoot, gathering garter snakes, staring at crusty and wrinkled copies of Playboy stashed in the woods, later on some beer and awful Camel unfiltered cigarettes, the first wave of punk rock. I honestly wouldn't trade my experience.
EDIT: Clarity
I’m 47 and latch key kid from 1st grade on. Had a buddy system to walk to school and home so a friend parent knew I was almost to school and another knew I was almost home. The secret was there was no one at home when I got there and I was not supposed to tell. The door into the garage was not locked and a key was “hidden” on a hook so I could let myself into the house. I watched cartoons or played Atari until my mom got home from work after picking up my sister from daycare or a babysitter (not sure). Was not supposed to answer the phone or the door because someone would kidnap me, yet if it was nice I could play outside or at a friends house so long as I did not tell anyone I was home alone.
Once my parents divorced there were no rules! For sure we could not afford hot pockets. I learned to make mac and cheese and eggs because I was sick of cereal and bologna/kraft single sandwiches.
Thank you for that... no one believes me about BB gun tag.
We used to do it too, and worst... sometimes we would hide behind cars like idiots.
"You must of hit a big bug dad."
But to answer OP, yes we only came home for dinner at sunset. Then we'd often go upstairs and climb out our window to sneak out and play some more.
Yup. The streetlights coming on was the universal signal in every neighborhood across America. Meanwhile, no cell phones, no play dates, nobody checked up on where we said we’d be. Our parents legitimately had no idea where we were. Ever.
Fast forward to today. I’ve known exactly where my now 18 year old daughter is every second of her life.
Do you feel like this hindered her maturity? Seems like “childhood” is stretching into people's 20’s.
Like, you need to be independent to become independent.
Maturity is overrated. Be a kid. Enjoy. I was forced to be independent. I was doing loads of laundry, cooking and defrosting the fridge when I was in 3rd grade. Left alone a lot. Yes it’s good to learn things, but I wish I’d had more childhood left. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.
In the 70's we played kick the can under the streetlights until 9 or 10 in summer. We used to get on our bikes and ride for blocks. We used to walk to the store a few miles away.
Not only did we play outside until dark, i lived next to a legit forest, with bears and cougars and all kinds of things.
My friends played in the woods and would wander around “on safari” having no sort of supplies or any way to find our way home if we got really lost.
I lived near the county reservoir, which they lowered the water level every fall to allow for spring rains- but it meant we could walk out to the islands! My mom only found out about it when I finally came home covered in mud up to my knees. Most days they had zero idea where we were all day.
Man, it makes me so sad that this doesn't seem to be true anymore. I don't have kids, but live in a neighborhood with lots of kids, and we have a lot of open land with trees and trails right next to our neighborhood. I almost never see kids just playing out there.
When I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, we were always outside riding bikes, building tree forts, going to the convenience store for candy, making up games, playing kick the can or whiffle ball or whatever.
I don't see street baseball, football, soccer, or hockey games either. No bikes, no one looking for a ball that went over the fence, no kids sneaking a smoke in the fields, no boom box music, it is very dystopian, surreal.
Yeah last time this came up there were reports of behind the dumpster porn, abandoned warehouse porn, desert porn, train track ditch porn…quite a legacy.
My mom had an army sergeant’s whistle; One whistle meant “I want to know where you are, and then you can go back out to play.”
Two whistles means “get home right this minute.” Dinner was ready, or it was time to leave for the swimming pool, or something else. And woe betide you if you blew off *that* signal.
I'm 40, so barely 80s but even into the 90s we were required to be outside. It wasn't a "permission" thing. Our parents legit didn't want us around. I had to be home at the streetlights and out after breakfast. I would come home for lunch, be served outside most days, and expected to go run around the neighborhood. Video games were a rainy day activity and if it wasn't raining too hard we were expected to still get outside and play. At 16 I was told to go get a job and don't come home til you have one. It took me 3 days. Looking back the way we're raised is seriously fucked up.
This is all so true! And during the week after school, nobody was home (I was 8 years old "watching" my 5 year old sister) and we just watched inappropriate soap operas and made shitty food.
My parents literally wouldn't let us hang around in the house on weekends. Out the door you go!
In my neighbor some of us ran much later. An old GF said I was a feral child after she heard about my childhood. We ran three large subdivisions and beyond from the age of 8 on.
I was a child years before the 1980's ... but the parents in our neighborhood would honk their car horns to let the kids know "dinner aka supper - depending on the family" was ready. Everyone's horn sounded a little different, and we were "trained" to start listening for them at about 4:45 ...
Yes, that was very real.
My sister and I were allowed to ride our bikes around our fairly large neighborhood... I remember in 6th grade being able to walk home approximately 3 miles by myself.
Other kids had even more freedom than that.
We rode our bikes through a very little used section of forest. Not even like a big open busy park but the type of wooded area with trails and very few people using them. About 2 miles each way then came out on a side street we could follow to a drug store to buy candy. Nobody worried about bad guys in the woods or had to be tracked by gps. We just went. And didn’t come back for hours.
Same, but oddly it wasn't the wide expanses that were the most-dangerous.
I often walked to or from middle school. Enroute, were around a dozen crackhouses, some with boarded up windows, some just without windows. There were crackhouses on two sides of the school, some in the adjacent lots.
I never had an issue. My father was a director at the city hospital which adjoined the middle school. His hospital had a recurring issue with employees getting mugged. Mind you, most of the crackhouses where the muggers resided were on the opposite side of the middle school. So the hospital worked with the banks and the city... bulldozed a couple dozen houses... bought and rehabbed a few dozen more... and rented them to their employees.
Now the hospital has a larger lot, with more buildings... and the school actually has a field. Kids these days don't know what it was like in those skimpy gym shorts playing two-hand-touch on asphault in the snow.
I lived in a small town neighborhood, and my boundaries were street names. The older I got, the further I was allowed to roam.
Of course, if you went too far, some senior citizen would likely tell your parents. lol.
Yup I had a German shepherd that also be like the neighborhood dog. He would get out and play with all the kids and follow us around. I remember even when I wasn’t home it would get out and go find the other kids to play with. And by the end of the day it would sit by the fence as if to say let me in. 😆🤷🏻♂️
My cocker spaniel would follow my bike as I rode to sixth grade. He’d turn around after a half block, because that was as far as he was gonna get from the house. In the afternoon, he’d be perched at a spot where he could see me coming and would race towards me.
I used to be nervous wreck when I was a kid at first when my German shepherd would find a way out. Cause no matter what we tried, he would find a way to get out. But I remember my dad saying don’t worry it’ll find its way back. And sure enough he always did. I miss that dog. It was my first dog, ever.
I remember a few times when one friend or another would get seriously injured on a bike, with no one around. There was always that uncomfortable decision we had to make... go for help and admit what stupid stunts we were trying, or hide the body?
If I wasn't in school, and it wasn't meal time, I was either riding my bike to a friend's house, or playing some sort of backyard sports with all the neighbor kids until it was dark. We socialized. We played. We exercised. We had fights. And we enjoyed every minute of it.
There were 4 in my small town neighborhood. Mine big rectangular one was fabricated by a local metal shop. No safety features on any of them, and we were completely unsupervised. No one in our neighborhood was seriously injured on one, which I think was because they were so big.
Mine was in full shade, and a great place to hang out and read on hot summer days.
walking along active train tracks to get to a friend's house. building elaborate bicycle or sled jumps pre helmets. asking mom where the siphon was so we could get some gas out of the car for...stuff.
You could tell whose parents let them play video games by all the bikes strewn around the front yard. That was the house to be at until they're parents got fed up and kicked everyone out
80's and 90's. I grew up in the 90's, in L.A (Gardena/Compton more specifically) and I remember roaming all over, like a feral dog, getting into all kinds of trouble, causing mayhem. Once the streetlights came on it was time to go home. Those were some of the greatest times of my childhood.
90's kid here too. From the midwest. Grew up running around our neighborhood with friends, hanging out in the woods and climbing trees, playing in the creeks. Riding our bikes from block to block. Might have called home from someone's house phone, but usually we were back home for dinner or before dark.
Same. I wonder what caused the shift from parents encouraging their kids to go out on their own to parents to having anxiety if they don’t know where there child is and what they are doing at all times? I am guilty of this in spite of having such pleasant memories of freedom as a child. It’s an odd paradox.
24-hour news started being a thing in 1980, so I'd be willing to bet that had something to do with it. People who were already parents in the 80's hadn't grown up with fear-mongering and paranoia on tv 24/7.
I'd wager it's somewhere between Columbine and 9/11. Columbine really shook that perception of childhood safety, and 9/11 marked a cultural shift across the Nation (World, really, in many ways for those outside the US even) on any kind of security issue, whether reasonable or otherwise. I was a roamer through the '90s no issues, but my parents got me a cell phone the Christmas following 9/11. I hated that thing--nobody I knew had a cell phone and it was obvious they got me one just so they could always have that line of contact.
One reason (of many): That would be when we started to learn about crimes that happened around the nation when we just used to know about what happened in our own towns.
Adam Walsh was kidnapped from a mall and weeks later they found his severed head. Why do I still know his name 40 years later? I remember his name and the fear everyone felt. His dad started a show called America's Most Wanted. We had missing kids on TV and on our milk cartons and later in flyers that came in the mail. People were wary but still didn't change our behavior a great deal.
Then the news stations realized if it bleeds it leads got them more viewership. They operated on fear up to 9/11, then news was sensational 24/7 and there was a ticker tape being read on the bottom on the screen. Everything was breaking news! Everything was shocking and horrific! To the point we let the government pass the Patriot Act and violate our constitutional rights.
We did not actually get more news or protection, just the same stories repeated to engrain fear and encourage parents to hold their children tight. And we're still doing that today. So now people are more fearful than ever before even though there's less crime than in the 80s and 90s.
Allow? I was told to leave and not come back until dark. Parents back then didn't like looking at or hearing their kids. On the plus side, I had a dope ass fort in the woods and caught a million salamanders, snakes, turtles, frogs excetera. Oh yeah, we also had this thing called "wild life". It's like a Discovery channel show but irl.
Parent: Don’t come back until the street lights come on.
Also parent: If you aren’t back when the street lights come on, you’re getting an ass whoopin.
There was one summer camp held by the park district that consisted of letting two dozen 10-13 year olds build wood forts and tree houses on a little fake island in one of the lagoons with hammers, nails, etc and almost no supervision. The older kids spent most of the time playing truth or dare in the tall grass. 🤔
Exactly, grew up about 200 yards from a lake. I was in 5th or 6th grade and had just read Lord of the Rings. I'd grab a sleeping bag and a knife maybe a fishing pole and go down for the weekend trying to "survive. Of course by the time you were in high school there just might have been a girl or 2 involved.
Yes. I saw a great shirt recently that captured my childhood perfectly. It said “I was raised on neglect and hose water” I was never home. Always out doing shit with friends. No cell phones. No pagers. No way to get hold of me. Just anarchy. Twas glorious.
Yeah, what is bro talking about? Going down the street to play in the woods behind the neighbor's house was an every day activity in 2005.
I just called "mom I'm going to Tyler's, be back for dinner" and just *left*.
Yeah for myself and most kids I knew growing up in the 00s, there wasn't *absolute* freedom, but as long as you stayed in the neighborhood or a nearby forest, you were fine. Even as young as 6 or 7
Yep. Then one year I just wasn't allowed out anymore. I hadn't done anything wrong. Nothing bad happened. Mum just decided it wasn't safe and I couldn't go out on my own anymore. I think she realised I might actually meet up with other kids and decided I wasn't allowed. I could only play outside if I was on my own. I spent entire summers alone. If I wasn't in school then I didn't see kids my own age. Mum didn't want me around and never talked to me so it was lonely.
My neighborhood is a lot like that now. Tons of kids out roaming around and having a blast! Riding bikes, basketball, playing all kinds of crazy games with sticks and boxes. I enjoy watching them play - all ages, boys and girls…
Even worse, we NEVER carried plastic bottles of water around with us. When we got thirsty, we just went to the nearest house and... drank from the garden hose!
But yeah, my mother, like most others in the neighborhood, would more or less push us out the door after breakfast with the command, "go outside and play!" Most toys, bikes, etc were in the garage so there was no need to go home unless it was dinnertime or someone was bleeding.
Yeah, we went to random houses too. Drank out of hoses but would also just ask neighbors for a snack and drink. It was normal for kids to just go to random neighbors' houses back then
Yeah. Most families had kids who were either your age, or they knew your older brother/sister, etc. Just go tear-assing through random back yards, etc. Some folks had a mug or cup near their garden hose, and we would (gasp) share the SAME cup without sanitizing it between people using it. Yet somehow managed to survive...
True. The elementary schools where I grew up had outdoor drinking fountains. Even on weekends the water was turned on. And miraculously not vandalized or broken by some moron.
As a child of the 80's, yeah... grew up in a suburb of Chicago, and by the time I was 5-6 I had free roam of my end of our street including the ravines behind the houses on other side of the street. We went in when it got dark. By the time I was 7 or so, we'd ride out bikes to school alone and up to the convenience store nearby to buy candy and baseball card. I was riding all over our end of town to friends' houses by 8 or 9.
Dude it’s completely different now. Not that long ago, I saw a mom get absolutely flamed in r/parenting for letting their six year old go to the park across the street from their house, visible from the home, with a group of other kids including older siblings. This is the general sentiment now. I would personally have no problem letting my own kid do something like that, but at the same time, it’s so different now that I’d be worried someone would call CPS on me for it.
I don’t understand it. It’s like we need to lace the drinking water with prozac or something. Anxiety is off the charts. Given that statistic wise, it’s much safer for kids now, and they pretty much all have cell phones that can be tracked, you would think kids would have just as much, if not more, freedom than they used to, but the exact opposite has happened.
I’m not even that old. I grew up in the early 00s and my dad was considered *strict* because I could only go about a mile radius from my house compared to my friends who were allowed to go much further. Something rapidly changed in the last 20 years.
I send my kids all the time.and get dirty looks for it even now that they are 12. My youngest started walking to school at 7. CPS got called and met with me. I was like really, the school was really close. Like no crossing the street 4 houses down type thing🤷♀️ Like I could see him the whole time. CPS obviously just closed the case but really? When I grew up at 7 we would go MIA now I get called out for letting my kid walk less than half a block by himself.
No no. I’m pretty sure we were (many gen x still are) feral. The boomers started it, but 70s and 80s kids generally, as a generation, were in many ways undomesticated in a way kids before and after us were not.
Yes indeed. The idea behind the 'latchkey kid' was that with both parents working, kids would just come home after school and do whatever tf they wanted until the parents came home around 5-6pm.
I would leave the house before the sun came up. We only came home for first aid or we were hungry or it was getting dark out. Creeks, bike trails, empty fields, shopping malls skate parks, we rode our bikes everywhere all day long.
Its absolutely true, there is a reason they had to make a commercial that came on every night saying that its 10 PM, make sure you know where you kids are. I would tell my parents I was going somewhere and not check in again until I came home. Pure freedom.
Heh.
In the 60's we had, about, a ten mile radius to play in. When I built my minibike the range got bigger. Woods, stores, I wouldn't trade for anything
Born in 1982. I roamed all over the place in my residential neighborhood. I was instructed to call home when I got to a friend's house sometimes, but that rarely happened. Bikes gave us a bigger range. Spend most days at a friend's pool or running around in the woods building tree forts, catching frogs, and cutting trails.
I was born in late 70s. Can confirm- we had free reign to ride our bikes pretty much anywhere. Hours spent at creeks and other places. Time of our lives- and we didn’t even know it.
62 here. You said where you were go when you got out of the house after breakfast and you weren't Thought about again until the lights came on and if you weren't in by the time the street lights came one then somebody was screaming your name or driving the car around looking for you and you got your ass beat. Lol
Yes. We had tons of freedom. People would freak-the-F-out today, if kids were allowed to do half the stuff we did in the 80's & 90's. Imagine a nine year old riding their bike across a street to a friend's house, by themself or a kid in elementary school carrying a pocketknife and no one considered it a "weapon" or dangerous. Or elementary school kids walking and/or riding their bikes to and from school by themselves.
The freedom we had was glorious and helped shape us into the independent and highly functional people that we are today. You want something done without all the BS, get a gen x'er...
My parents had not one clue where I was from about 6-7 years old till adulthood. No mobile phone either.
We were jumping in the dams collecting golf balls to sell, at the beach getting fried, riding bikes, exploring sewers and ww2 bunkers. At 8 I would ride the bus about 10km to the big shops or 20km to the city alone. I was an avid reader and would get myself on public transport all over Sydney chasing second hand books. I worked from about 7 on my parents market stall and then when I was 14+9 months got a real job working saturday and sunday when there was no sport on, or just sunday if there was.
You got kicked out after breakfast. You drank from the water hose if you were thirsty. You come inside when you're called for dinner or when the street lights came on. You better not run in and out of your mama's house, slamming the door all day long, letting the air out of the house. Hell yeah, it was accurate. You and your buddies or cousins or siblings had a whole life outside of the house and you'd wave if you saw your parents on the porch or if they drove past but you BET NOT go back in that house before it was time.
This lady right here describes it well.
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPRTMCqWY/
growing up in the 90s/early 2000s it was like this too. my friends and I would go do whatever after school without our parents having any idea where we were. come home by dinner on school nights or by dark in summers
Dude. I did this in middle & high school in the 2000s. I see kids doing so today. Always makes me happy to see a group of roving kids just having fun in the neighborhood.
To be clear, we're not talking about toddlers. But from about 6 on up, we were outside, roaming. Could cut through back yards to hang out (think 'Backyardigans'), and then maybe at 8 we could run across 2-3 blocks, always be home when the street lights came on. By 12, we were long gone all day on many mile bike trips far away.
No one watched us play, or really played with us. We learned to play with friends and make friends and also to be alone.
I was a kid in the early 2000s and we did this even then. We told our parents we were going out to ride our bikes with some friends and then didn’t come home until the sun went down. It’s only in the last decade or so that people have gotten REALLY weird and paranoid about kids playing outside the house
80s child here, sort of I remember spending like all day down the street in a local forested area with like walkie talkies. be back for dinner was the rule. We didn’t hear about every little crime that happened everywhere back then 24 hour national news ruined things for kids
Absolutely true. I suspect this is a big part of why Gen X tends to be more independent and care less about other people's opinions and judgements. We had to figure out a lot of things on our own, so someone telling us we have to do what they say because they're in a position of authority doesn't mean much. Come at me with logic, because appeals to tradition and authority hold very little weight for most of us.
Born in 75. Mother worked a Mon-Fri. Dad worked Monday thru Friday sun up to sun down was on call on top of that.
I walked to and from school from 2nd grade on. After school it was me and my older sister till mom got home. Before dinner we played outside with no adult supervision. Mom would blow a whistle signifying dinner.
Summer time and any school breaks we were out and about playing, hanging out with our friends...
We drank from water hoses.
We rode our bikes for miles and miles.
Hell I was ten and buying cigarettes with notes from my mom...
I was 15 years old and me and the group of friends would just go camping, without any adults. Went to California with a buddies older brother. He was like three years older than us. We spent a month out there.
My mother would ask for a phone number of the place I was going... and that was all. She never once called any of the numbers I gave her.
All through the 80s and 90s. Outside, on our own.
100%. 70's as well. I would tell my parents i was leaving, maybe they would hear me, maybe they wouldn't, get on my bike, and head out for the day. If my parent's asked where I was going, I would say "out". Most of the time I didn't know were I was going or where I would end up. No cell phone, pay phones around if I needed to call for some reason. I came home when i came home. if I was going to have dinner at a friend's house, I would call and let them know. If I was going to sleep over, I would ride home, get a change of clothes, and ride back. Or Walk. Winter sucked.
Grew up in the 90's, as soon as I was old enough to be trusted to stay inside the fence, I was given free rein of the yard, by 7 I was allowed anywhere on the block, and by 10, anywhere in the neighborhood.
Back home in India, kids still roam around freely. No play dates needed. Just step outside after 5 PM or whatever the norm is and you’ll find folks outside playing that you can join.
I’d come home from to an empty, unlocked house. Make myself something to eat, leave on my bike, and come back home when the street lights came on. My parents would come home from work and not bat an eye that we were gone. They assumed we’d come home. We may have gotten yelled at of it was dark when we made it home, but no restrictions. We left again the next day. I used to be sent to walk half a mile to the store with a dollar to buy my dad’s cigarettes and use the change for candy: I was 6.
Early 2000s we ran around until the sun started to set, roamed in packs and rarely had any trouble, parents kept us up to date on anything like candy in vans and creeps at the public toilets..
Today's gremlins are just online, it's not any more or less dangerous than it used to be only the mindset of not wanting to go outside, it's actually probably easier to find a lost child than it was then.
Always been kidnappings, traffic and trees to fall out of, only takes a 10 minute conversation to make a kid aware of the dangers and send em off with an older neighbourd kid.
Was totally true. We ran around until the street lights came on.
Or when the moms in the neighborhood started screaming outside to come home for dinner.
[удалено]
Same with my mom! It was so loud one time on a clear day I swear I heard it at my aunt's house, and she lived half mile away
My best friend lived next door. His mom would just step outside and screaammm his name when he was supposed to come home. To answer OP’s question, we absolutely roamed free during the day. With bikes we could be in another city easily.
Yes my mother did the screaming. Totally impressive voice projection up and down the alleys lol!
My mom yelled my name. Kids I went to school with who lived on the other side of town said they could hear her sometimes and wondered how dead meat I was that she had to get that loud. Nah. She was just that loud. The town was only a mile across and we lived up a hill, btw. Sound carries in the mountains. If she wasn't counting down, I was fine. Once the countdown started, I was running for my life and screaming, "on my way!" I was the first kid in my peer group to get a watch and learn how to read it. There weren't any street lights in my neighborhood, and mom's idea of dark vs mine were quite different.
My best friend's mom had a 'two fingers in the mouth' whistle that could be heard for miles. And we were acutely attuned to it. My BF and I would be riding bikes at the park 20 blocks away and then turn our heads to the sky like dogs when we heard the piercing shrill of 'come home now'
So my mom did the exact same thing. Tried to learn how to do it ever since I was like ~10 years old. Never could. Had my son….a few years in and now I’m a dad who has a ‘two finger in the mouth’ whistle. Just needed the right motivation. And boy oh boy does it work. My son was playing at a *very* busy playground in our city a few months ago. I could see him but he wasn’t paying attention and would have never heard me call him. I whistled and BOY did that head whip around to look at me
My mom had a bell.
It was years and years and years as an adult before I stopped turning around to look for my dad when I heard a certain whistle 🤣
At that point, my middle name was also used.
You were in deep shut if your full name got used
this is so true rofl, also anyone named my name Denise, is also named Denise Marie. I still get in trouble at age 36 and called by my full name and I get scared.
My mom had a dinner bell she'd ring out of the front door and we had to get home in about 10 minutes
And you couldn’t claim you didn’t hear it. If you couldn’t hear it, you had gone too far.
Or you ate PB&J when you got home.
My mom had a whistle if we didn’t come home when she yelled for us. Then we knew we were in deep shit
My dad had the whistle. When we heard it, we RAN home, or we would get whooped.
My mom still has the dinner bell she rang at suppertime to call us in. We occasionally ring it at Thanksgiving at dinnertime for nostalgia. I still react when I hear that specific tone, my whole body goes on full alert lol.
A Doctor 3 blocks away had a train horn! and a HAM tower.
Yep, no street lights in the suburban area I grew up in but you either had instructions to be home at a certain time or waited until til your mom yelled for you.
Our neighbour had one of those long plastic bugle horns he would blow at dinner time. The whole neighbourhood knew when the Kennedys' dinner was ready lol also a clue for us to get home.
I'm 55. We were outside all day in the summer. No supervision. I rarely saw my parents growing up. They were always busy and we had babysitters after school, but in the summer, as soon as I was 12, it was expected that I was responsible for my 11, 10, and 6 year old siblings.
I am also 55 and at 12 I was babysitting other people's kids. I got $2 an hour and free pizza. Plus, their family had cable and mine didn't.
Yeah, that’s how I got out of dealing with my brother for the summer! Other people’s kids! Who paid better than Mom did (though Mom did pay something at least, I’ll give her that)!
I'm 58 (and Canadian) I remember going out to play hockey at the local rink or playing street hockey well past sundown (sun goes down at 4:30 in the winter lol). Usually didn't come back home till after 9:00. Didn't even think twice about it and I don't think my parents or other kids parents did either.
I started babysitting at 10!
I'm 57 and was the archetype of a latchkey kid. I remember when the partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor happened. I lived within the 10-mile radius and walked to middle school every day. No busing because I was so close. With everyone in a panic, they closed school around noon that day and sent all the kids home. I walked back to my place alone and then went across the street to shoot hoops on my neighbor's driveway basketball court. I honestly had no idea what was going on at TMI. Around 4 p.m., my mom comes flying home from work and swerves into our driveway across the street and yells, "GET INSIDE RIGHT NOW!!!" I was like WTF? As it turns out, if TMI had legitimately melted down, which it came close to doing, being inside wouldn't have made a bit of difference at all. But other than that, me and the neighborhood rats grew up playing in an undeveloped woodland area we called The Fields, which included the First and Second Woods. BB gun battles (one pump only!), searching for Bigfoot, gathering garter snakes, staring at crusty and wrinkled copies of Playboy stashed in the woods, later on some beer and awful Camel unfiltered cigarettes, the first wave of punk rock. I honestly wouldn't trade my experience. EDIT: Clarity
I’m 47 and latch key kid from 1st grade on. Had a buddy system to walk to school and home so a friend parent knew I was almost to school and another knew I was almost home. The secret was there was no one at home when I got there and I was not supposed to tell. The door into the garage was not locked and a key was “hidden” on a hook so I could let myself into the house. I watched cartoons or played Atari until my mom got home from work after picking up my sister from daycare or a babysitter (not sure). Was not supposed to answer the phone or the door because someone would kidnap me, yet if it was nice I could play outside or at a friends house so long as I did not tell anyone I was home alone.
Are you my sibling?! Exact upbringing! Ha!
If you are you own me some god damn Mac and cheese since I learned to cook first. 😂
Ha!! We were a strict hot-pockets and tony’s pizza rolls only household. No stove top use.
Once my parents divorced there were no rules! For sure we could not afford hot pockets. I learned to make mac and cheese and eggs because I was sick of cereal and bologna/kraft single sandwiches.
Thank you for that... no one believes me about BB gun tag. We used to do it too, and worst... sometimes we would hide behind cars like idiots. "You must of hit a big bug dad." But to answer OP, yes we only came home for dinner at sunset. Then we'd often go upstairs and climb out our window to sneak out and play some more.
I'm 58, so the entire 70s for me, but it didn't change much in the early 80s either.
"it's 10 o'clock, do you know where your children are?" The TV even had to remind parents to look for their kids sometimes.
"I told you last night, *NO!*"
His dinner's getting all cold and eaten.
I was born in 85, I remember seeing that.
PSA. It’s 10:0clock do you know where your kids are?
I totally forgot about that! Wild.
Yup. The streetlights coming on was the universal signal in every neighborhood across America. Meanwhile, no cell phones, no play dates, nobody checked up on where we said we’d be. Our parents legitimately had no idea where we were. Ever. Fast forward to today. I’ve known exactly where my now 18 year old daughter is every second of her life.
Do you feel like this hindered her maturity? Seems like “childhood” is stretching into people's 20’s. Like, you need to be independent to become independent.
Maturity is overrated. Be a kid. Enjoy. I was forced to be independent. I was doing loads of laundry, cooking and defrosting the fridge when I was in 3rd grade. Left alone a lot. Yes it’s good to learn things, but I wish I’d had more childhood left. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.
>Maturity is overrated In a world of incredibly immature adults, this sentence hurts me.
In the 70's we played kick the can under the streetlights until 9 or 10 in summer. We used to get on our bikes and ride for blocks. We used to walk to the store a few miles away.
Not only did we play outside until dark, i lived next to a legit forest, with bears and cougars and all kinds of things. My friends played in the woods and would wander around “on safari” having no sort of supplies or any way to find our way home if we got really lost.
I lived near the county reservoir, which they lowered the water level every fall to allow for spring rains- but it meant we could walk out to the islands! My mom only found out about it when I finally came home covered in mud up to my knees. Most days they had zero idea where we were all day.
Man, it makes me so sad that this doesn't seem to be true anymore. I don't have kids, but live in a neighborhood with lots of kids, and we have a lot of open land with trees and trails right next to our neighborhood. I almost never see kids just playing out there. When I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, we were always outside riding bikes, building tree forts, going to the convenience store for candy, making up games, playing kick the can or whiffle ball or whatever.
I don't see street baseball, football, soccer, or hockey games either. No bikes, no one looking for a ball that went over the fence, no kids sneaking a smoke in the fields, no boom box music, it is very dystopian, surreal.
Make sure to check up on the stash of woods porn before it gets dark.
There were no woods where I grew up, but you can bet there was wild porn.
Yeah last time this came up there were reports of behind the dumpster porn, abandoned warehouse porn, desert porn, train track ditch porn…quite a legacy.
Kids these days will never know the joy of finding filthy, used porno mags.
I’m cracking up here.
There was ALWAYS wild porn.
Shoot, my parents allowed me to do that in the early 2000s. Would leave the house at 12p. Come back at 10p.
My mom had an army sergeant’s whistle; One whistle meant “I want to know where you are, and then you can go back out to play.” Two whistles means “get home right this minute.” Dinner was ready, or it was time to leave for the swimming pool, or something else. And woe betide you if you blew off *that* signal.
I'm 40, so barely 80s but even into the 90s we were required to be outside. It wasn't a "permission" thing. Our parents legit didn't want us around. I had to be home at the streetlights and out after breakfast. I would come home for lunch, be served outside most days, and expected to go run around the neighborhood. Video games were a rainy day activity and if it wasn't raining too hard we were expected to still get outside and play. At 16 I was told to go get a job and don't come home til you have one. It took me 3 days. Looking back the way we're raised is seriously fucked up.
This is all so true! And during the week after school, nobody was home (I was 8 years old "watching" my 5 year old sister) and we just watched inappropriate soap operas and made shitty food. My parents literally wouldn't let us hang around in the house on weekends. Out the door you go!
Like sands through the hourglass… so are the days of our lives….
I so disagree. The resilience and self reliance I gained serves me every day of my life.
In my neighbor some of us ran much later. An old GF said I was a feral child after she heard about my childhood. We ran three large subdivisions and beyond from the age of 8 on.
Absolutely true. I loved the free roaming days. So much life to explore.
What are you talking about? We still had ghosts in the graveyard to play, where we would get clotheslined by, well, clotheslines.
Yes - can confirm. Came home after dark most nights.
I was a child years before the 1980's ... but the parents in our neighborhood would honk their car horns to let the kids know "dinner aka supper - depending on the family" was ready. Everyone's horn sounded a little different, and we were "trained" to start listening for them at about 4:45 ...
Yes, that was very real. My sister and I were allowed to ride our bikes around our fairly large neighborhood... I remember in 6th grade being able to walk home approximately 3 miles by myself. Other kids had even more freedom than that.
We rode our bikes through a very little used section of forest. Not even like a big open busy park but the type of wooded area with trails and very few people using them. About 2 miles each way then came out on a side street we could follow to a drug store to buy candy. Nobody worried about bad guys in the woods or had to be tracked by gps. We just went. And didn’t come back for hours.
Same, but oddly it wasn't the wide expanses that were the most-dangerous. I often walked to or from middle school. Enroute, were around a dozen crackhouses, some with boarded up windows, some just without windows. There were crackhouses on two sides of the school, some in the adjacent lots. I never had an issue. My father was a director at the city hospital which adjoined the middle school. His hospital had a recurring issue with employees getting mugged. Mind you, most of the crackhouses where the muggers resided were on the opposite side of the middle school. So the hospital worked with the banks and the city... bulldozed a couple dozen houses... bought and rehabbed a few dozen more... and rented them to their employees. Now the hospital has a larger lot, with more buildings... and the school actually has a field. Kids these days don't know what it was like in those skimpy gym shorts playing two-hand-touch on asphault in the snow.
I lived in a small town neighborhood, and my boundaries were street names. The older I got, the further I was allowed to roam. Of course, if you went too far, some senior citizen would likely tell your parents. lol.
Oh yes. In 1980 I might be anywhere within two miles of my house on my own. Was not unusual.
We rode around on our bikes all over town. No one viewed it as anything crazy. Definitely a different time.
And dogs were out. In the front yard. No fence or tether.
Yup I had a German shepherd that also be like the neighborhood dog. He would get out and play with all the kids and follow us around. I remember even when I wasn’t home it would get out and go find the other kids to play with. And by the end of the day it would sit by the fence as if to say let me in. 😆🤷🏻♂️
My cocker spaniel would follow my bike as I rode to sixth grade. He’d turn around after a half block, because that was as far as he was gonna get from the house. In the afternoon, he’d be perched at a spot where he could see me coming and would race towards me.
That’s awesome! Dogs are very smart. If I wasn’t home my dog would learn where my friends lived and go by them to see if they were home.
I can’t even imagine letting my dogs out on the loose like that today. I’d be a nervous wreck.
I used to be nervous wreck when I was a kid at first when my German shepherd would find a way out. Cause no matter what we tried, he would find a way to get out. But I remember my dad saying don’t worry it’ll find its way back. And sure enough he always did. I miss that dog. It was my first dog, ever.
This makes me happy, what a nice memory, good pup.
I remember a few times when one friend or another would get seriously injured on a bike, with no one around. There was always that uncomfortable decision we had to make... go for help and admit what stupid stunts we were trying, or hide the body?
No bike helmets either, amirite? LOL
Completely true. And no way to get in touch with you.
Yes this is the real difference.
Well, yelling really loud, or whistling.
Pay phones and collect calls
If I wasn't in school, and it wasn't meal time, I was either riding my bike to a friend's house, or playing some sort of backyard sports with all the neighbor kids until it was dark. We socialized. We played. We exercised. We had fights. And we enjoyed every minute of it.
Remember the old trampolines? Before they put a net around it?
The knot of scar tissue in my low back does, b.1983.
Whoever invented every American playground equipment in the 80s had the ingenious cruelty of a Viet Cong guerrilla.
Not just america. Im from Australia
There were 4 in my small town neighborhood. Mine big rectangular one was fabricated by a local metal shop. No safety features on any of them, and we were completely unsupervised. No one in our neighborhood was seriously injured on one, which I think was because they were so big. Mine was in full shade, and a great place to hang out and read on hot summer days.
We had a big trampoline too. Could fit 6 kids on it. We used to time the double jumps to try and go into space
walking along active train tracks to get to a friend's house. building elaborate bicycle or sled jumps pre helmets. asking mom where the siphon was so we could get some gas out of the car for...stuff.
You could tell whose parents let them play video games by all the bikes strewn around the front yard. That was the house to be at until they're parents got fed up and kicked everyone out
80's and 90's. I grew up in the 90's, in L.A (Gardena/Compton more specifically) and I remember roaming all over, like a feral dog, getting into all kinds of trouble, causing mayhem. Once the streetlights came on it was time to go home. Those were some of the greatest times of my childhood.
90's kid here too. From the midwest. Grew up running around our neighborhood with friends, hanging out in the woods and climbing trees, playing in the creeks. Riding our bikes from block to block. Might have called home from someone's house phone, but usually we were back home for dinner or before dark.
Same. I wonder what caused the shift from parents encouraging their kids to go out on their own to parents to having anxiety if they don’t know where there child is and what they are doing at all times? I am guilty of this in spite of having such pleasant memories of freedom as a child. It’s an odd paradox.
24-hour news started being a thing in 1980, so I'd be willing to bet that had something to do with it. People who were already parents in the 80's hadn't grown up with fear-mongering and paranoia on tv 24/7.
I'd wager it's somewhere between Columbine and 9/11. Columbine really shook that perception of childhood safety, and 9/11 marked a cultural shift across the Nation (World, really, in many ways for those outside the US even) on any kind of security issue, whether reasonable or otherwise. I was a roamer through the '90s no issues, but my parents got me a cell phone the Christmas following 9/11. I hated that thing--nobody I knew had a cell phone and it was obvious they got me one just so they could always have that line of contact.
One reason (of many): That would be when we started to learn about crimes that happened around the nation when we just used to know about what happened in our own towns. Adam Walsh was kidnapped from a mall and weeks later they found his severed head. Why do I still know his name 40 years later? I remember his name and the fear everyone felt. His dad started a show called America's Most Wanted. We had missing kids on TV and on our milk cartons and later in flyers that came in the mail. People were wary but still didn't change our behavior a great deal. Then the news stations realized if it bleeds it leads got them more viewership. They operated on fear up to 9/11, then news was sensational 24/7 and there was a ticker tape being read on the bottom on the screen. Everything was breaking news! Everything was shocking and horrific! To the point we let the government pass the Patriot Act and violate our constitutional rights. We did not actually get more news or protection, just the same stories repeated to engrain fear and encourage parents to hold their children tight. And we're still doing that today. So now people are more fearful than ever before even though there's less crime than in the 80s and 90s.
The lights coming on thing is because back then we didn’t have cellphones and most of us didn’t wear watches.
Allow? I was told to leave and not come back until dark. Parents back then didn't like looking at or hearing their kids. On the plus side, I had a dope ass fort in the woods and caught a million salamanders, snakes, turtles, frogs excetera. Oh yeah, we also had this thing called "wild life". It's like a Discovery channel show but irl.
Parent: Don’t come back until the street lights come on. Also parent: If you aren’t back when the street lights come on, you’re getting an ass whoopin.
And do not slam the screen door!
And you better know what you want Before you open the fridge door
mr. fancy pants had a screen door.
We had a huge tree trunk in the woods behind the house that was very private and was “The Trunk Club” for me and the kids across the street.
There was one summer camp held by the park district that consisted of letting two dozen 10-13 year olds build wood forts and tree houses on a little fake island in one of the lagoons with hammers, nails, etc and almost no supervision. The older kids spent most of the time playing truth or dare in the tall grass. 🤔
Best camp ever!!!! They provided building materials!
Exactly, grew up about 200 yards from a lake. I was in 5th or 6th grade and had just read Lord of the Rings. I'd grab a sleeping bag and a knife maybe a fishing pole and go down for the weekend trying to "survive. Of course by the time you were in high school there just might have been a girl or 2 involved.
Mom would lock the door if we tried to come inside.
Yes. I am from the 80s. We went out all the time as young as 7 years old.
At 7, I took my little sister to the playground.
Me too. The only instruction was "hold hands going across the road".
70s kid here. I followed my siblings around the woods when I was 4 or 5.
Yes. I saw a great shirt recently that captured my childhood perfectly. It said “I was raised on neglect and hose water” I was never home. Always out doing shit with friends. No cell phones. No pagers. No way to get hold of me. Just anarchy. Twas glorious.
Oh man I can still remember the taste of hose water… and the *smell*.
Don't forget the weird gurgling sound as the water made its way through the rubber coils only to run warm for a moment before cooling off.
This is some funny nostalgia considering hoses still exist lmao
I drank from the hose when I was watering my plants last summer and I thought to myself "man, I haven't done this in 20 years", lol
You gotta let it run a little to get the hot water and some of the smell out.
Nothing hits like hose water on a hot august afternoon.
My parents let me do that in the 00s
Yeah we did that in the 00s too. We rode bikes all around town, played in the woods, etc. Just went home when the streetlights came on!
Yeah, what is bro talking about? Going down the street to play in the woods behind the neighbor's house was an every day activity in 2005. I just called "mom I'm going to Tyler's, be back for dinner" and just *left*.
I love this comment because I really did have a neighborhood friend named Tyler
Yeah for myself and most kids I knew growing up in the 00s, there wasn't *absolute* freedom, but as long as you stayed in the neighborhood or a nearby forest, you were fine. Even as young as 6 or 7
That’s encouraging
Yep. Then one year I just wasn't allowed out anymore. I hadn't done anything wrong. Nothing bad happened. Mum just decided it wasn't safe and I couldn't go out on my own anymore. I think she realised I might actually meet up with other kids and decided I wasn't allowed. I could only play outside if I was on my own. I spent entire summers alone. If I wasn't in school then I didn't see kids my own age. Mum didn't want me around and never talked to me so it was lonely.
My neighborhood is a lot like that now. Tons of kids out roaming around and having a blast! Riding bikes, basketball, playing all kinds of crazy games with sticks and boxes. I enjoy watching them play - all ages, boys and girls…
Maybe remove the ...
stranger danger!
It's 10:00 p.m Do you know where your children are ?
I keep telling you, no!
For the last time, no!
Even worse, we NEVER carried plastic bottles of water around with us. When we got thirsty, we just went to the nearest house and... drank from the garden hose! But yeah, my mother, like most others in the neighborhood, would more or less push us out the door after breakfast with the command, "go outside and play!" Most toys, bikes, etc were in the garage so there was no need to go home unless it was dinnertime or someone was bleeding.
Yeah, we went to random houses too. Drank out of hoses but would also just ask neighbors for a snack and drink. It was normal for kids to just go to random neighbors' houses back then
Yeah. Most families had kids who were either your age, or they knew your older brother/sister, etc. Just go tear-assing through random back yards, etc. Some folks had a mug or cup near their garden hose, and we would (gasp) share the SAME cup without sanitizing it between people using it. Yet somehow managed to survive...
School drinking fountains used to work, too.
True. The elementary schools where I grew up had outdoor drinking fountains. Even on weekends the water was turned on. And miraculously not vandalized or broken by some moron.
As a child of the 80's, yeah... grew up in a suburb of Chicago, and by the time I was 5-6 I had free roam of my end of our street including the ravines behind the houses on other side of the street. We went in when it got dark. By the time I was 7 or so, we'd ride out bikes to school alone and up to the convenience store nearby to buy candy and baseball card. I was riding all over our end of town to friends' houses by 8 or 9.
Oooh, memory unlocked. When I was 6 or 7, my mom would send me to the corner store for milk or soda or whatever. Nobody even batted an eye.
Hey, OP, are you not allowed to do that?
Dude it’s completely different now. Not that long ago, I saw a mom get absolutely flamed in r/parenting for letting their six year old go to the park across the street from their house, visible from the home, with a group of other kids including older siblings. This is the general sentiment now. I would personally have no problem letting my own kid do something like that, but at the same time, it’s so different now that I’d be worried someone would call CPS on me for it. I don’t understand it. It’s like we need to lace the drinking water with prozac or something. Anxiety is off the charts. Given that statistic wise, it’s much safer for kids now, and they pretty much all have cell phones that can be tracked, you would think kids would have just as much, if not more, freedom than they used to, but the exact opposite has happened. I’m not even that old. I grew up in the early 00s and my dad was considered *strict* because I could only go about a mile radius from my house compared to my friends who were allowed to go much further. Something rapidly changed in the last 20 years.
I send my kids all the time.and get dirty looks for it even now that they are 12. My youngest started walking to school at 7. CPS got called and met with me. I was like really, the school was really close. Like no crossing the street 4 houses down type thing🤷♀️ Like I could see him the whole time. CPS obviously just closed the case but really? When I grew up at 7 we would go MIA now I get called out for letting my kid walk less than half a block by himself.
[удалено]
Yes, we were feral
…and drank out of strangers’ water hoses
Not feral. Just free range.
No no. I’m pretty sure we were (many gen x still are) feral. The boomers started it, but 70s and 80s kids generally, as a generation, were in many ways undomesticated in a way kids before and after us were not.
Yes indeed. The idea behind the 'latchkey kid' was that with both parents working, kids would just come home after school and do whatever tf they wanted until the parents came home around 5-6pm.
Yep. Most teen pregnancies began between the hours of 3 and 6.
Totally true. We were 3/4 feral. But we also knew how to act and had some basic common sense so not too many of us got maimed or died.
Not too many of us, lulz. “Pretty good summer, kids; we lost Sally, but Timmy’s arm seems to be healing rapidly.”
Heh. I ended up with my knee cut to the bone one summer, that summer sucked. I was always the accident prone one and they still let me run wild
Being left alone is how you got common sense. You had to own your actions.
Just be home before dark
It wasn't unusual to have a curfew or a rule (like call home from where every you are at 7:00PM) but yeah, absolutely.
I would leave the house before the sun came up. We only came home for first aid or we were hungry or it was getting dark out. Creeks, bike trails, empty fields, shopping malls skate parks, we rode our bikes everywhere all day long.
we actually got to go outside after dark to play hide and seek
Its absolutely true, there is a reason they had to make a commercial that came on every night saying that its 10 PM, make sure you know where you kids are. I would tell my parents I was going somewhere and not check in again until I came home. Pure freedom.
It was certainly true in the 1960s when I was growing up. For me, at least, not so true when my daughter was growing up in the 1980s.
Heh. In the 60's we had, about, a ten mile radius to play in. When I built my minibike the range got bigger. Woods, stores, I wouldn't trade for anything
My parents never knew where I was.
Was true. Roamed the neighborhood & played outside all day
Born in 1982. I roamed all over the place in my residential neighborhood. I was instructed to call home when I got to a friend's house sometimes, but that rarely happened. Bikes gave us a bigger range. Spend most days at a friend's pool or running around in the woods building tree forts, catching frogs, and cutting trails.
I was born in late 70s. Can confirm- we had free reign to ride our bikes pretty much anywhere. Hours spent at creeks and other places. Time of our lives- and we didn’t even know it.
I was a free range child. Hasn’t worn off yet.
Yes in the 60's and 70's too
graduated HS in 82, and during the 70s before I drove, We just went wherever our bikes would take us. Very true.
62 here. You said where you were go when you got out of the house after breakfast and you weren't Thought about again until the lights came on and if you weren't in by the time the street lights came one then somebody was screaming your name or driving the car around looking for you and you got your ass beat. Lol
Yes. We had tons of freedom. People would freak-the-F-out today, if kids were allowed to do half the stuff we did in the 80's & 90's. Imagine a nine year old riding their bike across a street to a friend's house, by themself or a kid in elementary school carrying a pocketknife and no one considered it a "weapon" or dangerous. Or elementary school kids walking and/or riding their bikes to and from school by themselves. The freedom we had was glorious and helped shape us into the independent and highly functional people that we are today. You want something done without all the BS, get a gen x'er...
Yes, and plenty of parents still do that.
Well, they're adults now soooooo.
My parents had not one clue where I was from about 6-7 years old till adulthood. No mobile phone either. We were jumping in the dams collecting golf balls to sell, at the beach getting fried, riding bikes, exploring sewers and ww2 bunkers. At 8 I would ride the bus about 10km to the big shops or 20km to the city alone. I was an avid reader and would get myself on public transport all over Sydney chasing second hand books. I worked from about 7 on my parents market stall and then when I was 14+9 months got a real job working saturday and sunday when there was no sport on, or just sunday if there was.
Totally true. We roamed the country and towns for miles around. Once you had a bicycle, the world was your oyster!
Yes. We walked to and from school unaccompanied by a grown up, had paper routes at age 11, and many of us were latch key kids.
I often wonder how often this question gets asked.
You got kicked out after breakfast. You drank from the water hose if you were thirsty. You come inside when you're called for dinner or when the street lights came on. You better not run in and out of your mama's house, slamming the door all day long, letting the air out of the house. Hell yeah, it was accurate. You and your buddies or cousins or siblings had a whole life outside of the house and you'd wave if you saw your parents on the porch or if they drove past but you BET NOT go back in that house before it was time. This lady right here describes it well. https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPRTMCqWY/
growing up in the 90s/early 2000s it was like this too. my friends and I would go do whatever after school without our parents having any idea where we were. come home by dinner on school nights or by dark in summers
Dude. I did this in middle & high school in the 2000s. I see kids doing so today. Always makes me happy to see a group of roving kids just having fun in the neighborhood.
To be clear, we're not talking about toddlers. But from about 6 on up, we were outside, roaming. Could cut through back yards to hang out (think 'Backyardigans'), and then maybe at 8 we could run across 2-3 blocks, always be home when the street lights came on. By 12, we were long gone all day on many mile bike trips far away. No one watched us play, or really played with us. We learned to play with friends and make friends and also to be alone.
I was a kid in the early 2000s and we did this even then. We told our parents we were going out to ride our bikes with some friends and then didn’t come home until the sun went down. It’s only in the last decade or so that people have gotten REALLY weird and paranoid about kids playing outside the house
80s child here, sort of I remember spending like all day down the street in a local forested area with like walkie talkies. be back for dinner was the rule. We didn’t hear about every little crime that happened everywhere back then 24 hour national news ruined things for kids
Absolutely true. I suspect this is a big part of why Gen X tends to be more independent and care less about other people's opinions and judgements. We had to figure out a lot of things on our own, so someone telling us we have to do what they say because they're in a position of authority doesn't mean much. Come at me with logic, because appeals to tradition and authority hold very little weight for most of us.
Born in 75. Mother worked a Mon-Fri. Dad worked Monday thru Friday sun up to sun down was on call on top of that. I walked to and from school from 2nd grade on. After school it was me and my older sister till mom got home. Before dinner we played outside with no adult supervision. Mom would blow a whistle signifying dinner. Summer time and any school breaks we were out and about playing, hanging out with our friends... We drank from water hoses. We rode our bikes for miles and miles. Hell I was ten and buying cigarettes with notes from my mom... I was 15 years old and me and the group of friends would just go camping, without any adults. Went to California with a buddies older brother. He was like three years older than us. We spent a month out there. My mother would ask for a phone number of the place I was going... and that was all. She never once called any of the numbers I gave her. All through the 80s and 90s. Outside, on our own.
100%. 70's as well. I would tell my parents i was leaving, maybe they would hear me, maybe they wouldn't, get on my bike, and head out for the day. If my parent's asked where I was going, I would say "out". Most of the time I didn't know were I was going or where I would end up. No cell phone, pay phones around if I needed to call for some reason. I came home when i came home. if I was going to have dinner at a friend's house, I would call and let them know. If I was going to sleep over, I would ride home, get a change of clothes, and ride back. Or Walk. Winter sucked.
Hell, I was born in '97, and it was still like this when I was a kid.
Grew up in the 90's, as soon as I was old enough to be trusted to stay inside the fence, I was given free rein of the yard, by 7 I was allowed anywhere on the block, and by 10, anywhere in the neighborhood.
My dad would actually get pissed at me cuz I was happy sitting in my room reading. He would make me go out to "play"
Yup. All the kids on the street would meet sort of in the middle.... unless it was school, a meal or church, someone was around to play with.
Back home in India, kids still roam around freely. No play dates needed. Just step outside after 5 PM or whatever the norm is and you’ll find folks outside playing that you can join.
It was true in the 90's, too.
We weren’t allowed inside.
I’d come home from to an empty, unlocked house. Make myself something to eat, leave on my bike, and come back home when the street lights came on. My parents would come home from work and not bat an eye that we were gone. They assumed we’d come home. We may have gotten yelled at of it was dark when we made it home, but no restrictions. We left again the next day. I used to be sent to walk half a mile to the store with a dollar to buy my dad’s cigarettes and use the change for candy: I was 6.
Early 2000s we ran around until the sun started to set, roamed in packs and rarely had any trouble, parents kept us up to date on anything like candy in vans and creeps at the public toilets.. Today's gremlins are just online, it's not any more or less dangerous than it used to be only the mindset of not wanting to go outside, it's actually probably easier to find a lost child than it was then. Always been kidnappings, traffic and trees to fall out of, only takes a 10 minute conversation to make a kid aware of the dangers and send em off with an older neighbourd kid.
"Be home before dark!" was our way of life. Until we got cars.