I checked Google Earth to get a sense of scale. Basically our standard roaming radius, without telling parents we were doing anything unusual, was about half a mile. That was in elementary school. By junior high I'd say it was more like 3 miles.
Yeah, that's about right. By age 10 we had it down to a fine science where we could hike into the woods around our subdivision and pop out in our other friends' neighborhoods. I don't know how I wasn't covered in ticks and poison ivy rashes 24/7.
By 13, and friend and I walked 6 miles round trip down a winding lane-and-a-half country road to go to the ice cream shop in another town. The only real rule was not to cross any of the main highways.
Cool thing is, my current neighborhood is still kind of like that. Almost year-round there are packs of feral children running from house to house, into the woods, up the road to the gas station for snacks. It's quiet enough, there's not much crime to worry about. It makes me a little sad my kid doesn't participate much.
I don't know how I wasn't covered in ticks and poison ivy rashes 24/7.
I was probably 12 or 13 before I realized I have a birthmark on my knee and it wasn't just another spot of pine sap that I couldn't scrub off. We spent a lot of time in trees.
Cool thing is, my current neighborhood is still kind of like that. Almost year-round there are packs of feral children running from house to house, into the woods, up the road to the gas station for snacks.
That's good to hear. Most places, it's probably objectively safer than back then, with phones to call for help and everything. People just have different risk tolerance levels.
In middle school, I had a rule of "don't go near the highway". Aside from that, no limits. In fairness, I was a chunker and I reckon my mom just wanted me to get exercise 😂.
Yeah, the freeway was definitely our eastern boundary. Our home turf was basically defined by major roads that quartered the town, and our quadrant was fair game. But sometimes you'd meet up with other kids along the boundary who knew about some cool tree fort in a eucalyptus grove a few blocks over and you'd range outside of that to check it out.
My parents knew where I was headed, but a mile to my friends house alone, another mile to Putt Putt with him, and a mile home by myself on a main road felt like a huge distance as a kid. It looks like nothing on a map today but my kids will never get to experience it.
I have vivid memories of being able to go pretty much wherever I wanted in for or bike by the age of 9. Granted, I grew up in a town of 14k people, but still. I could cover a lot of ground in a day.
I just saw an article about a parent getting arrested for letting their 11 year old walk one mile alone. At 11 my friends and I would walk to the forest 3 miles away where skinheads graffiti trees and a dead body was found one time.
I feel like there's an appropriate balance between those two 😂
I mentioned to my sisters that our mom would be doing 50 to life if letting your 11 year old walk a mile away from home was a real crime. I never knew where I was going to end up from day to day. In my own backyard or 6 miles from home in a creek catching crayfish with a group of older kids that I'd never met until that afternoon. Flip a coin.
Had some classmates in middle school find a dead guy in the snow at a park. Apparently they threw snowballs at them before deciding they should go find someone to tell.
We had a Stand By Me corpse and it was only a couple hundred yards from houses. Supposedly kids knew about it for a month before it was reported. I was an Explorer on the search and rescue team and was the best with the metal detector so I got to spend the whole weekend searching that eucalyptus grove for a murder weapon. I'll never forget the mixed smell of eucalyptus and decomposing body.
I'd have been about 17 at the time. It amazes me how much the sheriff's department let us do as teenagers back then.
I wasn’t alone but my mom let my brother and I I think I was 10 and he was 13 ride our bikes two or three miles to the nearest grocery store. We ride our bikes everywhere.
Yeah I read that too. And the fact that they wanted the mom to agree to have the son wear a GPS tracker was absolutely ridiculous as well. I’m glad she’s trying to fight it. She isn’t a drug addict or a negligent parent, some “Karen” called it in because they have nothing better to do. And it wasn’t even in a bad part of a rough city, it was in like rural Georgia. Just stupid if you ask me.
Yeah, I would like to ask the Fannin County Sheriff's Department just how badly they've let crime spin out of control in their corner of Bumfuck Nowhereseville that a tween can't walk around unaccompanied by an adult in broad daylight.
I rode my bike everywhere. After 7th grade I never saw my parents unless I had a football game or something. I stayed driving at 15 and I was gone. I am in therapy BTW
we went wherever we wanted. just be home when the street lights were on. they had an entire commercial come on at 10pm for parents. Do you know where your children are?
I wasn’t completely feral as a kid in the 80s and 90s, but as long as an adult was close by, it was fine. But I lived on a farm in a rural area, so we usually just played football in the old cow pasture by the house or went swimming in the summer. My brother and I would take our beagle squirrel and rabbit hunting, but our dad was always with us, so the 4 of us would march around the fields and woods on Saturdays in the fall.
When I was 7 years old on vacation with my father in a small village in northern Italy alone I would walk to the grocery store half a mile there, half a mile back to get stuff for breakfast pretty much every day for 2 weeks.
I mean, I grew up rural. We kids didn't have regular rides to friends houses, usually miles away, parents back then either didn't know where we were or didn't care 😂 bikes were the mode of transportation. Maybe it was the things we did without adult supervision but there's no way in hell I'd let my kids do anything my parents let me do. There used to be a community that we all knew each other to a certain extent and pedophiles and delinquents were handled in house and made sure they weren't welcome in the community. The village took care of the villagers. I still live here, but I don't know my neighbors more than a few houses down. The rural school got shut down, most of the kids that grew up moved away and there's just not kids around anymore, the school got shut down and the sense of community died out. The way of the world I suppose. It's us kids fault for not carrying it on I guess. Can't fault any of the kids I knew growing up for getting out and moving on with their lives. Their parents moved away or passed on and new folks moved in, but dang did I miss not having that connection with others as my kids have grown up.
We were left to our own devices and were wandering around outside until the streetlights came on, then our moms would yell our names for us to come to dinner. You had to be within the yelling radius or you were in big trouble.
I was free to roam in a foreign country when I was 12.
I'm American, but we were living in southern Germany in the early 70s and the countryside was my playground.
I pretty much had zero adult supervision from after breakfast to dinner time in the summer. We just roamed the woods around my grandmas farm. My cousins and I had all these secret meet up spots so we could ditch my little brother and then meet up after we lost him
Went walking to school by myself since 4 y.o., crossing a big road with cars…we had a rope through the mailbox you could pull that opened the door from the outside so we could let ourselves in, made our own sandwiches and looked after ourselves or went outside to play without any adult interacting with us…played outside on the streets, in the park or on the cemetery until it got dark…the laissez faire or ignorance of my parents’ attitude was great to grow up independent and resilient…
Our neighborhood had multiple whistle parents who would blow an exceptionally loud one to call their kid home. Confusing but at some point everyone figured out whose was whose. I know some other neighborhoods had cowbell parents.
I was one of those dinner bell kids. We lived beside a big forest that was a couple hundred acres. Ypu could hear the bell from far away. When it rang we had 15 minutes till dinner. My forest friends usually came over to eat too.
I grew up in the 80's, and in the summer I would ride my bike to the park in the morning to play baseball all day. I'd usually come home for lunch, and then it was back to the park again. And I was right back out after dinner, usually until the streetlights came on. It was glorious.
I’m not sure our parents had a choice. Once we were out the door there was no contact. We were also bored as fuck and had to go on adventures to stay sane.
In grade 2 {87), living in North York (Toronto) I would leave my house with only a vague idea of where I was going. We spent a lot of time outside without any supervision. We got hurt, did dumb stuff, and had fun without parents hovering over us. We learned to be independent and take risks.
Parenthood must suck more nowadays. I mean our parents must have loved having more freedom themselves. This is something todays parents won’t understand
We had "boundaries", my mom basically set a Radius that she theoretically could still hear us scream if there was trouble, and until we were about 10, we had to stay in that area. But after ten, we could walk to the 7-11 that was 2 miles away.
80s and early 90s I lived in the woods behind our house. If I stayed the weekend with my grandparents, weather permitting, I was playing under the bridge in the creek a few blocks from their house. Rode my bike to the gas station a mile from our house nearly every day…until I got hit by a car…but that was my own dumbass fault…
It's weird because we grew up with Stranger Danger and a constant atmosphere of "Satanic cults will kidnap you and throw you in a van" but also none of that happened and we all turned out okay. But now that we're having kids of our own we're not letting them do the same stuff? What's up with that?
I remember my parents letting me ride my bike, by myself, around the block and along/across the train tracks. At six years old! In the shitty part of town! How i didn't wind up on a milk carton is a mystery.
Seriously once I turned like 13 my parents were like, meh “Did you eat something even slightly nutritious? Went to school? Ok home by 11, don’t call us if you get arrested doing something stupid.”
I was the youngest of five though and my older siblings were definitely a handful.
I never was feral.
I was a surprise retirement baby after decades of my parents not being able to conceive.
Also, my parents remember OG Jim Crow and were terrified I’d get hate crimed out wandering by myself.
We lived an abbreviated version of the free range 80s kids. From 89-93, We were expected to do whatever, outside the house on weekend but if we were leaving the street, our parents required info.
However, our neighbors house was absolute free reign. We could hang out in their yard, basement, use allll their sports stuff and no one cared. Unless we were leaving the street.
I could ride my bike to a local deli, alone at 9. To post rd (a mile away) to buy music and makeup at Sam goody and brooks drugs at 10. Babysat as soon as legally allowed at 11. Mostly on my bike.
Yes. My best friend and I would walk all over town by ourselves when we were 9 or 10.
There is an overpass by my house but it was just a big hill of dirt when I was a kid, right off of a highway, and all the kids in the area would go dirt sledding on it without an adult in sight. We could have sledded right in to a very busy 6 lane highway but it didn't seem to be a concern for anyone back then.
Walked around most of the town I lived in by myself. Basically the two mile radius around our place. The downtown was only a mile away. I was 12, mid-90s.
There was a lot more trust laid upon ourselves. I had to be home by 7.30pm and you rest assured that mostly it was 7.29 rather than 7.31.
What happened from 4pm when i waved bye to mum or dad (in the stints from diff works they were home or I'd be home alone also, my sister 6 years my junior was with granma) to 7.30pm only me and my mates know.
I grew up in a small town (less than 10,000 people), so I’m sure it’s a little different, my friends and I rode our bikes throughout town. We lived about 2 blocks from my dad’s office and about a half a mile from the dress shop my mom owned. I would ride my bicycle to both places of work and to the local baseball card shop, video store, and downtown restaurants.
Allow? It was more like "get out of the house and dont cone back until the street lights come on"
There wasn't a street, drain, tree, park or abandoned house within 10kms of my house that I hadn't explored thoroughly by the time I was in high school. Did I do stupid shit? You bet. Did I get chased by adults? Sometimes. Did I get hurt? Yeah occasionally.
Was it an awesome childhood? Fuck yes.
I remember my mom would watch my brother and I - 5 and 10 years old respectively- cross the 4 lane road. Then we’d walk down to the Circle K about a 1/4 mile away and buy candy. Then we’d walk back and cross the same 4 lane road on our own. Hell, there was a local pizza shop in the same strip mall as Circle K and she’d let me go over there to play the Galaga Arcade game before walking back with a pizza for dinner.
My friends and I used to wander the swamp forests of South Carolina day after day! When It got dark we came home and my parents just asked me what I did all day. We worked on the fort!
There was a pack of roving kids on my street when I was a kid. You just traveled with that group ie rode bikes, swam, climbed trees, went to 7-11, played city block wide hide and seek. No one knew where their kids were during the summer. I also walked a mile to the library by myself when I was about 11 or 12 all of the time.
I just had a rule to be home by dark. Where I went before dark was irrelevant really.
We mostly stuck close to home because we knew we had the freedom to go wherever anyway and home was more convenient but we did ride our bikes to the city lakes from time to time which was about 10 miles from my street for the bike trails they had there which we thought were cool, even though we had no problem riding on the street to get there.
We also spent a lot of time within a range of a few miles from our street. We just knew if we weren’t home by dark we had explaining to do and no one wanted that.
Things I found randomly as a kid:
A jousting tournament with people in full armor on horses at a city park.
Kids having a ninja turtle style battle where I joined in with confidence holding a mop stick proclaiming myself to be Donatello and got my ass kicked by a kid who had taken some martial arts and actually knew what he was doing. I was pretty good at spinning it though.
A deposit of florescent lights in a wooded area which we used as light sabers in explosive battles. (Yes I know that was a bad idea now)
Attempting to explore the sewers only to be chased away by a fucking horde of roaches… like thousands.
Some rickety old bleachers we used to climb and fly kites off of until the cops made us leave because they were unsafe. We argued with the cops trying to plead our case and no one got in trouble for trespassing and I guess it never even occurred to the cops that they should tell our parents. Again in hindsight they were right, we shouldn’t have been up there, they were half rotten.
I feel like my kids missed out. I genuinely tried to give them freedom, not as much as I had but more than a lot of parents I know but honestly after they reach a certain age they just didn’t have the wanderlust we did. Too many other things to do I guess.
Was definitely a free range child. I remember having to go to summer school, but the closest summer bus stop was roughly 2 miles away. My mother would drop us off in the morning, but we’d walk back home in the afternoons.
On bikes with no helmets. If someone didn’t have their bike, they sat on the handlebars or stood on pegs on the wheels. We used to ride on the side of a two lane road with a speed limit of 45 MPH.
I was out for dinner with my parents a week ago and the topic of kids leaving home came up. Dad said, “from about 14 onwards we never saw you, off on your skateboard all weekend all over town. Home Sunday night.”
As a young’un I was biking all over town as well with my mates.
Bro it wasn't just the 80's. I roamed all over metro Detroit in the early 90's through the 2000's when I graduated. Growing up pre-internet was something I wish kids nowadays had a chance to experience. Mom would feed you breakfast, if she was home, and then kick you OUT of the house so she could watch her shows. Tell you not to come home unless you were hurt or the street lights were on. You would have to fend for yourself for food and snacks.
It was an amazing time to be alive. I'm 39 and have so many wonderful memories of hanging out with friends in the woods, going on bike rides, climbing onto the roof of the schools, playing basketball, setting stuff on fire. It sounds like the stuff you see in the movies but, was 100% the life we lived.
One thing I love about the town I recently moved to is the kids live like we did as kids. They walk to school on their own, ride bikes around town on their own, go to the park on their own. I see groups of kids just hanging out on corners and huddling about whatever they're going to get up to. The locals call them feral in a mostly endearing way.
Bro it was me. My bike. My friends. We had till sun came down. I defied my stepfather one night and stay out until 10. When i snuck in i thought i was good. I tiptoed into my room and shut the door.. my stepdad was behind that door with a belt and I didn’t do that again😅
As an 8 year old in the 90’s I lived in a subdivision that was mostly still under construction. My friend and I would go play in partially completed houses, our parents had no idea where we were. Thinking back, it was a good time but we were lucky one of us didn’t get seriously injured
I grew up mostly in the '70s graduated HS in '80. As a kid I would eat cereal, watch Bugs Bunny/Road Runner hour and hit the door on a mission. Sometimes I came home for lunch, other times I ate at friends' houses. Mom would see me when I returned in the afternoon around 4-5p to clean up for supper. It was awesome!
born 77, growing up I had to be home by dark, but I had to be up and ready for school by the time the bus arrived otherwise I had to ride my bike to school or get locked out of the house. Sounds fun until you realize how boring it was all alone in an empty neighborhood all day. only so much fishing or turtle hunting to do.
when I got a bit older around 13-ish, I could take whatever bus home I wanted as long as I let my mother know where I was by calling her once I got to where I was going, and when they should come and get me. If I wanted to eat at someone else's house, I would just have to let them know.
If I came home, I had to do my homework for an hour or until it was done, then was expected to go outside until either dinner if I wanted it or dark. My rough "bedtime" was to be home no later than 9pm but it was loosely structured around my report card.
On the weekends it was basically get up, watch cartoons and have breakfast, help dad with whatever projects he needed and do the laundry, garbage and chores then I was free to do whatever I wanted until 10pm on the weekends. Nobody cared WHERE we were but as long as we were checking in and not alone, was largely not a concern to the adults.
If we took guns out and were shooting shit in the woods, people got curious, but nobody really cared if we took a shotgun out behind the houses to a river and shot cans with it. We were like 13 shooting rifles and shotguns. Nobody gave a shit about that, really.
The kids where I grew up governed themselves; we learned how to act socially by the school of hard knocks. run your mouth? Got punched. Learned not to do that again. We squared things up pretty quick. If someone got caught doing something dumb like stealing or cheating, we sorted it out within a day or so. You answered the bell, but after that you picked yourself up and moved on. Vary rarely did I see things NOT resolve themselves. One kid put someone in a wheelchair stealing their parent's car and crashed it, putting the other guy in the front seat in the hospital and broke his back. One of the injured kid's friends beat the shit out of the guy driving and we never saw the driver again. I think his parents moved. A few cheating girls stopped coming around, but other than that nothing major.
Even at parties in the mid 90s (the bigger house ones) people were pretty chill. You would hear about kids stealing shit or breaking stuff in the house and it would eventually get sorted out. cops got called once or twice for the house being robbed, but the jewelry was returned after a few beatings were handed out after the word got out of who did it.
I grew up as a single child, so in addition to all this stuff, I also spent a LOT of time alone, but I like it that way. I'm very at peace alone by myself. Not always, but it's my go-to safe place when I'm having any type of existential crisis.
Pretty much rode my bike wherever after about age 8. Neighborhood friends and I would spend most of the summer either catching frogs and snakes in the undeveloped part of the neighborhood or riding over to the public pool to cool off. In winter, we built snow ramps and had contests to see who could catch the most air on one of those plastic saucer sleds.
I remember racing home because I lost track of time and the street lights were already on and it was getting dark. I pedaled faster than I ever pedaled in my life. I burst in the door saying "It's okay I am here!". They didn't even know that I was gone. I think I was around 10 or 12.
Ok-Car-5115@reddit
Absolutely. I grew up in the 90’s and we tore up the town on our bikes hitting up playgrounds, trails, and hanging out at each other’s houses.
madsci@reddit
I checked Google Earth to get a sense of scale. Basically our standard roaming radius, without telling parents we were doing anything unusual, was about half a mile. That was in elementary school. By junior high I'd say it was more like 3 miles.
Krazy_the_Face@reddit
I also just checked a map. Our further skate session took us 21mi from home. On bikes, 33mi. Ages 12-15.
That's one-way.
We were to be home by "x", where x usually equaled dark. Whatever happens between wake and then was between you and 4 to 12 of your friends
drainbamage1011@reddit
Yeah, that's about right. By age 10 we had it down to a fine science where we could hike into the woods around our subdivision and pop out in our other friends' neighborhoods. I don't know how I wasn't covered in ticks and poison ivy rashes 24/7.
By 13, and friend and I walked 6 miles round trip down a winding lane-and-a-half country road to go to the ice cream shop in another town. The only real rule was not to cross any of the main highways.
Cool thing is, my current neighborhood is still kind of like that. Almost year-round there are packs of feral children running from house to house, into the woods, up the road to the gas station for snacks. It's quiet enough, there's not much crime to worry about. It makes me a little sad my kid doesn't participate much.
madsci@reddit
I was probably 12 or 13 before I realized I have a birthmark on my knee and it wasn't just another spot of pine sap that I couldn't scrub off. We spent a lot of time in trees.
That's good to hear. Most places, it's probably objectively safer than back then, with phones to call for help and everything. People just have different risk tolerance levels.
ThisElder_Millennial@reddit
In middle school, I had a rule of "don't go near the highway". Aside from that, no limits. In fairness, I was a chunker and I reckon my mom just wanted me to get exercise 😂.
madsci@reddit
Yeah, the freeway was definitely our eastern boundary. Our home turf was basically defined by major roads that quartered the town, and our quadrant was fair game. But sometimes you'd meet up with other kids along the boundary who knew about some cool tree fort in a eucalyptus grove a few blocks over and you'd range outside of that to check it out.
jdsmith575@reddit
My parents knew where I was headed, but a mile to my friends house alone, another mile to Putt Putt with him, and a mile home by myself on a main road felt like a huge distance as a kid. It looks like nothing on a map today but my kids will never get to experience it.
Ruenin@reddit
I have vivid memories of being able to go pretty much wherever I wanted in for or bike by the age of 9. Granted, I grew up in a town of 14k people, but still. I could cover a lot of ground in a day.
js4873@reddit
Yeah no. Not my experience at all in fact my GRANDPARENTS said the same thing about my generation that boomers say about our kids
js4873@reddit
Yeah no. Not my experience at all in fact my GRANDPARENTS said the same thing about my generation that boomers say about our kids
Itsamodmodmodwhirld@reddit
I grew up in the 70’s and early 80’s. It’s 💯 true.
Squi5hma110w@reddit
I just saw an article about a parent getting arrested for letting their 11 year old walk one mile alone. At 11 my friends and I would walk to the forest 3 miles away where skinheads graffiti trees and a dead body was found one time.
I feel like there's an appropriate balance between those two 😂
darxide23@reddit
I mentioned to my sisters that our mom would be doing 50 to life if letting your 11 year old walk a mile away from home was a real crime. I never knew where I was going to end up from day to day. In my own backyard or 6 miles from home in a creek catching crayfish with a group of older kids that I'd never met until that afternoon. Flip a coin.
SketchTeno@reddit
Had some classmates in middle school find a dead guy in the snow at a park. Apparently they threw snowballs at them before deciding they should go find someone to tell.
GoramReaver@reddit (OP)
lol so you and your friends pretty much lived the Stand By Me movie
Squi5hma110w@reddit
Didn't we all?
GoramReaver@reddit (OP)
I was more into the Goonies-life, looking for pirate booty!
layze23@reddit
No matter how young we are or old we get, we're all always looking for that booty
Coyote_Roadrunna@reddit
Hope you never ran into Sloth or Mama Fratelli during your quests.
RocketRaccoon666@reddit
We all lived Stand By Me and The Goonies
madsci@reddit
We had a Stand By Me corpse and it was only a couple hundred yards from houses. Supposedly kids knew about it for a month before it was reported. I was an Explorer on the search and rescue team and was the best with the metal detector so I got to spend the whole weekend searching that eucalyptus grove for a murder weapon. I'll never forget the mixed smell of eucalyptus and decomposing body.
I'd have been about 17 at the time. It amazes me how much the sheriff's department let us do as teenagers back then.
tubagoat@reddit
The parents didn't let him. He just decided on his own.
Wild_Manufacturer555@reddit
I wasn’t alone but my mom let my brother and I I think I was 10 and he was 13 ride our bikes two or three miles to the nearest grocery store. We ride our bikes everywhere.
ThisElder_Millennial@reddit
And that's why we'd arm ourselves with pellet guns.
cmgww@reddit
Yeah I read that too. And the fact that they wanted the mom to agree to have the son wear a GPS tracker was absolutely ridiculous as well. I’m glad she’s trying to fight it. She isn’t a drug addict or a negligent parent, some “Karen” called it in because they have nothing better to do. And it wasn’t even in a bad part of a rough city, it was in like rural Georgia. Just stupid if you ask me.
jstnpotthoff@reddit
This happens all the time, and often fighting it doesn't help. This can absolutely ruin both the mother's and that child's lives.
sidurisadvice@reddit
Yeah, I would like to ask the Fannin County Sheriff's Department just how badly they've let crime spin out of control in their corner of Bumfuck Nowhereseville that a tween can't walk around unaccompanied by an adult in broad daylight.
jstnpotthoff@reddit
Sadly, this happens all the time and it often has nothing to do with actual crime.
Michellehas2ls@reddit
In the 80s at 11, I had my own babysitting business with homemade business cards. This world is too delicate now!
wpmullen@reddit
I rode my bike everywhere. After 7th grade I never saw my parents unless I had a football game or something. I stayed driving at 15 and I was gone. I am in therapy BTW
StayBullGenius@reddit
At 11 I was riding my bike 10+ miles regularly
Infinite-Variation19@reddit
we went wherever we wanted. just be home when the street lights were on. they had an entire commercial come on at 10pm for parents. Do you know where your children are?
Infinite-Variation19@reddit
https://youtu.be/4ukDR6odGtM?feature=shared
-----_____---___-_@reddit
unchecked, unchallenged…
Chewiedozier567@reddit
I wasn’t completely feral as a kid in the 80s and 90s, but as long as an adult was close by, it was fine. But I lived on a farm in a rural area, so we usually just played football in the old cow pasture by the house or went swimming in the summer. My brother and I would take our beagle squirrel and rabbit hunting, but our dad was always with us, so the 4 of us would march around the fields and woods on Saturdays in the fall.
fgsgeneg@reddit
During the summer break I left the house after breakfast and often didn't return until after dark.
It's a crime what they do to kids these days.
Peaceoorwar@reddit
Oh man summers were an adventure
Stunning_Policy4743@reddit
We stopped this because we realized that sexual predators were benefiting from the children's neglect.
pippopozzato@reddit
When I was 7 years old on vacation with my father in a small village in northern Italy alone I would walk to the grocery store half a mile there, half a mile back to get stuff for breakfast pretty much every day for 2 weeks.
Proud_Cauliflower400@reddit
I mean, I grew up rural. We kids didn't have regular rides to friends houses, usually miles away, parents back then either didn't know where we were or didn't care 😂 bikes were the mode of transportation. Maybe it was the things we did without adult supervision but there's no way in hell I'd let my kids do anything my parents let me do. There used to be a community that we all knew each other to a certain extent and pedophiles and delinquents were handled in house and made sure they weren't welcome in the community. The village took care of the villagers. I still live here, but I don't know my neighbors more than a few houses down. The rural school got shut down, most of the kids that grew up moved away and there's just not kids around anymore, the school got shut down and the sense of community died out. The way of the world I suppose. It's us kids fault for not carrying it on I guess. Can't fault any of the kids I knew growing up for getting out and moving on with their lives. Their parents moved away or passed on and new folks moved in, but dang did I miss not having that connection with others as my kids have grown up.
sflogicninja@reddit
100%
We were left to our own devices and were wandering around outside until the streetlights came on, then our moms would yell our names for us to come to dinner. You had to be within the yelling radius or you were in big trouble.
Quixotegut@reddit
Yep.
You could roam pretty freely back in the day.
Halloween used to go to 10-11pm and you could walk with your friends unwatched (parents were usually at a nearby party).
NewspaperQuiet3159@reddit
Yup , we sure did.
DryDesertHeat@reddit
I was free to roam in a foreign country when I was 12.
I'm American, but we were living in southern Germany in the early 70s and the countryside was my playground.
BotGirlFall@reddit
I pretty much had zero adult supervision from after breakfast to dinner time in the summer. We just roamed the woods around my grandmas farm. My cousins and I had all these secret meet up spots so we could ditch my little brother and then meet up after we lost him
Striking-Access-236@reddit
Went walking to school by myself since 4 y.o., crossing a big road with cars…we had a rope through the mailbox you could pull that opened the door from the outside so we could let ourselves in, made our own sandwiches and looked after ourselves or went outside to play without any adult interacting with us…played outside on the streets, in the park or on the cemetery until it got dark…the laissez faire or ignorance of my parents’ attitude was great to grow up independent and resilient…
XFrankXGrimesX@reddit
Our neighborhood had multiple whistle parents who would blow an exceptionally loud one to call their kid home. Confusing but at some point everyone figured out whose was whose. I know some other neighborhoods had cowbell parents.
Adventurous_Pay_5994@reddit
I was one of those dinner bell kids. We lived beside a big forest that was a couple hundred acres. Ypu could hear the bell from far away. When it rang we had 15 minutes till dinner. My forest friends usually came over to eat too.
santoslhalperjr@reddit
We had a bell too. It was just a regular bell that my dad attached to our back porch. My mom would ring it to call us for dinner. She wasn't a yeller.
Darkwaxellence@reddit
I had yelling distance. And my dad could yell pretty loud. That or when the streetlights came on.
Wild_Manufacturer555@reddit
That was my mom. Somehow we always heard her even if we were on the other side of the neighborhood
Burto72@reddit
I grew up in the 80's, and in the summer I would ride my bike to the park in the morning to play baseball all day. I'd usually come home for lunch, and then it was back to the park again. And I was right back out after dinner, usually until the streetlights came on. It was glorious.
dalafferty@reddit
Yep...My only rules were stay off the highway and be home by dark.
I_Try_Again@reddit
I’m not sure our parents had a choice. Once we were out the door there was no contact. We were also bored as fuck and had to go on adventures to stay sane.
maringue@reddit
On the weekends, my mom would push me out of the house and say "Be home by dark!"
Then we'd get into an argument about how it doesn't look that dark out when you're outside compared to being inside the fully lit house.
NonCorporealEntity@reddit
In grade 2 {87), living in North York (Toronto) I would leave my house with only a vague idea of where I was going. We spent a lot of time outside without any supervision. We got hurt, did dumb stuff, and had fun without parents hovering over us. We learned to be independent and take risks.
EnragedMoose@reddit
Yeah, we could go anywhere so long as we showed up for dinner.
Spider-1205@reddit
We were free range children lol
koei19@reddit
I guess that sounds better than "feral," lol
bitsy88@reddit
I prefer "feral". It conveys how likely a person is to get bitten if they put their hands too close to my face 😂
CountingCastles@reddit
Hey I take pride in having grown up feral
Spider-1205@reddit
😂😂
Dakkin4@reddit
In the 90s we ran free. Had to check in a couple times a day and had to be home by dinner. Other than that we went and did whatever we wanted.
Flux_My_Capacitor@reddit
Parenthood must suck more nowadays. I mean our parents must have loved having more freedom themselves. This is something todays parents won’t understand
Flux_My_Capacitor@reddit
I hope the lightbulb goes on as to how much better our lives were because of this.
Then again, you don’t know what you don’t know and they’ll never know what they missed.
uberallez@reddit
We had "boundaries", my mom basically set a Radius that she theoretically could still hear us scream if there was trouble, and until we were about 10, we had to stay in that area. But after ten, we could walk to the 7-11 that was 2 miles away.
SBG4LIFE80@reddit
I was off in the woods all day when I was a kid in the 90s
PhotographStrict9964@reddit
80s and early 90s I lived in the woods behind our house. If I stayed the weekend with my grandparents, weather permitting, I was playing under the bridge in the creek a few blocks from their house. Rode my bike to the gas station a mile from our house nearly every day…until I got hit by a car…but that was my own dumbass fault…
This_Fkn_Guy_@reddit
NicWester@reddit
It's weird because we grew up with Stranger Danger and a constant atmosphere of "Satanic cults will kidnap you and throw you in a van" but also none of that happened and we all turned out okay. But now that we're having kids of our own we're not letting them do the same stuff? What's up with that?
Gubernaculator@reddit
100%.
Tuffwith2Fs@reddit
I remember my parents letting me ride my bike, by myself, around the block and along/across the train tracks. At six years old! In the shitty part of town! How i didn't wind up on a milk carton is a mystery.
beebs44@reddit
It's 10PM, DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR KIDS ARE?
🤣🤣🤣
kingj7282@reddit
Yeah, we were out there on adventures.
JustJBong@reddit
Seriously once I turned like 13 my parents were like, meh “Did you eat something even slightly nutritious? Went to school? Ok home by 11, don’t call us if you get arrested doing something stupid.” I was the youngest of five though and my older siblings were definitely a handful.
lavasca@reddit
I never was feral.
I was a surprise retirement baby after decades of my parents not being able to conceive.
Also, my parents remember OG Jim Crow and were terrified I’d get hate crimed out wandering by myself.
Mooseandagoose@reddit
We lived an abbreviated version of the free range 80s kids. From 89-93, We were expected to do whatever, outside the house on weekend but if we were leaving the street, our parents required info.
However, our neighbors house was absolute free reign. We could hang out in their yard, basement, use allll their sports stuff and no one cared. Unless we were leaving the street.
I could ride my bike to a local deli, alone at 9. To post rd (a mile away) to buy music and makeup at Sam goody and brooks drugs at 10. Babysat as soon as legally allowed at 11. Mostly on my bike.
Nikki10021982@reddit
We did before my friend was kidnapped at age 10. (1992) It got a little less free after that.
Deedeelite@reddit
Yes. My best friend and I would walk all over town by ourselves when we were 9 or 10.
There is an overpass by my house but it was just a big hill of dirt when I was a kid, right off of a highway, and all the kids in the area would go dirt sledding on it without an adult in sight. We could have sledded right in to a very busy 6 lane highway but it didn't seem to be a concern for anyone back then.
It was fun though.
rebleed@reddit
Yes, and everyone in this thread made it. Survivorship bias at work, lol.
KebertXela87@reddit
I was all over the city on my bike. I had specific times when I had to be home to "check in" then back out to do whatever.
KittySwipedFirst@reddit
Walked around most of the town I lived in by myself. Basically the two mile radius around our place. The downtown was only a mile away. I was 12, mid-90s.
SuperLory@reddit
There was a lot more trust laid upon ourselves. I had to be home by 7.30pm and you rest assured that mostly it was 7.29 rather than 7.31.
What happened from 4pm when i waved bye to mum or dad (in the stints from diff works they were home or I'd be home alone also, my sister 6 years my junior was with granma) to 7.30pm only me and my mates know.
EastTXJosh@reddit
I grew up in a small town (less than 10,000 people), so I’m sure it’s a little different, my friends and I rode our bikes throughout town. We lived about 2 blocks from my dad’s office and about a half a mile from the dress shop my mom owned. I would ride my bicycle to both places of work and to the local baseball card shop, video store, and downtown restaurants.
mundoid@reddit
Allow? It was more like "get out of the house and dont cone back until the street lights come on" There wasn't a street, drain, tree, park or abandoned house within 10kms of my house that I hadn't explored thoroughly by the time I was in high school. Did I do stupid shit? You bet. Did I get chased by adults? Sometimes. Did I get hurt? Yeah occasionally. Was it an awesome childhood? Fuck yes.
swinging-in-the-rain@reddit
Oh, we terrorized the neighborhood. But all in good spirits.
humanist-misanthrope@reddit
I remember my mom would watch my brother and I - 5 and 10 years old respectively- cross the 4 lane road. Then we’d walk down to the Circle K about a 1/4 mile away and buy candy. Then we’d walk back and cross the same 4 lane road on our own. Hell, there was a local pizza shop in the same strip mall as Circle K and she’d let me go over there to play the Galaga Arcade game before walking back with a pizza for dinner.
proudmaryjane@reddit
80s & 90s kid chiming in - they let us roam around in the 90s too
repo_code@reddit
I roamed, but rarely encountered other kids.
Other kids' parents had heard of Etan Patz by then, but my parents were blessedly unaware.
TheDevil-YouKnow@reddit
We started so many fires, and blew so much shit up. Run and hide in the bayous. Built forts, wage war, burn them down. Nobody even batted an eye.
My children wouldn't be able to fathom my upbringing. It's Stranger in a Strange Land territory.
SuperDerpfake@reddit
My friends and I used to wander the swamp forests of South Carolina day after day! When It got dark we came home and my parents just asked me what I did all day. We worked on the fort!
NovelPepper8443@reddit
There was a pack of roving kids on my street when I was a kid. You just traveled with that group ie rode bikes, swam, climbed trees, went to 7-11, played city block wide hide and seek. No one knew where their kids were during the summer. I also walked a mile to the library by myself when I was about 11 or 12 all of the time.
tubagoat@reddit
I was semi feral from May - September until I hit high school.
JamesMattDillon@reddit
Yup, I'd be gone for hours
Main-Ad3654@reddit
Wasn’t there some sort of PSA which was TV at around 10:00 PM asking parents if they know where their kids are?
xt0rt@reddit
"Allow" lmoa! "Force" most of the time, yes.
Biguitarnerd@reddit
I just had a rule to be home by dark. Where I went before dark was irrelevant really.
We mostly stuck close to home because we knew we had the freedom to go wherever anyway and home was more convenient but we did ride our bikes to the city lakes from time to time which was about 10 miles from my street for the bike trails they had there which we thought were cool, even though we had no problem riding on the street to get there.
We also spent a lot of time within a range of a few miles from our street. We just knew if we weren’t home by dark we had explaining to do and no one wanted that.
Things I found randomly as a kid:
A jousting tournament with people in full armor on horses at a city park.
Kids having a ninja turtle style battle where I joined in with confidence holding a mop stick proclaiming myself to be Donatello and got my ass kicked by a kid who had taken some martial arts and actually knew what he was doing. I was pretty good at spinning it though.
A deposit of florescent lights in a wooded area which we used as light sabers in explosive battles. (Yes I know that was a bad idea now)
Attempting to explore the sewers only to be chased away by a fucking horde of roaches… like thousands.
Some rickety old bleachers we used to climb and fly kites off of until the cops made us leave because they were unsafe. We argued with the cops trying to plead our case and no one got in trouble for trespassing and I guess it never even occurred to the cops that they should tell our parents. Again in hindsight they were right, we shouldn’t have been up there, they were half rotten.
I feel like my kids missed out. I genuinely tried to give them freedom, not as much as I had but more than a lot of parents I know but honestly after they reach a certain age they just didn’t have the wanderlust we did. Too many other things to do I guess.
Bait_and_Swatch@reddit
Was definitely a free range child. I remember having to go to summer school, but the closest summer bus stop was roughly 2 miles away. My mother would drop us off in the morning, but we’d walk back home in the afternoons.
MoveToPuntaGorda@reddit
Yes. We roamed if wanted to.
mrmadchef@reddit
🎵Roam around the world🎶
Dimebag0352@reddit
On bikes with no helmets. If someone didn’t have their bike, they sat on the handlebars or stood on pegs on the wheels. We used to ride on the side of a two lane road with a speed limit of 45 MPH.
kalitarios@reddit
Front pegs or back pegs?
schoolisuncool@reddit
Definitely the back for me. The front messes with the balance lol
NubiaMain@reddit
Yes we did
_undercover_brotha@reddit
I was out for dinner with my parents a week ago and the topic of kids leaving home came up. Dad said, “from about 14 onwards we never saw you, off on your skateboard all weekend all over town. Home Sunday night.”
As a young’un I was biking all over town as well with my mates.
It’s how it was.
Minute-Menu-9295@reddit
Bro it wasn't just the 80's. I roamed all over metro Detroit in the early 90's through the 2000's when I graduated. Growing up pre-internet was something I wish kids nowadays had a chance to experience. Mom would feed you breakfast, if she was home, and then kick you OUT of the house so she could watch her shows. Tell you not to come home unless you were hurt or the street lights were on. You would have to fend for yourself for food and snacks.
It was an amazing time to be alive. I'm 39 and have so many wonderful memories of hanging out with friends in the woods, going on bike rides, climbing onto the roof of the schools, playing basketball, setting stuff on fire. It sounds like the stuff you see in the movies but, was 100% the life we lived.
fakesaucisse@reddit
One thing I love about the town I recently moved to is the kids live like we did as kids. They walk to school on their own, ride bikes around town on their own, go to the park on their own. I see groups of kids just hanging out on corners and huddling about whatever they're going to get up to. The locals call them feral in a mostly endearing way.
Lazy_Match724@reddit
Bro it was me. My bike. My friends. We had till sun came down. I defied my stepfather one night and stay out until 10. When i snuck in i thought i was good. I tiptoed into my room and shut the door.. my stepdad was behind that door with a belt and I didn’t do that again😅
LooksLikeAWookie@reddit
I honestly don't know if my mom comprehended how much of our city my friends and I would roam
Last-Presentation-11@reddit
As an 8 year old in the 90’s I lived in a subdivision that was mostly still under construction. My friend and I would go play in partially completed houses, our parents had no idea where we were. Thinking back, it was a good time but we were lucky one of us didn’t get seriously injured
myfrigginagates@reddit
I grew up mostly in the '70s graduated HS in '80. As a kid I would eat cereal, watch Bugs Bunny/Road Runner hour and hit the door on a mission. Sometimes I came home for lunch, other times I ate at friends' houses. Mom would see me when I returned in the afternoon around 4-5p to clean up for supper. It was awesome!
kalitarios@reddit
born 77, growing up I had to be home by dark, but I had to be up and ready for school by the time the bus arrived otherwise I had to ride my bike to school or get locked out of the house. Sounds fun until you realize how boring it was all alone in an empty neighborhood all day. only so much fishing or turtle hunting to do.
when I got a bit older around 13-ish, I could take whatever bus home I wanted as long as I let my mother know where I was by calling her once I got to where I was going, and when they should come and get me. If I wanted to eat at someone else's house, I would just have to let them know.
If I came home, I had to do my homework for an hour or until it was done, then was expected to go outside until either dinner if I wanted it or dark. My rough "bedtime" was to be home no later than 9pm but it was loosely structured around my report card.
On the weekends it was basically get up, watch cartoons and have breakfast, help dad with whatever projects he needed and do the laundry, garbage and chores then I was free to do whatever I wanted until 10pm on the weekends. Nobody cared WHERE we were but as long as we were checking in and not alone, was largely not a concern to the adults.
If we took guns out and were shooting shit in the woods, people got curious, but nobody really cared if we took a shotgun out behind the houses to a river and shot cans with it. We were like 13 shooting rifles and shotguns. Nobody gave a shit about that, really.
The kids where I grew up governed themselves; we learned how to act socially by the school of hard knocks. run your mouth? Got punched. Learned not to do that again. We squared things up pretty quick. If someone got caught doing something dumb like stealing or cheating, we sorted it out within a day or so. You answered the bell, but after that you picked yourself up and moved on. Vary rarely did I see things NOT resolve themselves. One kid put someone in a wheelchair stealing their parent's car and crashed it, putting the other guy in the front seat in the hospital and broke his back. One of the injured kid's friends beat the shit out of the guy driving and we never saw the driver again. I think his parents moved. A few cheating girls stopped coming around, but other than that nothing major.
Even at parties in the mid 90s (the bigger house ones) people were pretty chill. You would hear about kids stealing shit or breaking stuff in the house and it would eventually get sorted out. cops got called once or twice for the house being robbed, but the jewelry was returned after a few beatings were handed out after the word got out of who did it.
I grew up as a single child, so in addition to all this stuff, I also spent a LOT of time alone, but I like it that way. I'm very at peace alone by myself. Not always, but it's my go-to safe place when I'm having any type of existential crisis.
Tonrunner101@reddit
Very freely. Just had time restrictions
EatLard@reddit
Pretty much rode my bike wherever after about age 8. Neighborhood friends and I would spend most of the summer either catching frogs and snakes in the undeveloped part of the neighborhood or riding over to the public pool to cool off. In winter, we built snow ramps and had contests to see who could catch the most air on one of those plastic saucer sleds.
Ezypeezylemonsqueezy@reddit
Adult me would actually be a little scared to hang out with my younger self 😂
MartialBob@reddit
It's confirmation bias. We're so bombarded by the news through tv and social media that events that are actually kind of rare feel more common.
Ok_Egg_2665@reddit
I saw my parents so little I actually asked them if they lived in the same house as me.
giraffemoo@reddit
I remember racing home because I lost track of time and the street lights were already on and it was getting dark. I pedaled faster than I ever pedaled in my life. I burst in the door saying "It's okay I am here!". They didn't even know that I was gone. I think I was around 10 or 12.
lieutenantLT@reddit
It was real. I seent it,
lifeat24fps@reddit
Not exactly. I wasn’t allowed to cross the street and play in the playground across the street from my house until I was at least 10-11 years old.
UpkeepUnicorn@reddit
That was my everyday life