Climbing trees as if you were Tarzan himself, riding your bike without even considering wearing a helmet, or turning an abandoned building into a playground—these are just a few examples of things kids do—or used to do back in the day, at least—that would make the hairs on parents’ necks stand up. (Though, these were arguably also some of the best childhood memories to some.)
Members of the ‘Ask Old People’ community recently shared what it is that they used to do that would make parents sick with worry nowadays. Redditor Ron, going by the moniker ‘ChillwithRon’ on the platform, started a thread about it and fellow netizens had plenty of stories to share. If you’re curious to see what adventures they would embark on as children, scroll down to find their answers on the list below.
Below you will also find Bored Panda’s interviews with the OP himself, as well as with the Professor and Department Head at the Department of Human Development & Family Studies at Colorado State University, Dr. Julie Braungart-Rieker, who was kind enough to answer a few of our questions about the importance of childhood adventures.
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In an interview with Bored Panda, the user who started the thread, Ron, shared that he often finds himself reminiscing about his childhood in the ‘70s and noticing how drastically things have changed. “The carefree and adventurous spirit of those days seems so distant now, and I was curious to see if others shared similar memories,” he said, explaining the reason behind the question posed to the online community.
“I wanted to spark a conversation about the stark contrast between the freedom we had as kids and the more cautious approach to parenting today.”
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The freedom kids have, or used to have, allows them to explore the unknown, which, according to Dr. Julie Braungart-Rieker, is an important part of kids’ development.
“There is an interesting balance between fear and excitement when it comes to facing something new or challenging. When children encounter something novel that they haven’t seen or done before—stumble upon a squiggly salamander in the mud, for example—they can feel a little unsure about this creature and they can be curious about it: ‘What is it? Can I catch it and hold it? Will it hurt me?’ So they might be drawn to something like this because it’s exciting,” she explained.
“Being curious about new situations like this one is very instinctual and promotes learning in children. Learning by interacting with the environment directly is a great way for kids to figure things out. In this example, they might learn that this salamander is squirmy, slimy, colorful, muddy, doesn’t bite, and is really fast despite its small size when it runs away. If a child was told the characteristics of a salamander by someone else, like a parent or a teacher, or saw it in a video, they just wouldn’t experience the same excitement because children aren’t interacting directly with the novel creature.”
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The redditor said he was pleasantly surprised by the variety and depth of the responses. “It was incredible to see how many people had similar experiences and memories.”
But what surprised him the most was the universal nature of some of the activities, like playing outside unsupervised for hours, riding bikes without helmets, or engaging in risky games. “It highlighted how much childhood norms have shifted over the decades,” he said, adding that he was struck by some of the more extreme examples of freedom and risk-taking that people shared, which would be unthinkable today.
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Discussing the activities of today’s children, Dr. Braungart-Rieker also suggested that it does seem that children get less opportunity to explore on their own currently than in the past.
“To my knowledge, we don’t have any solid data or research to show this is the case, but it’s easier to keep track of children now with technology than it was in the past, as now we have cameras, apps on phones, and similar means,” she said. “News about terrible things happening to children is also more readily available now which can fuel parents’ fear and anxiety that something bad will happen to their children.”
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Even though nowadays making sure that children are safe is arguably easier than it was back in the day, the expert recommended trying to find a balance between that and allowing children to explore on their own (in an environment that is likely to be very safe).
“Getting dirty, falling down, picking up gross things in the mud might be messy but they can be fun to children and it allows them to learn about the world and themselves. If nature and other areas of novelty are not readily accessible to families, they might think about bringing something home that is unusual and even messy to allow their children to explore it and learn more about it.
“Even something as simple as baking something new gives kids an opportunity to get into the ingredients, feel them, measure or weigh them, and mix things which can get messy, stick whatever they made in the oven and see what happens to this mixture after baking,” she added. “That can be exciting to kids because they interact with the ingredients and create something new from them. Parents can be there to assist and watch their kids have fun with this situation.”
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Grew up in a hollow We spent one early spring cutting down trees with axes and buck saws and dragged them down to the creek We spent late Spring building a dam in the creek at the base of a small waterfall to make a swimming hole We spent the Summer at our swimming hole. Built a club house, made a rope swing and a fire pit. Would camp out there. Swim all night. Cook hot dogs on the fire We were around 11 years old.
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The OP seconded the idea that part of the reason for change between childhood then vs childhood now is parents’ sense of safety and the use of technology.
“The biggest change, in my opinion, is the level of parental supervision and the general sense of safety and freedom. When I was a child, it was normal for kids to roam the neighborhood, explore, and find their own fun without constant adult oversight. Today, there’s a much stronger focus on safety and structured activities,” Ron said.
“Technology has also significantly changed childhood, with kids spending more time indoors on screens rather than playing outside. Additionally, societal attitudes toward parenting and child safety have become much more cautious, influenced by a heightened awareness of potential dangers.”
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“Parents naturally want to protect their children, which is a good instinct. But there’s a balance between allowing your child to explore new situations while keeping them safe,” Prof. Braungart-Rieker emphasized. “Obviously, if a small child were to approach something dangerous like the edge of a raging river, the parent would want to make sure that any exploration would be done in a safe way: ‘Don’t get in that river because the rapids are too fast right now but what else could we explore? Maybe there’s a salamander under a rock near the river?’”
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Ron shared that some of his fondest memories were playing outside with his friends until the streetlights came on, building forts out of cardboard, and going on adventures in the woods or local parks.
“I loved riding my bike everywhere and experiencing a sense of freedom that felt boundless,” he added. “We often played games that we invented, which involved a lot of imagination and creativity. I also cherished family road trips, even if we didn’t wear seatbelts all the time, as they were a source of great stories and bonding moments. These experiences were a significant part of my childhood, fostering independence and a love for the outdoors.”
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“I think it's important to remember that while some of the things we did as kids might seem reckless by today’s standards, they also contributed to our sense of independence and resilience,” Ron said.
“However, it's also crucial to strike a balance between safety and freedom for children today. Encouraging outdoor play and creativity while being mindful of modern-day risks can help create a well-rounded and fulfilling childhood experience. It’s fascinating to see how societal norms evolve, and conversations like this can help us appreciate the past while navigating the present.”
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I hitchhiked everywhere I went from 1974 - 1984. Lots of serial k*llers were active and out there at the time. I am convinced that God hand His hand over me (still does!).
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Unsupervised play deep in the woods. It was glorious.Anyone remember the scalding hot metal playgrounds in the summer, as kids?Played with my friends on construction sites after the workers were gone.
From about age 8-10, they built a bunch of new homes in my neighborhood. We had so much fun playing in peoples houses when they were just wooden frames!Riding in the bed of a pickup truck.Going to the public pool all day with a couple of my friends, minus any adults. We’d either ride our bikes or one of the moms would drop us off there at opening time and then pick us up late that afternoon at a pre-arranged time.
We all somehow survived it.Walked to the store by myself at 9 years old to get some items for my mom.
My friends and I made an Evil Knievel kind of ramp over a creek that ran in the back of our houses. We then tried jumping it on our bikes. No helmets of course. I was maybe 11 or 12.I grew up in a small town in Indiana. My sisters were 7 and 10 years older than me, and mom's rule was they couldn't leave me alone at home, so I tagged along with them and their boyfriends all the time.
Indiana is littered with abandoned quarries, and they're the best swimming holes you can find.
10 to 100 acres big, 200 to 500 feet deep, or more. They'd fill with rainwater over the years, and with no current, they would just warm in the summer sun to about 85 degrees or more.
However. Below 15' or so, the water was about 58 degrees year-round.
While the boyfriends were 17-21 or so, I was 10/11.
And when the boys climbed up the walls and jumped into the water, I would follow.
You kept your shoes on, and dropped feet-first into the warm water, but you would zip down to 30' or more instantly. The cold shock would zip up your body and take your breath away, then it's time to struggle back to the surface. Sometimes, you'd run out of air about 2 or 3 feet down, and it's the most terrible feeling to expend your last bit of energy to cover that distance to sweet, sweet air.
I went back to visit many years later and found that we were routinely jumping from 60 and 70 feet to the water.
That was 50 years ago, and I can see it and smell it like it was yesterday. Plunging past the thermocline into freezing water in the summer is something that never leaves you.
And I'm pretty sure it was never Mom Approved^(TM).Being left home alone & entertaining myself.Delivering newspapers and collecting the money.
11-15 year olds waking up at 430-5am daily. Sitting on a corner (by themselves sometimes) and riding a bike around the neighborhood trying to throw news papers onto peoples porches.
Then every two weeks, going to every house to collect the money. Sometimes carrying around 50-100 dollars around in a pouch. To top it off, it was considered ok to be welcomed into the houses during winter when collecting the money. We definitely had encounters with what we considered ‘weird’ people. Now they’d be considered creepy af.Babysitting younger kids at the age of 10. I guess I was responsible enough with my siblings that even neighbors would ask to hire me. Plus I'm male. Unheard of, especially nowadays.When I was in HS, I was really into high heels but had a long walk home. Random guys would stop and ask if I wanted a ride home. I’d jump right in with a smile. Nothing ever happened, but I would NeVER do that now or let my kids!!I used to run around corn fields as a kid playing chicken with combines. 95% sure they couldn’t even see me.
I should be dead, honestly.I lived on Guam about ten years after WWII and in certain areas ammunition had been unceremoniously dumped, other places where it had been left by the soldiers in the heat of battle.
Anyway we used to go looking for the ammunition, and then, here comes the fun part, when we found it, we disarmed it, cleared it up and added them to my collection.
I knew how to completely unload Japanese and American frag grenades, knee mortars, and shells below 40mm.
Every few weeks or months you would hear about kids trying to disarm bombs killing themselves. Never touched one.
I was eleven.My sister and I *regularly* crawled through the storm drain tunnel in our town (we had to hunch over a bit, but it was pretty big). At the halfway point there was a road with a bus stop overhead and a drainage hole. We’d stand under it and use vulgar language at people waiting for the bus. Then we’d continue to the end of the tunnel where we’d sit and smoke a cigarettes. ??♀️ (thank god neither of us got addicted, bit by a rat, or arrested).Sat in my dad's lap while he drove. From ages 2-6 would regularly sit on the arm rest between the seats in the front seat of the car (so I could see where we were going, obviously). Would push the lighter in (to heat it) in the car so mom could smoke while we drove around (pretty sure all the windows were up, too).We lived on a lake with channels that went on for miles through woods. I used to get on my bike and spend the day catching frogs, crawdads, turtles and snakes. Sometimes I would build a small fire and eat the crawdads and frogs. One time I found a poor snake who had a fishing hook and line caught in its mouth. I took it home and was using my dads pliers to get the hook out. He came up and snatched that snake up so fast and tossed him into the woods. I was like, "Im trying to save him!" He said "Thants a gaddam cotton mouth! You could of died!" Lol I was grounded for 2 weeks and had to read a book on snakes. Heh.I used to babysit, at the age of 13-17, for families I didn't know before that night. Yes, they were recommended by other parents, but quite often the first time I met the parents would be when they came to my house to pick me up. The dad - a 30something man previously unknown to me - would then drive me to their house, where I would meet the kids, and the parents would go out on their date or whatever. Then, at 11 or 12 at night, they would come home. The dad, quite likely already drunk, would then pay me and drive me home along narrow country roads.I rode in railroad boxcars. From my northern New Jersey town's railyard up into New York and back again. Running and jumping in was crazy stupid.My sister and I rode for hours home from vacation one time. We were sitting on lawn chairs in the back of our Dad’s truck….We used to go up in the hayloft of a neighbors barn and grab a rope and swing across the whole barn and fly thru the air into the hay pile on the other side. : 0. I remember trips to the amusement part - Cedar Point in Ohio - that was about an hour drive. The three of us boys would all clamber into the back of the station wagon and rough house away during the drive. Pushing shoving, rolling around in cargo area while dad smoked and mom yelled at us to simmer down .
No seat belts, second had smoke wafting back, windows open. Ah the joys of being a young child in the 60's! And here I am, as are my brothers, alive and well in our 60's!There was a swimming hole near our Alabama home in a creek. In order to use the hole, you had to throw a couple of large rocks into it. This caused the water moccasins to run out of the water and into the woods. We would then swim here. Crazy, I know.Oh God. Don't come for me. I know I'd never be able to run for public office because of this.
I played a character in a play who was supposed to be black. I am not black. So... Yeah.
At the time my black friends loved it, we all thought it was hilarious, they and took me under their wing to teach me things. It was a different world.We made homemade fireworks..I fell out of a tall tree and broke my leg and crawled home. Just a block fortunately. But I was embarrassed that I fell (I was way too high up and a branch gave way) so I crawled in my room and lay on the floor and didn’t tell anyone. My younger sister was the only one home and she wasn’t paying attention (we were 9 and 5 and used to get left home alone all the time). Hours later my mom came home and I didn’t tell her and she only figured it out because I wouldn’t get up to get into bed. She was so pissed she made me wait till the next day to see a doctor rather than spend the night at the ER. I slept most of that afternoon and might have had a concussion too. Never got checked for anything but the leg.
Do kids still get to climb trees? I did it obsessively and was mostly very careful and good at it. I don’t know what possessed me to be an idiot that day. The temptation to see further I guess.This was not a regular occurrence for me, but when I visited a family in rural Tennessee a group of kids got together after dark, formed two groups, and shot bottle rockets across the field at each other as long as they lasted.Besides the things you mentioned, I also built model rockets. Also, tricks off the high dive at the local swimming pool. These days public pools don’t even have diving boards, let alone high dives.Yippoing Grew up in northwestern Pennsylvania, on the shores of Lake Erie. Think “lake effect” snow. At least 100 inches a season. We would go out at night and wait for a car to come by, run to the back and grab the bumper and get pulled as far as we could without falling off. Our parents had no idea, my mom blanched visibly when we told her about it just several years ago, and we had done this about 35 years ago. My stupid cousin lost my best mittens this way ?.Running after the "smoke truck" that sprayed insecticide in our neighborhood.Bottle rocket wars with my friends. It's a wonder we didn't put an eye out.I was born in 1965. We lived on a very busy Main St in small town Indiana. When I was 4/5/6 years old, if it rained - my grandparents would let me put my bathing suit on and go stand on the sidewalk, so I was sprayed when cars drove through the puddles passing the house.I’ve already said this once, but as young teen girls, we would cross a huge empty lot in order to get to the mall. Most of the time there was a guy riding his bicycle in the lot with his d**k hanging out. Back and forth. Back and forth. We told our mothers who just said not to look at him and he won’t bother you. They never called the police or stopped us from taking the shortcut. God only knows what could have happened to any of us, especially when we walked alone.My best friend and I were spit sisters. You each spit into your hand, then rubbed and shook each other's hand. Less cleanup than the blood brothers' pledge.
Walking solo to school over a mile away, in blizzard conditions. Riding bikes for miles, no helmet, no water, over all sorts of roads, plus going to the park by yourself -- with no one knowing truly your whereabouts.
Climbing really old trees to the very, very top, often requiring an older sibling to figure out how to get you down.
Watching the stars at night after climbing out on a precarious roof.
Skipping school to go fishing along a major river.
Might not be "horrifying," but not as many kids today had our freedom to try.Buying cigarettes at age 8 (for my mom who had provided a note), riding in the back of pickup truck on highway, no seatbelts, driving at age 10 (with dad in passenger seat) on country roads, hitchhiking with my dad after our car broke down, and my car seat as a baby was a laundry basket on the floor of the car.I stole cigarettes from my mom and got caught in 6th grade. It was a big deal and I felt horrendously guilty, even though my mom was pretty nice about it.
My brother and his friends started a fire from having match fights, you know where you light the match and fling at each other at the same time? They barely successfully stomped it out.
I told a neighbor girl my dog would bite her if she pushed me, she pushed me and my dog bit her.
We drew up a very elaborate battle plan in order to ambush by dirt clod a neighborhood kid who hated getting dirty.
I walked my bike up a very very steep mountain road repeatedly and rode my bike straight down the middle of the road, like an idiot. On a regular basis.
Made pancakes from pancake mix a neighbor threw away, and we ate the dough. More authentic than mud pies, and edible!Rock & Dirt Clod battles.For the most part, my parents kept me on a fairly tight leash, but one thing I never understood is why my parents thought it was okay to send me on foot to kindergarten without an adult. The trail started behind the barrier of a dead-end street, wound past a cornfield, then past an apartment complex before it took me to school. Today someone would call CPS for letting their 5 year old do something like that.
I was also allowed to explore a brushy area behind our house that had the remains of some old structures. I was 8 or 9. My friends and I also liked to explore the remains of an old trailer park. The mobile homes were long gone, but there was an uncovered, unfenced swimming pool that always contained dark, festering water, and I once nearly fell into a hole near there. My leg went all the way in and my friends had to grab my arms and pull me out. We continued playing.
Then again, this was an era when no one batted an eye about sending all of us kids to school during a tornado warning. I had nightmares for a bit after that experience, but I got over it and grew up to have no fear of storms, just a healthy respect for them.My family was among the first residents of the newly developed town/city I grew up in (moved there in 1964 as some of the first 3000 residents) and there were new houses being built all over including nearby through the 1970s. My sisters and I along with the other kids in the neighborhood would play in the houses before the "skin" was put on. heck even after the drywall was put on. These days I imagine if there was a new house being built they'd put a chain link fence around it to keep people out but not those days. There were nails and scrap pieces everywhere...we could have easily stepped on something that would send us to the doctor. Fortunately that didn't happen to us.
Once we were old enough (I think probably 8 years old) we (or maybe just me!) were allowed to pretty much roam at will through the town. I was into bird watching so would ride my bike or walk the distance to the marsh at the side of the bay with my binoculars and Peterson field guide and bird list and see if I could find any new species around. Yes, I was a nerd.
Also around 1974-75 our town started a bus system to the mall in the next city over (it went other places but that's where we wanted to go) it only cost 10 cents at the time. So I'd ride to the mall, hit up Sears for bridge mix or popcorn, slide down the slide at the children's shop/toy store, look through the albums at the record shop, and just hang out for some hours. It was great to get away from the house and family for awhile.
Also fireworks were legal at that time but they wouldn't allow kids under 18 to purchase them.
Had a friend who had a trampoline in their back yard along with a piece of a surplus army tank probably from WWII or Korea. We'd jump on the trampoline then get into the tank and rock it back and forth until we got nauseous. Of course these days if you have that stuff on your property your insurance company will cancel you.There was a medical clinic near our house. They would dump the test tubes full of blood into the big trashcan. We liked those glass tubes with stoppers so we pulled them out and washed out the tubes so we could play with them.My uncles used to scramble on top of the barn. It has a metal roof. They thought it was fun to slide down it and “fly”. Good thing kids bounce and the ground was soft.
I was a cute little girl with few friends. Often rode my bike down the back alleys. There were usually guys hanging out in their garages which faced the ally. I would stop and talk to them. In retrospect…that’s not a good idea. Cute little me was too friendly and curious.We had BB gun fights. Only 2 rules, no shooting anyone above the belly and if you had a pump up BB-pellet gun, no more than 2 pumps.
Think paint ball with BB guns.Delivering newspapers and collecting the money.
11-15 year olds waking up at 430-5am daily. Sitting on a corner (by themselves sometimes) and riding a bike around the neighborhood trying to throw newspapers onto peoples porches.
Then every two weeks, going to every house to collect the money. Sometimes carrying around 50-100 dollars around in a pouch. To top it off, it was considered ok to be welcomed into the houses during winter when collecting the money. We definitely had encounters with what we considered ‘weird’ people. Now they’d be considered creepy af.
I think about my own kids; telling them to wake up at 430AM 7 days a week and expecting them to perform well at school would just be irresponsible.How much time do you have?
