What did you do when you were a kid that is considered dangerous now?

[Karlwho]

Just out of interest.
When I was little (7-10), I'd play outside around the neighbourhood with no adults and not a mobile between my friends and I. We'd go home when we were hungry.

We also had little bows and arrows, I shot at my brother and it hit him between the eyes and cut him. Our parents just said be careful, but didn't stop us.

Rode ponies bareback without a helmet along the grass verge of A roads, jumping the drainage ditches as we went! Massive fun!

Oh my goodness these are brilliant. I use to play out till dark from as young as 6.

I love the story about the buttons listening service!!

Apparently the head of the local Infant school used to send the children home early on a Friday if they'd been good!
Walking to school on my own in the Infants' walking home and back for lunch and coming home on my own.
I was bullied by a bigger boy on one such trip and when I told my mother she said I had to fight my own battles! I said a rude word to him and his mother came and told my mother that her children weren't allowed to play with me as I was a bad influence

Born in the fifties too. My Dad used to take me (7) and my younger sister (5) on his motorbike - one pillion, one sitting on the petrol tank and none of us with helmets. My sister and I would catch a bus to school on our own. There was a building site next to the bus stop, so while we waited, that's where we played. I crawled through a pipe and my sandal came half off - my foot was trapped and the fire brigade had to be called out to cut the pipe in half.

I grew up on a farm. We spent a lot of time on and around tractors / large machinery / cows. We used to sit on the round baler for hours when we were little - there was a very small platform right next to the fast moving rollers / directly above the pick up reel (large rotating spiral with spikes of metal designed to pick up grass and feed it into the baler). I was the oldest of three and I was in primary school so youngest brother would have been 4. Dipping sheep (with organophosphate chemicals) in shorts and T shirts - I can still remember the burning sensation of the dip on my skin. Oh and never, ever having sun cream applied (and frequently getting sunburnt).
Ironically my parents seemed to think that we were safer than “townies” ....

@karlwho yes that’s exactly it, that’s really interesting I’m going to look it up. Parents are definitely under more scrutiny now, you see it so much when a genuine accident happens and people are saying ‘where were the parents, that would never happen to my child’. The fear of being that parent holds us back from allowing our kids more freedom.

I was a latch key kid from the age of 6 or 7. I looked after my kid brothers too. We were left on our own for 2 hours after school every day.

obvious one - but loads and loads of us here will have been put to sleep on our fronts as babies with pillows and god knows what else in our cots!

That was no more neglectful than what parents do today some of which might be deemed dangerous down the line.

Reading some of these posts those children seem to have had far more fun than being constantly organised by parents, play dates etc., and they were also allowed to develop a sense of danger and responsibility which I think is now seriously lacking.

The Butlin's baby listening service sounds like one up on Pontins. At Pontins the parents had to leave the chalet door unlocked and tie a handkerchief to the handle so the listening service would know there was a child in there.

@LaurieFairyCake - Broke thermometers with mercury in to play with the mercury
Little Willie from the mirror
Licked the mercury all off
Thinking in his childish error
It would cure his whooping cough.
At the funeral, Willie's mother
Smartly said to Mrs. Brown,
"Twas a chilly day for Willie
When the mercury went down!"

@LadyRannaldini yup I’ve read about this where children aren’t being allowed to develop risk assessment skills anymore. It’s a bit worrying.

Kidnapping games, where the loser would be tied to a tree, and left to try to escape. Usually they succeeded, but once someone was still tied up an hour or two later!

Also blind man's buff, near lakes and rivers.

@Ladymargarethall Jesus that is scary!

No seatbelts, played out alone in the countryside, was given a packed lunch and told to be back when it was dark, travelled by myself to primary school from age 6, stayed home alone when parents were on holiday once I was 11.

@LadyRannaldini yes! I think kids develop their own judgement best when they're allowed to judge lol. I'm completely guilty of being a h&s inspector with my kids too. There's a Ted talk called 5 dangerous things you should let your kid do. Its nothing like some of these stories lol, but it's inspiring.

Public information films about most safety issues started after the war and continued up until about 2008. The things that people are describing are just as dangerous today as they were back then. When I was a child in the 60s there were regular films about train lines, building sites, road safety, lake/pool safety amongst other stuff. Lots of short films about leaving children alone, nspcc stuff, playing with matches, green cross code, stranger danger.

It's just pure luck which of us survived to tell the (very rose tinted) tales.

Standing in the footwell of Dad's car with my nose against the windscreen.

Walking/cycling 2 and half miles to school (aged 8) with my little brother (aged 5).

Saturday morning cinema. I'd go with a friend, we'd cross a dual carriageway for the bus stop. Once in town we'd walk through town to the cinema. After the film, back through town and visit on of her aunties for a drink and a biscuit ( if it was winter she'd give us a tiny drink of her homemade parsnip wine, saying it would warm us !)
Then back home via the bus as before. I was about 9 and my friend a year younger 😯

On holiday We used to play in 6 ft waves sitting on the inflated inner tube of a tractor tyre with my dad! I take my children to the same beach now and shudder at he though of what could’ve happened! We loved it at the time tho!

Car without seatbelt.
Travel to school without a parent aged 7 (friends went together).

I used to go off hacking for miles with my friends for hours and hours on our ponies. We were all around 9yr old.

Like many posters, we had the run of the country when we were young (70s/80s) We lived by a hilly field and we rolled all the big round straw bales down the hill, trying to balance on them. I doubt the farmer was impressed. I got a black eye from an accident in a home-made cart, and again from a tyre swing when the rope broke and it fell on my face.

I had a friend whose parents owned a shop so she was unsupervised during the day from about age 8. I spent a lot of time at her house without ever apprising my parents of the situation. We ate what we liked, rambled around local farms and once fell into a pond while gathering newts to bring to school.

My father taught us all to shoot and we often went with him to hunt rabbits for the pot as pre-teens.

I was in a youth club and we had so many mixed-sex overnight expeditions. I doubt we were affiliated to any official organisation...

My best friend had a car as soon as she turned 17 and 7/8 of us used to travel the 90 minute round trip to the cinema in her small car. We picked up random hitchhikers if we had space for them.

I like to think surviving my childhood has turned me into the resilient adult I have become

@lljkk that was still happening in the early nougties in rural Italy. Not on the freeway though, just round the local villages. One parent would pick us up from youth club and drop us home.

DC still 'play out' where I am, and I'll let DS when he's older.

All the usual playing out. The only unusual one was me and my three older sisters all riding on one bike to school. We managed it as well when we were small!