To wonder how kids had downtime before TV

[someladdersandsnakes]

I saw a post earlier on a Facebook group from someone who had managed to keep their 3 year old screen free, until out of desperation recently she started giving her one cartoon a day so she could put the younger child down for a nap. And she feels she's destroyed her kid's creativity. And most people were saying it's admirable you've managed this long but go easy on yourself because screen time is incredibly helpful and gives your child a chance to wind down too.

Now I see a moderate amount of screen time as pretty much essential to my own parenting. It's not just that it gives me time to get things done without being interrupted. There are also times particularly after a long day at nursery when my DD seems too tired to engage with play, and can't maintain interest in anything and just needs TV/tablet to zone out a bit. And this seems pretty normal/common to me.

So I'm just wondering, before TV was invented (and/or if you're genuinely a screen free parent but I've never met one of those) what did young kids do when they were too frazzled to play? Were they more creative than modern kids and just played nicely anyway? Or did they sit there whinging? What if they were ill? Did they just lie in bed staring into space? I'm a 90s kid and always had TV so I have no idea and cannot imagine this world 😂

Late fifties kid here. I can't remember much about pre school, except that I used to watch Bill and Ben, watch with mother and apparently I used to cry buckets when Andy Pandy finished 😂
I remember that Tues evenings were ballet lessons at the local village hall. Quite why my mum thought I would make a ballerina when I danced like a hippo, I have no idea!
We didn't really watch much TV, but we did have lots of toys and attention off my parents.
We used to play out with our friends a lot too if it wasn't raining.
Memories of my friends mum charging down the garden path and walloping us all because we had run off with her washing line to skip with. ( One end tied round the lamp post )
Then getting an almighty telling off from my mum for the same offence, even though I hadn't personally taken the line down. I was guilty by association..
Imagine that now? 😂
When mine were pre school, they didn't watch much TV, but like me they had lots of toys and attention, along with playing out with their friends on an evening if it wasn't raining.

Not in my experience. Both in schools and nurseries I’ve worked in, role play and ‘playing houses’ is still a huge thing. You be the mummy and I’m the daddy, pretend to be sick and I’m the doctor, let’s be xyz from this and so on and so forth. I think people like to imagine the new generation is so much less than - less creative, less intelligent, less imaginative. But when I was young we heard all the same stuff and it’s simply not true. Kids now play lots of the same games I played at that age.

That’s not to say that I don’t believe screen addiction is a huge issue, but to say ‘oh I have a photo of my kids glued to an iPad on holiday but if they didn’t have the iPad they would have made their own entertainment’ doesn’t mean they can’t or that most kids can’t make their own entertainment! In schools, in nursery, at soft play, or at the park, I still see kids playing all the same games I played as a child.

Born in 1980 but we only had one tv, and we weren't allowed that on before about 5pm even in the summer holidays. We also spent a lot of time in places with no TV at all.

Spent time doing chores!
Running about in fields and mucking around in rivers, building dams, catching minnows.
Running around in woods building dens, climbing trees.
Playing with ponies, riding, grooming, doing dangerous and silly stuff and learning why we shouldn't do dangerous and silly stuff.
Walked long distances and by myself too so lots of time to look at stuff and explore.

Read books, played with toys, made things (clothes for my toys, stables for my little ponies), built models.

Downtime would be reading or drawing/colouring etc. Earlier than that, too young to read or draw, probably sitting on an adults knee whilst they talked to other adults, or sit in a play pen with toys.

We listened to the radio, or to story tapes a lot - the radio would have children's stories etc. My Mum didn't work, but I don't really remember 'down time' as such pre-school - my Mum didn't drive so a lot of our day was taken up with walking/cycling to the shops, helping/watching my Mum bake, or mucking around in the garden I think?

Me and my sister did a lot of drawing, writing, read a lot of books. We also played a lot together with our dolls.
We were usually playing out in the street on bikes or skates until it was time to come in for bed during the summer. We actually didn't have a TV until I was a teenager so no choice anyway.
My kids have screen time but also play out a lot, especially in summer months. The two younger ones are less creative than my eldest was who is now nearly 21 - I would say they probably spend more time on screens than he did at their age.

My youngest had a friend over today (school strike). They've spent the whole day in and out of the garden; playing football, on the trampoline. They've had all the toys out playing with wooden swords doing battles and had all the soft toys out with some elaborate game going on. I think most kids can entertain themselves without screens and certainly mine often choose actual play over screens anyway.

My mother said TV came to her community when she was 12. She was irate because suddenly kids just wouldn't come out to play. That was their downtime, shoo'd out the door at 8am & told not to be home before 6pm. From about age 4yo.

i think there was only an hour of children’s programming on one channel when I was a young child.
I used to be out playing a lot of the day. Indoors, I would read, make paper dolls and clothes, play with toys. Can’t remember being bored.

We have no TV days three times a week at least. Mostly she looks through books, falls asleep reading them, draws, opens cupboards she shouldn't and takes all the contents out, talks to people on imaginary phone, plays, just lives really- potters around, sometimes she'll ask for music on and sometimes she's just fine without- we don't have a normal tv but a projector so when it's on it dominates the room so I don't have it on every day because she would be glued to it.

My children had no TV between birth and 2.5, and 2 and 4 respectively. Because we were living in the US in the 1990s and frankly the tv there bewildered me so we didn't bother with one. They basically played (very enthusiastically and imaginatively) and were read to, and just flopped around. They returned to the UK none the poorer for having missed a chunk of Teletubbies and Fireman Sam.
Things soon changed when we moved back <sigh>. But I think in retrospect it was a really helpful period in their development

Right, I mean fine to have a value judgement about screen time displacing a portion of imaginative game time (or whatever other play), but all the answers on this thread tell me that before screens, children played more or less in the same way as children do now. They didn’t have some other “downtime” activity that screens have replaced. I think that’s interesting in itself

my own view is that playing in your own home generally is downtime for children. But I don’t make judgement about screens - I think they have a different downtime purpose, usually related to parents needing children to remain in one place fairly reliably while they do jobs or rest or whatever. As this thread shows, previously even very small children might have been sent outdoors to play in a way that isn’t considered safe now, for the same purpose

When I was that age we only had 3 channels and children's TV was only on for a few hours a day.

I remember being bored watching my parent's TV programmes but also went out to play a lot.

Born 1960. We didn't own a telly until 1971. We had the radio on a lot - Radio 4. Listened to Dad's records. Read books, lots and lots of books. Spent most of our free daytime outdoors. Either playing with other kids or vanishing on our bikes to goodness knows where. I played recorder quite a lot. Liked to roller skate around the block and the local park. Lots of drawing and painting. Wrote letters to pen pals. Wrote my diary and small "books". Oh, also knitted while watching the box. We were on the go all the time.

Oh how could I forget the hours spent cycling to and visiting horses and ponies? Pestering their owners to let us brush them. Sometimes getting a free ride in return for doing some jobs.
We played a lot. My sister and I spent hours when the weather kept us indoors building farms and stables using plastic and wooden buildings, fences, hedges and animals. Just the sharing out of the animals and equipment (I choose one, you choose one) took ages.

I feel lucky to have been in a generation that had such relaxed lives, and such freedom. From the age of about 10 I'd be off in a gang of varied ages on bikes. We'd go miles with a jam sarnie and can of shandy in a little bag behind the saddle of our bikes. We ate less and more simply too. My family weren't exactly rolling in it, a lot of bread and spuds were consumed.

My parents didn't have a TV.

Aged 7 I read, played with my toys. I loved lego and fuzzy felt. I played board games and played out with my friends. If I was ill in bed I read a lot.

We listened to the radio and tapes and I'd go off for hours on my bicycle either by myself or with my best friends.

I did my best to try and make sure my own children had a similar childhood and very little TV was allowed.

I now don't have a TV or watch any TV programmes by other means. I never really got into the habit.

Nothing wrong with that. I sometimes get amazed at the amount spent on toys that are rarely played with because they're on screens.

We played with toys, read books, went out on our bicycles, played with our little garden plots, played with pets, friends, got healthily bored occasionally. I made a showjumping course in the garden for my imaginary horse. There was an area nearby when the concrete surface got eroded and it made interesting puddles, where we played at water gardens, floating leaves and daisy heads. We had so much freedom. No television until I was ten so I never got the habit.

But if the question is what did we do for downtime before TV - videos weren't invented then. They came out around the end of the 70's I think? But really only on sale to the public when I was working in retail (anyone remember Rumbelows electrical shop??).

We just watched TV, it's been around since the interwar period. 'Screen time' is an old parenting technique with a new name

My kids are pretty restricted on TV. They don’t ever watch it every day and actually haven’t watched it for the last few weeks as they’ve just not asked.
Downtime is colouring/reading for my oldest and audiobooks for my younger two. I was similarly restricted as a child and also remember listening to lots of audiobooks, plus
my brother and I had a low table in our room with loads and loads of crayons and paper (no toys in our bedroom really but I remember the reams of paper!) so I guess we spent a lot of time scribbling.

Left to their own devices children can be amazingly creative. Even from a young age I was creating stories with my toys. My sister joined in as she got older. With 6 years between us, as I got older and spent a lot of my time outdoors my sister, aged about 5 or 6, would be trailing along behind me as I was under orders from Mum to look after her. We played "horses" and also a lot of cowboy and indians stuff. She usually had snot running and little mittens hanging out of the sleeves of her coat, attached together with a bit of wool running up and over her shoulders. That's my abiding memory of her anyway. 😂

I was born mid 50s in London. Lived on a main road so no playing in the street but very close to the park so spent a lot of time there.
At home listened to the radio, watched a very small amount of suitable TV. Spent hours drawing, writing stories, reading, making up games. My dad used to take me to major London landmarks most weekends.
I was a bright only child who got lots of adult attention from grandparents and an aunt an uncle who lived in the house which was divided into three large flats.
When we moved out of London it was very different and I had more freedom to roam.

Nothing at all wrong with it, in fact it’s much better than plonking them on screens or timetabling their every waking minute.

Its funny because I don’t remember ever asking my mum what we were doing that weekend - it was just a given that we’d be playing out or at home unless something unusual was happening, in which case she would tell us.

A lot of parents I know have a planned itinerary for every day of half terms for example, rammed with exciting stuff, I can see why kids minds are hyperactive and they can’t entertain themselves

Reading.