<p>BTW - I wouldn’t trade one moment of my adventures. I was always having a blast right up until the moment it all went terribly wrong. Just hope my kids didn’t miss out on the same feeling of freedom and fun.</p>
<p>So we all agree that times are different and that by and large we all had more “freedom” to play and explore than our own children.</p>
<p>Garland writes: “I’m not sure I buy our injuries and near injuries as reasons to be worrywarts now.” (sorry, I still can’t figure out how to quote a post)</p>
<p>I spent some time thinking about this (the “worrywart” part) and here’s what I’ve come up with…</p>
<p>When I was a kid we knew to stay away from that “weird” guy down the street. We didn’t know why. We just were told to. Kids were abducted, sexually preyed upon, and more. HOWEVER, we (meaning our parents) weren’t being fed EVERY GORY DETAIL of the events. Perhaps there was talk on the street, but not days and days of news being flashed on TV, newspapers, the Internet with graphic information. I know more details about poor little Jon Benet Ramsey than anyone has a right to know, and I didn’t even “follow” that storyline. </p>
<p>When I was a kid we were permitted to swim unsupervised. Now we SEE (almost every day in So Cal) how terribly dangerous that is. </p>
<p>When I was a teenager sex didn’t kill you. It might have made you pregnant (and if it did you were shipped off to “Aunt Suzy’s” in the country), or given you a reputation, “the clap” or “crabs”, but it did not kill you. Now, UNPROTECTED sex can kill you. Dead. Really.</p>
<p>When I was a kid learning to drive we didn’t have these ginormous SUVs barreling down the road at 75 miles an hour. We had VW bugs for crying out loud (all 48 miles per hour of them). 8 of us could pick one up and move it across the street! The speed limit on our freeway was 50! Today it is 65. We didn’t have people distracted by cell phones, text messages, and are you kidding… DVDs playing in their cars! </p>
<p>Times are different. We have more information now. Far more information! I am a “worrywart” but not to the point where I DON’T let my 20 yo D live in NY city in an apartment with a roommate she met on craigslist. I worry enough to teach her how to be careful. How to buddy up. How to protect herself.</p>
<p>Your thoughts?</p>
<p>Yea, I loved climbing to the tops of trees & being “invisible” (tough to do when there are 9 of you living in one house). I never revealed where I disappeared to & it was very peaceful to do just about anything quiet up there. We had quite a few large trees to choose among–mango, plumeria and more. I could just sit and be at peace until it got dark & was time to go in for dinner. When I started college, dad had the backyard cleared of vegetation and put in a swimming pool so we lost our personal jungle/forest.</p>
<p>I didn’t spend my childhood outdoors. I was an only child and didn’t live on a street with tons of kids. I was envious of my cousins who lived in a neighborhood with lots of kids and hills to climb in. After our kids were born, my husband and I bought a house in a cul de sac and for a number of years the cul de sac was filled with kids playing. I bought one of those “Caution Kids Playing” signs that I’d put at the entrance to the cul de sac and there were lots of long afternoons where all the kids were out playing street hockey, or baseball or long and wonderful games of Capture the Flag which included the back yards of a few homes. The kids are grown now and the street is quiet. While my kids didn’t get to wander for blocks away on their own, they did get to be outside. I hope they will pass that down.</p>
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<p>Me, too. One hit by a car. One drowned.</p>
<p>When I was in middle school, one boy was killed riding his bicycle. Head injuries.</p>
<p>Another one was playing with his friend and didn’t know his dad’s gun had a bullet in it. He died. </p>
<p>Bad stuff that happens to people we know may shape how we live. We probably have too many details about what kind of badness is out there. I guess I would rather know what could happen and remind my kids about safety issues. </p>
<p>The prickly back of my neck feeling happened when I was a kid many times. Maybe that and sheer luck kept me out of bigger scrapes. </p>
<p>Still rather be a worrywart than oblivious to what could go wrong when it comes to my kids.</p>
<p>Coming in late to say no, I didn’t play outside much as a kid…at least not after we moved to AZ. I hate that dry, bone-melting heat and hardly stepped toe outside the door unless forced to. I was (and am) an obsessive reader. Despite this, I managed to skin my face falling off a bicycle (helmet? Don’t be silly…), break an arm on school grounds because the jungle gym had only concrete under it, and cut my knee to the bone on a piece of ragged steel on the inside of our station wagon door. It opened flat like a table and apparently the car company decided it was okay not to hammer sharp pieces of metal flat so long as there was carpet over them! Who could have imagined that a small child might crawl there?</p>
<p>My d, however, loved to go down to the woods behind our house and hang out with the neighbor kids, climbing trees and exploring. I asked her to take the dog along, both because he enjoyed it and because – though delightful with kids – he did not care for adults much and was protective of her. The kids called him ‘wolf-dog’ and I think he added a lot to their adventures. Fortunately, the only one who was scared of him was too little to join in the games anyway. </p>
<p>Yes, I delegated to the dog…I’m such a bad mom!</p>
<p>Also coming here late and haven’t read the whole thread yet.</p>
<p>But, yes. We played outside virtually all of the time. In fact, I couldn’t wait to get outside to play after coming home to school. We had school uniforms - jumper over blouse. I remember that I’d get home, tear off the jumper, leave on the blouse with full slip underneath and just stuff the skirt of the slip into my pants so I could get out faster than if I bothered to take it off!</p>
<p>Even though I was a bookworm, I was outside all the time.
Did a lot of imaginary play with friends, and I’d read up in trees or on the front porch in the summer time.</p>
<p>Remember when the only thing to watch on TV during the day was soap operas?</p>
<p>Outside was better.</p>
<p>(Of course, if memory serves, there was a lot of whipping my brother at Monopoly - I was ruthless 
)</p>
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<p>And your grandmother would tell you don’t disrupt her stories.</p>
<p>I remember the Edge of Night being on when I got home from school. I think the first soap I watched was Dark Shadows.</p>
<p>By the time I got to high school it was all about the Young and the Restless with Snapper & Jill Foster, the Brooks sisters and the Jill- Kay & Phillip Chancellor love triangle (it came on while we were in school, but everyone knew about it).</p>
<p>By the time I got to college, it was all about GH and the saga of Luke and Laura.</p>
<p>Didn’t read the entire thread so I apologize if some of these are repeats.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Attaching baseball card to your bike with clothes pins so they would be struck by the wheel spokes and make a “mortorcycle” noise.</p></li>
<li><p>Lugging empty bottles back to the store for $.02 each.</p></li>
<li><p>Phosphates (spelling?) and cherry cokes/vanilla cokes at the neighborhood drug store.</p></li>
<li><p>M-80s and cherry bombs.</p></li>
<li><p>Backyard baseball - the house was the Fenway Park Green Monster, only it was in right field. Also pitcher’s mound or pitcher’s hand as “out” and imaginary baserunners when you were short a whole team.</p></li>
<li><p>Little league football with girl cheeleaders. I admit, girls did get the short end sports-wise.</p></li>
</ol>
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<p>OH–YES!!!</p>
<p>And bottle rocket wars!</p>
<p>Christmas Tree Forts and rubber band guns (homemade).</p>
<p>bottlerocket wars! </p>
<p>hard to believe we all survived the games we played! we actually had a live cannon. you would light the gunpowder and it would discharge these plastic cannon balls. what was my mom thinking?</p>
<p>when my kids were younger, the whole flock of grandkids would spend a week or so with my parents on the farm. golf carts, go carts, kiddie kat snowmobiles (grass runners for summertime), hammers, nails, saws and forts! as they got older, we would start hearing some of the stories. amazing they all have their fingers,toes, and eyesight! what was i thinking?</p>
<p>HImom and undecided, I too was a tree climber with books. I still climbed trees to read in college. One morning a grad student out for a jog spotted me from across the gardens and stopped to say hello. On another day, a couple of romantic undergrads spread their blanket under the tree where I was reading and I had to jump down on top of it to leave (that was the only exit route). Luckily the tree was in a very public place so I only interrupted their conversation!</p>
<p>I was in Phoenix/Scottsdale, and we played outside for hours in the heat, though came inside for breaks, and spent lots of time at the city pool, as well as reading. Running through sprinklers was thrill. In my teens when I returned to AZ from CA, I stayed with my dad a distance from friends and would bike miles to visit. Would ride through sprinklers on the sidewalks when possible. We rarely wore shoes, though walking was a dance between the white cooler lines on the pavement and grass. My feet were like leather. I thought no shirt, no shoes, no service was a cruel and needless prohibition.</p>
<p>Running through sprinklers and squirting hoses for each other to run through was a summer staple for us. We had names for all the different settings and feel of the hoze nozzle: “bullets”, “pins and needles”… I can’t remember the other names.</p>
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<p>I completely agree, "just"amom, that it’s all the fearmongering, mostly in the media, that has made us worrywarts (or made me, rather, I shouldn’t speak for others). There are ads in my city about abducted children with an image of an empty swing, even though stranger abduction is extremely rare, but it feeds into our worst nightmares. Who is benefiting from these ads, is what I want to know.</p>
<p>There’s just too much information out there about every possible (remote) consequence of every behavior! Sometimes, ignorance is truly blissful. Nowadays, when I see kids digging those huge holes at the beach (and they’re having so much fun working as a team, trying to get as deep as possible), I flash on the news story I heard about some kid who died when a hole collapsed.</p>
<p>On the other hand, parents can still be kind of oblivious. I have fished more than one toddler out of a fast moving current at my local beach. Of course, for every one of those toddlers, there are the multitudes of little kids with the full body suit (to prevent sunburn), giant floppy hats, and so many inflatable things attached to their bodies (to prevent drowning) that they can’t even bend over (and if, God forbid, they did end up in the water, they would be floating face down, held immobile by that giant floatie thing on their back.)</p>
<p>I spent my early childhood in Hawaii (my dad was in the Navy) and I remember playing outside all the time! Barefoot! We had the biggest front yards in Navy housing w/ 11 tall coconut trees. They dug up at least half of them leaving huge holes in the ground for a few days. Well, guess where we played…and my brother (and this it true!) found a small Hawaiian statue in the one of the holes. We all freaked out and begged him to bury it back there. We had just seen the Brady Bunch episode where they went to Hawaii and one of them found a small statue!</p>
<p>lilmom - I remember that Brady Bunch episode! Then Greg wiped out on his surfboard…oh that was a good 2 parter!</p>
<p>Sorry, I digressed. Having come from a severely broken home, I always wanted what was left of our family to be rescued by a “Mike Brady”.</p>
<p>This is a great thread - it brings back so many memories. When someone wrote about kites just above, I remembered that every spring we went to the five and dime to buy flimsy paper kites, and we put them together and tore up old sheets to make the tails. I also used to buy comics with my quarter allowance - Superman, Spiderman, Archie and Veronica.</p>
<p>I lived by a creek and we used to spend whole days down there. In the summer, when the water was low, we spent a lot of time building bridges and falling in, but in the winter it was a “river” with fast-moving brown water. I went barefoot all summer, and in the fall I would get new school shoes and complain about the blisters. We made lots of forts. My friends and I used to climb up to our roof and hang out there, eating powdered jello mix out of the box. (Yuck.) I also remember whole blocks of kids playing hopscotch until dark and drawing elaborate obstacle courses in the street to roller skate around in.</p>
<p>I had such a great childhood, and the suburban neighborhoods we’ve lived in as adults seem very sterile to me. Too much pavement. We were very lucky to be able to send our kids to a funky private school that reminds me very much of my childhood. No pavement, lots of mud, many trees to climb (including scary ones), forts to build using real tools. As a parent I am a big worrier, and I have a hard time letting my kids have the freedom I had at home, so in a way we contracted it out. My daughter did break both wrists at school when a high tree branch broke; she ran into a window and needed stitches, my son dropped a metal shovel on his foot and cut it pretty badly. I kept them safe at home and sent them to school to get all banged up :).</p>