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 🤣)

I guess those who felt their childhood was amazing for the freedom are letting their own kids grow up the same way? Out from dawn to dusk with no idea what their children are getting up to?

If not, why not?

We’d build forts on top of the garages on the estate, mostly in the summer, you’d leave the most random personal possessions up there, all the neighbourhood kids would use it, no one would steal it.

Playing on building sites, lighting fires by striking cap gun roll with a stone, raking for ale bottles and getting sweets in exchange, playing down by the burn.

I'll admit to finding this a lot more shocking than whatever kids got up to - did your mum just watch without saying anything ?

It’s just a twatty thing to do. Some men have to do these dangerous things as if it they think it’s manly or something. My dad was one of these twats.

🤣

I was enjoying reading these and wasn’t going to comment. Until I read this 😂😂😂😂 and laughed for a full minute.

Who made up that game?!

We used to go play on the railway line, blackberry picking, climb onto the flat roof in next street, steal pears. The only hassle we had was playing in the park by another group of kids.

After school it was shop lifting. The group I hung about with did. Not me I was too scared.

U@readdysteddy hunt the shit has me howling 🤣🤣🤣

I know what you mean. I was writing about when I was ten and had complete freedom to do exactly as I pleased. 10 year olds are feral and wild in an innocent and lovely way. That same freedom/indifference/benign neglect was not something that did me any good as a teenager and I parent my own children very, very differently.

I think lots of parents are just as neglectful these days. Instead of allowing them out into the real world they allow them to be out in a very adult virtual world. Just because the immediate physical risk isn't present it doesn't make it safe. Despite more information on parenting and mental health, there is a mental health crisis for kids and young people. Child exploitation and abuse is as high as it has ever been. Every other day we hear about someone else who has been found with thousands of images of child abuse on their computers - actual real life children. So I refuse to believe that this aspect of child safety is any better now than it was in the 80s.

Most children in the 80s and earlier who died in accidents, were often in the presence of their parents or other adults. Road traffic accidents due to less safety features or seat belt use, fires due to adults smoking and no smoking alarms.

Yeah less children are dying nowadays, but maybe not because of better parenting but better knowledge, safety features and medical advancements. And more children are very much struggling with mental health and identity issues. I still on balance am happy that I grew up in a time when children and young people were less infantilized, were allowed to make mistakes and take risks and to develop more resilience.

So as far as I can remember, everyone was laughing! I expect my mum chided him a bit. He was such a lovely man, but it was such a peculiar thing to do. I asked him about it before he died and he said his dad did the same thing to him! He used to dangle him out of the window as the German bombers flew overhead 🤯

We used to go out on our bikes and down by the canal. We lived in army quarters so we were technically safe to roam the streets nearby (we were allowed up to where the army houses stopped) my parents didn't worry anything untoward would happen as there were so many children that there were always a parent or two around and we knew which houses we could go to if we needed to. We would go down by the canal though and off the estate the other end.

No mobiles, just a parent coming out and calling when it was time to go in.

He used to dangle him out of the window as the German bombers flew overhead 🤯

Da fuk? 😲😆😂

@Pinkfluffypencilcase I think it's origins predated my time but I suspect it started from kids who didn't want to go home for a shit because they knew they'd be kept in. I have heard of other people doing something similar as kids but I'll spare everyone the details!

@readdysteddy that makes sense! Still v funny!

Re being kept in my mum used to say "if you come in again you're staying in!" And "in or out, make your mind up!!"

She hated in and out in and out. I don't know why but it was the norm when I was a kid. If you went home, half the time you'd be made to stay in for the rest of the day because keep running in and out was irritating I guess. 🤷

I think that is pretty unfair. For one thing, I don't think posters are making judgements for the most part. They are just recalling the joys of freedom. Many of us who had that 70s freedom are precisely the people who enacted a less free childhood on our own children. We aren't in a position to take any kind of moral high ground.
But for another thing, I don't think we should be reflecting on those earlier parenting styles as 'bad'. Children aren't more protected from risk now than they were then. They are just protected from some risks at the cost of facing other, equally destructive risks now. Lack of exercise, lack of autonomy, lack of adventure and exploration. Exposure to the awful, mind-twisting pressures of social media.
I know which risks I would rather face. I know which childhood I would rather have.

I've got up to so many of the same tricks described here - 70s and 80s. We just used to roam free from about 6 years old and I rode my bike on the road aged 7. Quieter roads, obviously.

I remember being sent with my sisters for a gallon of pink paraffin, from the petrol station when I was five. I took us ages to get back, almost 2 miles and we got shouted at for taking too long!

We went to my aunt's for the holidays quite often. I was 10 and the local kids took us up to an old brick factory, with tunnels under the kilns. A few of us went down with torches, I think the tunnels were flues and full of soot. My got, we were black from head to toe! We did our best to wash it off in a quarry, with scant success.

My aunt gave me such a hiding!

Read the room. Those days are gone, it's quite right from a safety and welfare POV that they are, but has it occurred to you that maybe what pps are expressing is a sense of how carefree they felt because they were of an age/living in a time when the dangers of certain activities (and, by extension, of the world in general) simply hadn't hit home? I'd say that's very different than 'taking pride' or 'snigger, snigger'.

I am a child of the 60s! We were out with our bikes and scooters till very late during the summer holidays. We use to call on the other kids who lived in our street then spend the whole day roaming the streets. We also had a railway bridge nearby so we watched the trains go by.
Often the school gates were open, so we had the playground to play in. Playing hopscotch on the pavement was great plus waiting for the postman to come and empty the postbox. All this in Battersea before it became 'trendy'!

Sundays watching tower blocks be blown up.
playing in a burnt out factory.
using a tyre in a bush as a loo in our ‘den’.
playing on the train tracks.
I grew up in central London… lots of trains.

My parents had a small farm, which had a pit.

My elder brother made a raft from railway sleepers, and we used to sail round the pit. We loved it, even the mud.

This one just tops the lot 😁

At primary school someone discovered that you could lift the drain cover around the back of the outside toilets...we would take it in turns to shit then run as fast as we could to watch our turds race by! Proper log flume that 😁

I left that school aged 9 in 1982 to give a timeframe. Did a lot of what others have already mentioned too and still occasionally do some of them, as did my kids.

We used to make prank calls - we found teachers' numbers from the Phone Book. We also used to try to light fires alot! Mostly in my Grandma's shed. My friend in secondary school used to shout at older men " show us your c**k " and one day one of them did.. it was a shock! 😆

We used to ride our bikes out of the village to fields with really wide, old hedges. We had a den inside one of the hedges and spent hours there until one day we discovered that our den had been ransacked and left full of empty cider cans and girlie mags!
And we all told our parents that we were going to the beach to revise for our O levels.. as if.
And I went to a boys school for A levels and my boyfriend was a boarder. The strict rule was no girls in the boarding house. How we didn’t get expelled I shall never know.
And my parents never knew a thing.