Times have changed for kids!

[GOLGO 13]

~ Meh. Random stuff.

[PaulBullion]

A thing I find interesting is Peanut allergies. Now I am sure they are very real and children have gotten sick and die. But growing up in the 60s, I never heard of one kid getting sick from peanuts.
I am not sure if it happened and no one talked about it, which would be weird. Or that it is a newish phenomenon with kids.

Also, before diagnostics and treatment of allergies became better, many children with severe allergies died very young.

[Kirby101]

Also, before diagnostics and treatment of allergies became better, many children with severe allergies died very young.

True. But I just don't recall any story in the city where I lived in the 60s of a kid getting sick or dying from peanuts. Now that doesn't mean anything, so I was asking if anybody else growing up around that time remembers anything. There are two possibilities, it happened and just wasn't reported, or it is a newer phenomena. But We did not lose any children in my school district to peanuts.

[MyriVerse]

Food allergies, in general, are really rare things. Only about 4-5% of people have any food allergies, and the vast majority of these people don't have significant problems with their allergens. These rates have been rising over the past few decades. However, they did exist, but big deals were not made of it back in the day and usually the person sat quietly and suffered as silent as they could. Allergic to nuts in the 1960s? You just avoided nuts, and most didn't know about it. That's really enough for most allergic people.

[Shalla Bal]

I/we did all kinds of things when I was a kid in elementary school from 1958-65 that I never see kids doing today:

....

* Being sent to the store to buy cigarettes for my parents, or six bottles of pop for the family.

Just came upon this thread--great post, Hepcat. Lots that I identify with, and what I've excerpted here reminds me that when I was kid my parents (like yours) always sent me to the corner store to get them their cigarettes. I hated it because even though I was very young--under 10!--I looked mature, was tall for my age back then, and the male store workers and/or customers always harassed me.

K-6 for me was 1970-1977. Walking to school started at 1st grade, and the distance was about 1.5 miles. But there was one day in Kindergarten when my mom was over 30 minutes late, and I took it upon myself to walk home. Walked home, and she wasn't there. So I walked another 2 miles to my great-grandmas. Waited there until my hysterical mother came and got me.

And this reminds me: when I was 8 I had started at a new school that was 3 miles away from where we lived, so I took the city bus daily. We students were given bus passes. One day after school I realized I'd left my bus pass in the classroom, but the school door was now locked. I had no money and my mother always told me NEVER to borrow money (she felt it would make us seem poor...which we were) so instead of asking, you know, an adult teacher or a friend or someone, I walked home. I followed the bus route as best I could (this was in a major city, lots of twisting avenues, streets, etc.). Of course this took me much longer than the 30 minute bus ride. My mother was frantic with worry and had called the parents of the 2 or 3 classmates I usually took the bus with, but no one had seen me. A scary episode for her, an adventure for me...I passed by several "candy stores" along my long trek home.

[The no face guy]

I/we did all kinds of things when I was a kid in elementary school from 1958-65 that I never see kids doing today:

* As soon as kindergarten walking the several blocks to school unaccompanied by any parent/adult.

* Just leaving the house in the morning to go out and play with friends, whether it was baseball, football or whatever activity in the park or hide-and-go-seek or any other game right on the street. Sometimes we'd ride our bikes as much as a mile away to a particular park or street. The key though was that there was no need to report to parents, so long as we were home by the time it got dark.

* Doing wheelies on my bike. That's something rarely seen these days. Whether wheelies are no longer fashionable or whether kids don't get the chamce to pop any wheelies under the ever present gaze of helicopter parents is a question I can't answer.

* Going out for little league football without the parents knowing anything about it. I mean why would they care?

* Being given bus fare and taking the bus downtown by myself for French, Lithuanian or accordion classes. The latter of course required lugging a full size accordion downtown.

* Reaching into ice water coolers in variety stores to select soda pop in dripping wet proper ten ounce refillable glass bottles.

* Roaming streets looking for empty pop bottles for the two cent deposit. I needed the money for cards, comics and potato chips because I was always collecting something.

* Looking through the spinner rack at corner variety and drug stores to select ten and then twelve cent (eeeeek!) comic books. Specialty comic shops weren't even imaginable, let alone comic books fetching even $1.00.

* Flinging baseball cards up against brick walls in winner take all games with nary a thought as to future "values".

* Having an early morning or after school paper route. Selling stuff, e.g. newspapers, seeds, Xmas cards, door-to-door.

* Being sent to the store to buy cigarettes for my parents, or six bottles of pop for the family.

* Hitting up my parents for dimes and quarters to buy firecrackers before Firecracker(Victoria) Day. I mean what's wrong with young boys letting off firecrackers? Playing with caps all year round.

* Playing with marbles, Yo-Yos and Duncan Spin Tops. Sidewalks would often be taken up by young girls skipping rope. When was the last time you saw any little girls engaged in this splendid aerobic activity?

* Building model kits and slot cars. Racing these slot cars at the hobby shop track downtown. Kids don't build models anymore. Kids these days aren't interested in anything that doesn't provide instant gratification, i.e. anything not TV screen related. Just check out the clientele of the few remaining hobby shops. They're all aging boomers.

* Playing with pea shooters. My parents giving me a BB gun and a bow and arrow with a steel point.

* Carrying a jack knife around for games such as knife baseball.

* Hitting up my parents for a dime to go to the skating rink or swimming pool with friends. No parents to supervise of course. Pools had lifeguards. What more did you need?

* Hitting up parents for the twenty cents to go to the Saturday afternoon kids' matinees with two movies and cartoons or Three Stooges shorts at the neighbourhood theatre

* Going for a dip in the creek behind the house which my father had dammed up to form a swimming hole.

* Camping out in a tent overnight with friends in the backyard.

* Climbing trees.

Oh, I'm sure modern parents would all be aghast. They want the kids safe in front of the TV with video game consoles at all times. And that's why so many kids are obese and end up with deadly peanut and bee sting allergies. Keep kids squeaky clean and of course they don't develop their natural immunities.

Deny kids deadly pea shooters and (heaven forbid!) metal lunch boxes and they end up arming themselves with real knives and even guns to go to school. It's the principle of the dam. Keep denying kids whatever is "unsafe" and the pressure just keeps building up and building up till it explodes.

The ultimate irony of course is the parents who demonize sugar (of course their inactive kids don't need the extra calories). These kids then take to experimenting with alcohol, pot, crystal meth and cocaine at first opportunity. It's the boy who cried wolf syndrome. "Hey, remember, you were the ones who told us sugar was so bad! You think we're going to listen to you now when you tell us to avoid booze and drugs? And what about all that Scotch and gin you drink and those sleeping pills and pain killers you pop all the time? Sure, sure, we kids are going to listen to you old farts. Yeah, right."

I think it boils down to three things...

1) Most parents have only 1 to 2 children these days, only child's are on the rise, so parents are micro managing their kids more.

2) There are a lot more recreational activities to enroll your kids in than when I was growing up. I know one parent who has their child enrolled in at least one activity per day during the school week.

3) This is the biggie.....The evolution of the law.

When I was young it was commonplace for parents to be seen leaving their kids in the car while they went grocery shopping, or riding a bike without a helmet.

Not today, if a kid is seen in a car by himself, someone will probably get a ticket, ride a bike without a helmet, parents get a hefty fine. Let the neighbourhood kid climb your tree or give him a firecracker...anything goes wrong lawsuit!

[TriggerWarning]

Meanwhile lets forget about all the kids who died back then because things were so much more lax.

I lost a first cousin to a motorcycle crash when he had major head trauma after wrecking his motorcycle without a helmet. OMG, back in my day I didn't wear a helmet and I survived.

I lost two classmates to car accidents that they would have likely survived if they'd been wearing seatbelts. OMG, people today, we didn't have the nanny govt telling us to wear seat belts when I grew up and I turned out just fine.

Etc.

[The no face guy]

Meanwhile lets forget about all the kids who died back then because things were so much more lax.

I lost a first cousin to a motorcycle crash when he had major head trauma after wrecking his motorcycle without a helmet. OMG, back in my day I didn't wear a helmet and I survived.

I lost two classmates to car accidents that they would have likely survived if they'd been wearing seatbelts. OMG, people today, we didn't have the nanny govt telling us to wear seat belts when I grew up and I turned out just fine.

Etc.

Well that is why the evolution of the law happens, lives and lawsuits.