Times have changed for kids!

[Hepcat]

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."

[Powerboy]

My k-6 years were1963-70. There is definitely a lot of truth to this but I don't think it's that simple. Kids I know that age today are all about coming over to play or going next door to play. Sure, computer games are some of it. But it's also going on the swings, swimming, running all over the yard and so on. But not letting grade school kids out and about without any adults knowing where they are is very bad when we know the dangers that exist. There is over-protectiveness. But there is also greater awareness of the dangers.

Regarding Millennials and thing like drugs, sure, it happens, just like teenaged alcoholism and addiction to cigarettes before people were even legally old enough to buy them. But other teens get involved in good social causes way earlier than we tended to and are more informed (or misinformed). To quote Luke Cage: "It's complicated".

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

-Socrates, 470-399 BC

(I know the quote because it was used in an episode of "My Three Sons")

[Kirby101]

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.

[PCN24454]

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.

It's probably that no one talked about it. Allergies, like homosexuality, is a "weakness". Either that or no one really understood it yet.

[numberthirty]

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.

While it was spitballing, one theory that I heard was that they wind up in or near more things than they used to.

There's also that there could be contributing changes that played in. Heard someone phrase the increase in Autism that way.

[Kirby101]

It's probably that no one talked about it. Allergies, like homosexuality, is a "weakness". Either that or no one really understood it yet.

Plenty of kids had allergies, and asthma, but there were no peanut events.

[MajorHoy]

With your bicycle, did you ever attach baseball cards or playing cards to your bicycle with a clothespin (remember those?) so they'd make a neat sound hitting the spokes of your wheel while you were riding around?

[Kirby101]

With your bicycle, did you ever attach baseball cards or playing cards to your bicycle with a clothespin (remember those?) so they'd make a neat sound hitting the spokes of your wheel while you were riding around?

Absolutely!

[Hepcat]

With your bicycle, did you ever attach baseball cards or playing cards to your bicycle with a clothespin (remember those?) so they'd make a neat sound hitting the spokes of your wheel while you were riding around?

While I've heard much about that the practice and now know it was quite common, I don't remember anyone in my broader neighbourhood doing it.

[MyriVerse]

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.

Generally, we stayed outside until the street lights came on.

By 12 years old, me and friends were routinely riding bikes across town (New Orleans) to see the Rocky Horror Show at midnight (or whatever midnight movie we chose).

I was never reckless enough to do wheelies on my bike, but we did ride about with fireworks and shoot them at each other.

Did a bit of damage with a BB gun. No human got harmed tho. Squirrels and birds, on the other hand...

We had a plethora of martial arts weapons, but we never used them on living things.

One dry day, we went walking into a canal (the water level was way down), and I slipped in... something... tried to hide my disgusting jeans from my mom and do my own laundry but failed.

Spinner racks generally sucked around me. Months went by between them getting restocked. I was never that interested until my teens.

One summer day, my parents' best friend sees me playing around outside. I must have been about 10. He says, "The grocery store threw me out. Can you go buy me a carton of cigs?" Hands me $10, and I go buy them. No one cared.

[babyblob]

I grew up in a small country town. So even though my childhood years were later we still did many of the things you old farts did.

Played in the streets all day. When it got dark everyone had to go home.

The small store with the ice in the coolers and the one weird kid who spent his Ale 8 money on a pickle from the barrel. And how about why you are getting your Ale 8 you hand the old lady behind the counter a note from your parents and get a pack of Smokes for them because they are too lazy to go to the store? All you had to do was swear you would not smoke one on the way home. because in small Kentucky towns you cant smoke until you are 12.

Playing in the large field behind the church before Sunday school and your parents getting mad that you got grass stains on your good pants.

Going to the high school field on Friday nights to watch the local football team even if you did not have a kid on the team. Because school pride and all that.

Hanging out at the Only cool place in town. The Dairy Queen built during the winter before.

The Swimming hole. Yea it didnt matter that the water wasnt clean. But that is why kids never got sick back then and are healthy adults now. Our immune system got boosted by swimming in raw sewage.

Tv was a rare treat. Left for Saturday morning cartoons. We had four channels back then and damn it we were greatful.

[DanMad1977]

You forgot: Beat up other kids, who never told their parents what happened, because the father would get upset that you lost a fight.

I once told my father that another kid smacked me in the face and I didnt fought back...big mistake. He gave me a lesson, next time I hit back big time and got a lot of respect.

[seismic-2]

It's probably that no one talked about it. Allergies, like homosexuality, is a "weakness". Either that or no one really understood it yet.

I was a kid growing up in a small town in the 1950s. I had allergies and truly terrible asthma (which was made worse because they didn't have the modern drugs to treat it back then). Everyone in town knew about my allergies and debilitating asthma, because that's how small towns are. Howver, in spite of my severe allergies I never had peanut allergy or even heard of it. I simply didn't know there was such a thing until long after I grew up. I have read that some allergists believe that the condition is in fact far more prevalent now than it was even a few decades ago, and they assert that it is because infants now are growing up in cleaner homes, and so they don't develop antibodies to substances in the environment at the same rate that children used to do. Some of these doctors believe that infacts should in fact be given small amounts of peanut butter fairly early on, so that their bodies won't treat it as a foreign substance later in life. As is usually the case, that opinion is controversial (which of course doesn't mean that it's wrong).

[MajorHoy]

. . . I have read that some allergists believe that the condition is in fact far more prevalent now than it was even a few decades ago, and they assert that it is because infants now are growing up in cleaner homes, and so they don't develop antibodies to substances in the environment at the same rate that children used to do. Some of these doctors believe that infacts should in fact be given small amounts of peanut butter fairly early on, so that their bodies won't treat it as a foreign substance later in life. As is usually the case, that opinion is controversial (which of course doesn't mean that it's wrong).

You also wonder if how / who kids play with these days might also be a factor.

A few people here have mentioned they use to just go outside and hang around other kids in the neighborhood, which probably increased interactions with multiple people and increased their exposures to more things like germs.

These days, do kids have as many other children in their immediate neighborhoods? Are smaller families and the greater prevalence of structured "playdates" limiting the minor contact with some germs/bacteria so that children aren't building up immunities they way they use to?

Heck, I've occasionally heard on the news of parents specifically bringing young children to the house of a sick kid to expose their child to some older common childhood illnesses (like maybe chicken pox?) just so the child builds an immunity to that earlier in life when it should be less of a problem for their bodies to cope.

[seismic-2]

Heck, I've occasionally heard on the news of parents specifically bringing young children to the house of a sick kid to expose their child to some older common childhood illnesses (like maybe chicken pox?) just so the child builds an immunity to that earlier in life when it should be less of a problem for their bodies to cope.

When I was a kid in the 1950s, practically all children got chicken pox, measles (both kinds), and mumps, because the vaccine that kids now take against all of them hadn't been invented yet. That's why now when one or two people contract red measles it is literally major news, with worried reports in the papers and on TV, whereas in the 1950s there would be children out sick from school with those diseases every single day. Parents did in fact make sure that their daughters were exposed to German measles (rubella) and contracted the disease while they were still kids, so that they wouldn't get it later on when they were old enough to be pregnant. (It causes birth defects.) Parents also wanted their boys to get mumps, because after puberty it is a disease that affects the testicles even more than it does the salivary glands.