To think kids miss out these days?

[jelly449]

Last week I went out with my dad for a meal. My aunt came too and I hasn't seen her for 6/7 years as she moved abroad.

Dad and aunty spent most of the night talking about what they got up too as kids. We're talking 1960's.

They honestly had the best childhood even though times were hard. They had no money - my grandad walked out on my grandma and she worked literally all the hours she could.

My grandma basically used to 'chuck them out after breakfast' - dads words - and him and my aunty wouldn't come home until tea time.

They spent the summer holidays playing in farmers fields, building dens, biking to here there and everywhere, waiting for the trains to pass etc. They even used to build their own dens and camp out on them in the middle of the woods. I'm guessing they were between the ages of 8 and 14/15. Dad started working at 14.

My aunty also mentioned the one holiday they all had at a caravan park. But it had no toilet and it was quite a walk to the outside ones. They thought it was great. Going to the toilet was a massive adventure for them. In all honesty....my dcs would moan at staying in a caravan with no toilet.

They had some stories to tell and they were all amazing.

My dcs won't have any of these stories to tell. Literally none. My dcs aren't even allowed to leave the front garden.

Dd is currently up in her room watching you tube. Ds is watching a film. They've only met up with their friends a handful of times this summer as everyone is abroad.

Just sat here thinking how times really have changed

P.s regarding the 'chuck them out after breakfast' comment - my grandma was ace, she was very set in her ways though. I remember staying at hers over night once and she made me stay in the garden all day and play. I remember thinking 'wtf am I supposed to do our here, I'm coming in when home and away is on at lunch time' so even I'm guilty of it lol

Some interesting stats although they only go back 10-20 years or so...but assuming the trend has been constant you can see why parents don't just leave kids to fend for themselves anymore

I don't deny that there is a greater risk nowadays but I think it's partly a self perpetuating cycle.

initially, there weren't actually greater risks, there were fewer, but because the press had boomed, we all knew about every tragedy, so it appeared that there were more risks, that meant a lot more children were given less freedom.

With freedom also comes responsibility and independence. Over the years it has meant that children don't have the same levels of responsibility, independence and the knowledge and common sense that comes with that. which means that were you to put today's kids into the same scenarios there NOW probably would be a greater risk of harm. This is combined with a loss of community. I am not someone who thinks all kids need a stay at home parent, however in times when almost every household had an adult at home all day there were stronger relationships, friendships and community among neighbours and people who lived locally to one another all knew each other. IT's a combination of influences over time that mean kids nowadays don't/can't have the same levels of freedom.

and almost none of it is anything to do with cows

Just to add to the post by umpteennamechanges, here is a report from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, based on analysis of death certificates.

www.rcpch.ac.uk/sites/default/files/CHR-UK_-_Retrospective_Epidemiological_Review_of_All-cause_Mortality_in_CYP.pdf

Key findings

-Child mortality from all causes has declined in all age groups and UK countries between 1980 and 2010 by 50% to 70%.

-Injury is the most common cause of death accounting for 31% to 48% of all deaths in children aged 1 to 18 in the UK.

-England had consistently lower rates of injury deaths than the other UK countries. This disparity has widened since 1980 for children aged 10 to 18 years.

-We estimated that 52 fewer deaths would occur each year among children aged 10 to 18 years if all UK countries had the same mortality rate due to injury as England for children in this age group.

-There has been no decline in injury deaths due to intentional injuries (deaths due to self-harm, assault or undetermined intent) in 10 to 18 year olds in any UK country since 1980.

I spent lots of time outside playing - although I wasn't chucked out. It was great fun. Most kids played outside, so there were always other kids to play with. We were much more active then, so slimmer.
The more neglectful parents would let their kids roam free anywhere, but most had strict boundaries of where they were allowed to play. Our mum would come out and call us in for our tea - so we were never that far away. Perfectly safe.

soupforbrains Totally agree. We knew all our neighbours to at least 10 houses away. They would all keep an eye out on the kids playing just outside. And car drivers knew there were kids playing around so would generally be really careful. The only kids I knew as a kid injured or who died in road accidents were in cars or in one case a bike with their family.
And yes we were much more capable of sorting out conflict or squabbles with other kids.

Just because you don't give your children any freedom, don't assume all children suffer similar. My dd spends ages doing brilliant stuff and is in no way missing out on childhood. I let her out because I don't think there is more risk now than when I was a child and quite frankly, I didn't have a child to wrap her in cotton wool.

I did all of those things and I grew up in the 90s, but I grew up on a farm in the countryside. However, my parents kept a very sneaky eye on me and would follow me to the fields and just watch from a distance and I didn't know. best of both worlds!

Also - my eldest plays outside now most of the day, and certainly doesn't sit around on a tablet watching youtube. if he's not outside he's making crafty things in the house, or playing with instruments. So i don't really know what their freedom to leave the front garden has to do with it.

@JustlikeDevon totally agree

Remember those public service videos? All put on the kids. Don’t play on railways, near deep water, on electricity pylons, busy roads, don’t talk to strangers.

I always think about those. If it was all so idyllic and free and wonderful why were those videos needed? They were always on the television; drowning, electric pylons, Charlie says blah blah blah. My "free" childhood involved regular exposure to porn, flashing, a child falling off an underpass bridge, a child drowning, having to run to a friend of my Mum's house because we were being beaten up and my Mum was at work, being threatened with a knife by an older boy, seeing a friends older sister attacked and beaten by a huge gang over some boy.

Yeah brilliant

All sounds like it was rather shit for grandma in that first post too.

Yeah I remember being soaked to the bone when it rained, baked and sunburnt when it was hot and always really bloody hungry. Two meals a day isn't enough for a small child.

These reminiscent posts always leave me a bit confused. It was miserable being chucked out of your house all day. I mean yes, sometimes we made the best of it and nearly killed ourselves went on adventures, but mostly it was shit.

My dc have been on two foreign holidays this holiday so far plus days out with friends, going to events and days chilling. Contrast with my childhood where I played on building sites and in canals completely unsupervised, dodging the local pervs. I may have got more independence from adult supervision but I was very vulnerable and wouldn’t swap with my dc. My dad talks about packs of feral dogs and peadophiles at the cinema so it wasn’t so great in the 50s either. There’s nothing wrong with enabling your dc to have a proper childhood where they’re not having to deal with shit well before their time.

My DD plays out still. It's very normal where I live.
We have playing fields next door to the row of houses, the back of the houses are tree lined.

The kids go out in summer and climb trees, play games in the field etc. She has a lot of freedom here and I am so, so glad for it.
She's growing up in the way I did.
I think it's a great shame that a lot of children never experience this now.

I agree 100% @idonthaveatattoo

And I had that sort of childhood. All the fun things were really dangerous - darting across railway lines, smashing up stuff, etc etc not good at all!

Also in the summer holidays loads of kids where I live were chucked out after breakfast and told not to come home until dinner so had no lunch. Miserable.

Cherry picked romanticism I’m afraid.

My DGM grew up post WW2 and she had a pretty shit time actually. She was bullied and excluded at school for being a ‘darky’ (she is white but French and also Jewish so she has dark olive skin, dark brown eyes and jet black hair.) She’s told me horrific tales of rampant racism at the time, her older brothers were beaten up for being ‘darkys’ too and for being immigrants. The pubs had signs that stated “no blacks, no Irish, no dogs”. Homosexuality was illegal. If a woman got pregnant, she had to marry the man even if it was someone she didn’t love. Abortion was illegal and dodgy backstreet abortions existed, women died. Women died giving birth. Poverty was rife and not in the way we describe it now, babies slept in drawers and my DGM grew up in a two up two down despite there being nine children. Disease was rife, I mean things like polio existed ffs... Women virtually had no rights, they were most often SAHM’s with very little life outside of the home.

I mean, need I go on? I don’t think playing outside from dawn till dusk and having little parental interaction is a particularly nice memory to have either if I’m being honest.

Going back to the RCPCH study it's interesting that while death rates overall have fallen dramatically, self-harm and suicide death rates haven't changed. Some is due I suspect to changes in death certification, coroner's practices etc but there are other data pointing to flat if not increasing rates of self-harm and mental illness among children and young people. Improving physical safety may be to the detriment of other aspects of health?

Somewhere inbetween the totally feral childhood (like mine, spent doing all manner of dodgy/dangerous/illegal things and surrounded by people waiting to prey on vulnerable kids like us) and the cotton-wool wrapped indoor kids, I suppose lies a happy medium. I'm trying to give that to my kids - relative freedom and independence, but without being naive about the risks. It's very difficult!

There is definitely a balance between staying in on electronics and being chuck out all day in all weathers with no food.

I played outside as a child of the 90s. However I wasn't allowed out of our cul de sac until I was closer to 9 or 10, and then it was only to a very local park there were hourly check ins.

My mum would provide me and friends with a steady flow of sandwiches, crisps, pop and tip tops. If I wanted to go into a friends house we had to knock on and tell our mums.

It was great fun riding our bikes around, water fights, snowball fights, roller skating, climbing trees etc. I was lucky to live in a cul de sac with a green.

I do remember other children being allowed to go further afield and I was often left behind as I wasn't allowed out of the street, that wasn't nice, but I do think my parents had the right idea as lots of the kids who strayed further got into trouble or injured going into derelict buildings or climbing on garage roofs.

My parents had little money and we never went on holiday or did things as a family, I feel I missed out in that respect as I'd have actually loved more structured, family activities.

I think you can give your children freedom but still keep them safe.

Improving physical safety may be to the detriment of other aspects of health?

Or the two things may not be directly related.

I think the increase in mental health problems is due to 1) More people alive who would have died younger from other health issues 2) Better recognition and diagnosis 3) Increased, or the perception of increased pressure and competition to make a success of life.

Oh I just remembered after summer holiday there was usually a death announced at school assembly from someone drowning and loads of kids with plaster casts / burns from their fun.

Absolutely actualpuffins, of course correlation does not equal causation and that why I wrote it as a question. I agree with your explanations.

It's a complicated picture and I probably didn't phrase my point well, which was more to do with finding an approach which allows as much freedom as possible but without disregarding (or exaggerating) the real risks. I know it's important that children learn to assess risk for themselves - it's how to do that in a way that both safe and that works that is a challenge.

The children where I live still have this childhood. We live in rural Northern Scotland. Farms all around us.

The only difference is the road. There are tractors, log lorries, HGVs and cars thundering along. I'm happy for my eldest to play out so long as she sticks to the fields and farm tracks. DD2 is only 4 so she has to stay in sight of the house.

There isn't much for teens to do though. The bus stop is 2 miles away.

Rose tinted glasses.

Those kids are now grandparents and many of them have inflicted a lot or damage on their own kids, which they in turn must have got from somewhere.

If you've ever felt as an adult that you don't really have a home to go back to where you know you'll be welcome, think about the kind of insecurity that gives a small child. Yes it's lovely to have freedom and explore but it's only really 'fun' if you've got a secure base to return to. Getting chucked out doesn't breed security.

We were chucked out kids.

Our mate Carl came out one day as usual except he was ill but his mum told him to wrap up and go out. She wouldn’t let him back until dinner time. He was so ill all day, I remember it vividly even as a kid knowing he was sick.

The next morning we heard that he died of meningitis during the night. Parents were just way more lax those days

chips I don't remember any child dying at school, except from cancer and a car accident. Sure some kids had plastercasts, just as some kids still have them.

actualpuffins LIfe used to be much harder. The increase in mental health problems is partly down to recognition, but also a lack of resilience.