To be pleased children are no longer out from dawn until dusk unsupervised

[rosediamond]

I know some people claim they had a brilliant childhood roaming free but I think for the majority of children growing up prior to the late 90s (maybe?) they were pretty dark times.

I’m pleased that children playing without supervision is rare now.

I knew someone would diminish my experiences.

Gang can have two different meanings. Of course the youth gang culture is awful but it’s not something in my world, whereas the gangs of younger children was very much part of my childhood.

Mine had limits put in place, I had to know where they were and they had to be back at a certain time, plus a very few places were banned

So yours were supervised and you had to know where they were.
So in essence your reply to the op referring to her post as being ridiculous must seem a bit ridiculous too?

I was out roaming from dusk to dawn and later in the Summer and so were all my cousins and friends.

It was much safer, with no drugs, online bullying and the only crime I remember was when someone's sandals got stolen when we were in bathing in the river.

I knew someone would diminish my experiences.

Maybe diminishing your experience, but your massively generalising and assuming everyone's experiences were the same as yours, they weren't.

I think times are worse now though I don't know if it's because people who grew up experiencing all the things that could go wrong now worry they could happen to their child so are more inclined to keep them in like me,
Or if people just don't care if there kids are in or out so if they want to play fortnight all weekend go for it,
My childhood was weird I've already posted about it before can go out do whatever you want but other option was sitting in the pub for hours on end or staying in upstairs so my parents could party with the door locked
I think the rise in young kids using social media is crazy but in our day we had game boys and used to play Pokemon on them for hours a day so still using a screen etc

We are living in much darker times for our kids than was the case in the latter part of the last century.

My siblings and I, plus most of our friends, were free range kids. I loved my childhood and have no doubt that the freedom and fresh air was a good thing.

Now as a parent I am not looking forward to keeping my DD safe from social media. The internet is a wonderful thing but it is used in such a fucked up way nowadays that whatever measures I put in place I know I can't fully protect my children from it.

And gangs have always been around back in our day they used to keep an eye on the little ones and know you was so and so boy or girl so they kept an eye out, much worse now because people don't care who's who

I don't know, I'd have to see the stats.

I think psychologically children lose a lot by being too watched and too structured - it lessens the ability to problem-solve, empathise, overcome setbacks.

I was going back and forth to my best mate from when I was 7 years old, we were going to the swimming pool and park without adults from when we were 8 or 9. When I was 8 I was hit by a car coming back from my friend's house and nearly killed, entirely the fault of my childish inattention - but do I wish my parents had been dropping me there in a car and picking me up every time so that never happened? No, I don't. They made the right call.

I don't doubt there were more accidents (though I don't know how many fatal or life-changing) when kids were out unsupervised and I don't think there's a need for kids to be out alone dusk til dawn but they could certainly be given more independence.

Growing up in the 80's was great for me, but again I must be one of the lucky minority. Would hate to be growing up now in the SM era. Closest I came to a "dark time" was writing to Jimmy Saville to appear on Jim'll Fix It, thankfully never got a reply.
This is a very odd and inaccurate thread.

No dark times for me, loved playing out. We were lucky to live by lots of fields. We built dens, played in the barley fields - we were chased by the farmer on more than one occasion.

We collected tadpoles, roded for miles on adventures with our bikes. Made up loads of games without anything to play with, ran & jumped, climbed trees, my knees were always cut or grazed. We only when back home to get fed and at the end of the day we were exhausted!

The fields have since gone, replaced by house's, they have since build a park near were we used to live, my little nephew uses it & asked once if I felt sad the park wasn't here when I was young, I said no, we had lots of fields & land to play with, you can keep your park

I had a fab childhood roaming the countryside and the farm we lived on with friends, going on long bike rides, going trekking on horses the only child I can remember dying was one that got run over outside the school trying to cross the busy road.

I would far rather kids had a childhood of playing having fun rather than being cooped up indoors on iPads, the world today is not a good place imo, and not because of the 'scary' things outside but because of the pernicious dangers of the internet and social media.

I think OP has been watching 70s safety information films that schools showed to scare us and got a completely warped idea about what it was like then. Where u even alive then OP? The realitys of playing out whete the complete opposite of those films I lived thro it.

I grew up in the 60s and 70s, played in the woods (nearby!) with my friends and walked to school on my own from 7 years old, often with much younger children. I never felt unsafe, nothing bad ever happened to anyone I knew. Those times always seem so much more innocent to me. Social media, screens, online pornography - childhood seems far worse to me today.

Mine are pretty free range - not dawn to dusk because they're always nipping back for "equipment" to build a den. I try and mitigate risk by putting some parts of the village out-of-bounds.

Statistically they were more at risk from their father when we were married. n.b., their father is not a child rapist - but we're talking statistics.

I never got flashed at in the 70s - bit disappointing really - it seemed to be very exciting. I must've had a RBF even back then.

I keep my kids safe by refusing social media/tablets/phones etc. If they want to use the PC it's to use scratch or The Maths Factor. My worry is the 9 year olds in the village with their own iphones who are watching porn...

The number of child deaths by accidents you're describing has pretty much on the decrease since the '70s, through the 'dark times'. There are a range of environmental factors in this, but as the sharpest decline came before the '90s, I don't think we can say that fewer children playing out from the late '90s is not the biggest factor.

Unlike with deaths, we can't know with any certainty about abuse or neglect now compared to decades past. While we might talk about it more, I really don't think its really properly addressed now, there is still very much the attitude in many communities that parents know best and should not be questioned, violence against children is still heavily excused (especially when the child is disabled - one only has to look at any case where a disabled child is murdered by a parent or carer to see this), and there is a real lack of support for kids and I think even more for young people in those situations.

And really - for children in abusive and neglectful homes (as I grew up in), being out of the house away from parents can be the far better thing. It's sometimes the only way some kids survive and the lack of safe places for kids and young people to gather in many places I think is a sad thing, it can block kids from the wider community and care when the areas we live in are designed so much for traffic that parents feel it is too unsafe to let children play and connect with others together. For some of us, that was a lifeline we needed and the only way we survived & its sad that in some areas, fewer kids have that.

My dad’s happiest memories were of entire days spent roaming the countryside surrounding a north eastern pit villages with his three cousins. They went out first thing in the morning and got home in time for tea. One of them was killed in a pit accident when he was 16, another died in WW2, the other two lived to be very old men. Their “dark times” were lightened by memories of their childhood freedom.

I have no idea what you're on about re dark times. I was a child in the 1950s and all the children in the street were out playing all summer. The only time we saw our parents was at meal times. My DM didn't wring her hands wondering how she was going to keep my sister and I amused 24/7 like some do on here because we amused ourselves. Not a single child from that time was molested, kidnapped, run over, drowned or fell on the railway lines to be electrocuted or run over by a train. How ever did we survive?

I disagree that it was Dark.
I think it's a shame. Makes me very sad.
I let Ds1 go out with his mates as much as possible, so I'm trying to change current situation.

No one is 'diminishing your experiences'. Most people are pointing out that they aren't everyone's, and your sense that now is a better time to be a child is way off, and suggests a fairly inadequate sense of real risk.

My dgs often complains of being bored. His main interaction with his friends, apart from at school is through his head set on Xbox and his football club on a Saturday. I think back to my childhood and my brother, played out with friends till dark, roamed the streets, played football, cricket, made dens etc etc. It was all character building I suppose. It makes me sad for my dgs who doesn’t get those joys and experiences.But then nothing stays the same. There are also compensations for all that I suppose.

Dark Times?

Only after the sun went down Some people are plain bonkers

Strange thread. I suggest OP needs counselling and help with anxiety from her GP.

The only child I knew who got injured in those ‘dark times’, broke his arm whilst climbing a wall.

At school.

At lunch.

Under supervision.

I was just thinking this morning that summer holidays for me in the 80s consisted of cereal and cartoons in the morning, nagging my Mum for sweet money (9 times out of 10 being told no), getting my bike out of the shed, knocking to see if anyone was around, and then disappearing until teatime.

But for the dc's it's a constant back and forth on their phones with friends and usually meeting up at someone's house to all sit in front of a games console.

I don't think it's entirely about safety though. I used to stay in until the cartoons stopped. If they'd run on TV all day, I'd probably have stayed in. There wasn't much in house entertainment in the 80s.