Kids of the 70's/80's - what did you do playing out that would horrify people today?

[IncompleteSenten]

I grew up in a pit village and we'd play on the pit tip, including round the slurry pond. We'd chuck sticks in and try to get them round the other side, we'd climb up and slide down the tip mounds. I only remember getting chased off once, it's bonkers to think it was all mostly open and unguarded!

There was a big open sewer? Storm? Drain or massive pipe with a grill across it that had been prised off and we used to go in there. I don't really know what it was, just that it was metal and massive and a bit wet and smelly and you could crawl quite a way in.

An old pit tip that time had grassed over but was not all that stable and had a chunk out the side of it. We called it "holey hill" and would sit in the carved out bit and make it bigger.

There was a stream with a big tree next to it. We had a rope tied round a branch and a stick to turn the rope into a swing. One side of the stream had a really steep banking and we had a massive knife and took it in turns to swing as high as possible and stick the knife into the banking. The next person had to swing to get the knife and then swing to put the knife higher up the banking. The winner was the person who got it so high nobody else was able to retrieve it.

Gathering hay from the fields and making a massive pile under a tree (different tree) then climbing the tree and jumping off it onto the hay. Bonus points for fancy jumps.

Playing chicken across the new road (it's still called the new road even though it's been there 40 years now and the old road's been buried for 30)

Climbing onto the row of garages at the bottom of the estate and jumping from one roof to the next.

God, so many!

I was chatting with my mum the other day and was reminiscing about all these games when I noticed my mum had gone absolutely silent.

She had no clue what I'd been doing all that time. She'd assumed I was just in the park. (Nobody played in the park. Who wants proper swings and slides when you've got pit tops, slurry ponds and knife games 🤣)

We used to go to the dumps, use everything people had thrown away to make a play house. Discarded mattresses were our trampolines for the day, used to hope you didn’t hit a spring.
To end our day we’d climb into the huge pipes on a building site at the top of a grassy hill, roll all the way to the bottom .

Hopefully no rocks, glass or dog dirt on the way down because we never checked and no one cleaned up after their dog. Forgot about dumps. We were always messing about looking for....whatever. discarded mattresses, paint, furniture etc

Why were porn mags always left in bushes? Was it like a secret nationwide porn-exchange? I’ve often pondered this. They were everywhere!

But some kids didn’t survive or were injured, as I wrote in my last post. It’s only luck that more were not hurt.

I’m not talking about things like pen knives, which my kids certainly had growing up in the countryside, and they’re teens/young adults born after 2000.

It’s perfectly possible to have an outdoorsy childhood, with pen knives, lighting bonfires, playing in streams etc but to do it safely with parental input until kids are old enough to do these things alone and safely. When kids were being injured, dying and being sexually assaulted and raped due to lack on supervision/age appropriate input from parents, it’s hardly something to wish we went back to.

My parents were just neglectful like many others, there’s nothing fab about that.

Ironically, kids are facing more dangers being alone in their bedrooms these days than we ever were jumping around all over the place outside...

Played 'wars' throwing half-bricks at each other at the derelict building site.

Sitting on skateboards down a steep hill in the middle of the road

Ages in our playing out 'gang': 5 - 9 years old

@IncompleteSenten compared to the thread on what 90’s teens got up to (which all seemed to be about sex at a young age with older men and pervert teachers) this thread sounds very wholesome !

Playing everywhere than where we said we’d be, bombing about on my bike or roller boots, dangling upside down on climbing frames, knock a door run, water fights with washing up liquid bottles, making dens and ramps to do jumps off, the best times

Were you in our gang @SmugglersHaunt ? 😄

@DamnSmartCat , I think parenting has changed, but maybe not as long-term safe now as parents like to imagine - theres huge acceptance of children accessing online stuff from really young, lacking exercise, obesity, MH issues are enormous, young men driving accidents...etc. Theres way less "blood and gore" risk, but more ... dunno.. wellbeing risk, IYSWIM? My parents wouldve assumed we had some sense and wouldnt have thought we'd do anything too crazy.

But, yes, average 1970's parenting was much less safe than now! Some of these stories are really scary! I grew up rural, so swimming in freezing cold lochs, climbing rocks, etc., but nothing really ouright insanely dangerous.

Potentially true but I was one of two as were the majority of families even back then. We were working class kids though so it was different.

There is some research that suggest that playing out on unsupervised as a child in big groups of other kids, getting into scrapes, falling out and sorting things out amongst yourselves is a vital stage of development and if you miss it then it has a negative effect on your life leading to greater anxiety and more dependence on others such as parents and teachers to sort things out for you as you get older.

Went skating on a dam that was partly frozen over....miles from home....we liked daring to go out so far and hearing the ice cracking at the thin edge....

Mollycoddling and helicopter parenting has led to a rise in anxiety and massive lack of resilience in kids.

But many kids did not survive. Todays society could not absorb the death rate of the 1970s We dont have enough children

We used to go in a mechanic garage. We’d go through everything. We’d use the paint and paint random things near our house.

We also used to roller skate around in the old great mills building when they all shut.

Nothing really that dangerous but lots of time spent just with kids in the woods, down canals, in abandoned rail tunnels etc.

Bizarrely, this was my dad, not me - whenever people came to visit for the day, my dad’s party truck was to pick me up and hold me over a railway bridge as an Intercity 125 was speeding by about 100ft below. And I’d be wriggling in protest the whole time. He did this many, many times. Thanks dad!

*party trick, not party truck obvs

Magical, we used to do this as well and in the summer we'd rake the middens at the school for old jotters and random stuff, it felt like Christmas!

We all had pen knives. Sharp ones. There weren't any school rules about them either.

We played on a lot of building sites. Sledging down heaps of gravel on trays or tyres! So much fun!

DH grew up in the countryside and they sledged down random hillsides, vaguely hoping there weren't any walls hidden in the snow, because they'd catch a clouting if they broke their sledge. And he ended up in a snowy stream more than once and had to make his own way home, courting frostbite all the way.

Although we played on the edges of the tip/landfill, along the canal, cycling off to wherever we could, the odd spot of arson if a particular kid was involved, I'm pretty sure none of us were significantly hurt. All the broken bones etc I knew of happened at school or other "sensible" places.

We grew up by a women's refuge and kids had been snatched before, so we were all extremely thoroughly trained on stranger danger, which was a genuine issue round us. So we didn't talk to strangers. But we'd jump out of trees into the river.

I used to have quite a tame one really : there was what we used to call a quarry , like a half hill and I think it used to stop suddenly , it wasn't big , no water .
Anyway the bigger boys used to take thick ropes there and tie them to the trees . So the kids there can waste an afternoon swinging on the rope . It was good we sometimes took a picnic and the bigger kids would look out for us .

We would definitely play out all day returning only for food and our bath with Savlon Before bed for a good rest after our packed day .

Literally every other bush, especially in the park 😳 We knew who the local pervs/crazy men were so would avoid them and we also knew if one came near us to kick them where it hurts and run like hell.

My parents were as ‘neglectful’ as the next but we knew we were loved and we had a very happy childhood all the same.
It’s called freedom and ‘doing it safely with parental input’ is not quite the same.

Same 🫣

Also playing on a building site beside our estate. In and out of half built houses, messing around those massive concrete sewers... used to try to clean our shoes before going home so my mum wouldn't know we were there.

Getting really annoyed when they finished building and the houses were locked up.

'Running away' to the forest (actually only a patch of trees) and our parents not even realising that we had 'run away' for the entire day!

#Goodtimes

#iddieifmykidsdidthesame