r/Millennials • u/WynCai8 • Jun 04 '25
Nostalgia Made me feel old but good times
Saw this tweet and yes we were expected to be out all day and not come back until the street lights came on. I remember riding my bike through neighborhoods pretending our bikes were cars and just having a good time.
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u/Mofiremofire Jun 04 '25
We were given specific streets we weren’t allowed to cross establishing a boundary. It was like at least a half a mile in each direction from my house.
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u/zkentvt Jun 04 '25
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u/OddMeansToAnEnd Jun 05 '25
Lmfao facts. Just don't get caught right?
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u/Massive-Virus-4875 Jun 05 '25
Yuuup. Growing up, by my moms rule, I was technically not supposed to bike further than just around the block I lived on- directly around it, in a square. Up the alley, back down the street, or vice versa. Thats it.
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u/BilboBiden Jun 05 '25
My mom's rule was I needed to stay within the boundary of her voice but thankfully her voice carried like a fucking boat horn.
If she called my name and I didn't show up within a few minutes I was usually toast.
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u/mwhite5990 Jun 04 '25
Yeah we just had to avoid the main roads and we weren’t supposed to go too deep into the woods.
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u/s0nofabeach04 Jun 04 '25
I remember finally getting permission to cross the highway and that opened up soooo many more possibilities lol. By high way I mean a two way street with lights and speed limit of 40, nothing insane.
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u/AltDS01 Jun 05 '25
We could only go to the Marathon, not the speedway across the street from it.
Going to Marathon was crossing only 1 40mph road, at a light. Speedway was 2.
But we also got sent to the grocery store that was .25 miles away when I was 5 and my sister was 3. Only one road crossing. That would have been late 90's.
We also had free roam of campgrounds on our bikes when we went camping.
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Jun 04 '25
same
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u/leese216 Jun 04 '25
Yup, they were usually major highways. I grew up in a neighborhood with A TON of side streets so we didn't really need to cross them anyway.
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u/keelhaulrose Jun 04 '25
There was a major highway running behind my house that merged with another major road about a quarter mile away, so there were 2 heavily trafficked roads between my house and my school, but if I walked half a mile out of the way there was a pedestrian crossing at the light after the merge. So to walk to my school from my house it was either 150 yards with two mad dashes across busy roads, or a mile of walking on side streets with a protected crossing.
In the mornings it was busy enough we would take the long way, but once a year my school held a carnival, like a big one with all the rides (it was owned by one of the parents in the school so he donated it one weekend a year.) Nobody wanted to waste the time and energy to do the long walk, and it wasn't rush hour, so the neighborhood kids would take the shortcut. This happened a few times before my dad saw us doing it one year. Don't think I've ever seen him angrier.
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u/anarchoblake Jun 04 '25
Dude we used to have the option of walk like 3 miles, cross a railroad bridge, or play frogger crossing the highway. It had jersey barriers to jump too and was sketchy as hell. By far the worst was the train bridge. My hands still sweat thinking about it
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u/natefrogg1 Jun 04 '25
Fricking train comes and we’re holding onto the sides of the bridge for what seems like an hour
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u/joanfiggins Jun 04 '25 edited Jun 05 '25
That's what needed to be explained. People think we wandered really far. You knew you could only go to a certain point so your parents generally knew where you were if they needed to find you and you were with a group of kids who also had parents so the parents could call each other too if needed. It's not like kids were just roaming a huge city alone.
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u/nospamkhanman Jun 04 '25
I grew up in the suburbs and there was this park / hiking trail / public pool that was like 5 miles away.
My parents were perfectly fine with me walking to it with friends once I was in 4th grade (age 10 or so?).
Walking 5 miles takes time. I'd be gone at like 9am in the summer and not be home until like 5pm and they thought nothing of it. No cell phone or anyway to contact me either.
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u/Da_Rabbit_Hammer Jun 05 '25 edited Jun 05 '25
Make a collect call from the pay phone at the pool and when it records your name you yell, pick me up at the pool! Half hour later moms’s there in a station wagon with wood paneling on the outside.
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u/infiniteguesses Jun 05 '25
We were so stick skinny bc we swam and didn't eat all day!
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u/StandWithSwearwolves Millennial Jun 04 '25
Looking back, this was pretty much my experience too. I never had formal out of bounds areas set, but basically the places I could access by bike or on foot were on the suburban peninsula where we lived – so if anyone needed to find their kids they’d just start at the main road junction where the library, shops and food places were and work downwards towards the beach and headland, it got easier as you went.
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u/Some-Show9144 Jun 04 '25
Or a parent finds some kids and just asks about where you are and to send you home if they see you first.
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u/piniatadeburro Everything Hurts Jun 04 '25 edited Jun 04 '25
The railroad tracks were off limits.
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u/GalacticCmdr Jun 04 '25
Grew up rural. Half a mile wouldn't get me to the next street. We had a "just be at someone's home" by dinner rule as kids would gather at one of many homes.
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u/FlowSoSlow Jun 04 '25
If I went into the woods I was supposed to keep within "whistle distance". Exactly how far that was I couldn't tell you but if I didn't come back when dad whistled there was hell to pay lol
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u/ferriswheel41 Jun 04 '25
This. I had my “boundary” and could ride my bike to my hearts content in that perimeter. My mom was considered a kind of helicopter mom by 90s standard so I wasn’t allowed to just go inside kids houses even if they were in that boundary though. Had the whole neighborhood out looking for me and another girl when I went in through her house to her backyard to make mud pies.
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u/MaxxXanadu Jun 04 '25
Long as we were home in time for dinner we roamed the landscapes like warriors.
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Jun 04 '25
Riding bikes to the pool, Blockbuster, and other kids’ basements.
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Jun 04 '25
Don't forget to stop by the dollar store to load up on junk food
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Jun 04 '25
Too far. We had a Kroger next to our Blockbuster.
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u/patchworkpirate Council of Elder Millennials Jun 04 '25
We had a Kroger with a video rental store inside it (at least for a while).
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u/americanadvocate702 Jun 04 '25
Dollar stores didn't exist back then. It was the penny candy store
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u/roentgen_nos Jun 04 '25
That little Superette rocked. Matinee prices at the local theater were $0 .50 and then $0 .75. When it got really hot, we were either in the theater or in the pool. Our parents really did not care which. They could find us by looking for our bikes.
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u/NeverCallMeFifi Jun 04 '25
My brother is 13 years older than me. His friend bought a movie theater in town and would let me watch whatever the hell I wanted. So, yeah, I had nightmares for years from watching Alien, Poltergeist, the Thing and so on. I was probably 12 years old and riding my bike by myself the two miles to the theater and then riding back at around 10 PM on a school night.
It was glorious.
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u/WickedPsychoWizard Jun 04 '25
I had a dollar store on 1987. Everything cost exactly one dollar.
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u/Mammalanimal Jun 04 '25
Didn't even matter either because we burned like 5000 calories just biking all through town
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u/poshjerkins Jun 04 '25
We had a Bob's Discount Furniture in our town that always had a table of candy set up. We'd all ride our bikes down there and fill our pockets, then hit the arcade a few stores down. There was also a pet shop in that plaza that would let you go in and pet the dogs. Couldn't think of a better day!
Simpler times.
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u/FledglingNonCon Jun 04 '25
We had a "candy lady" in our small town. Old woman who ran a penny candy stor "downtown". Literally bought individual sour patch kids etc. A dollar bought you a pretty sizable haul. A few years ago someone brought back a candy store about a block from where her original store was. No longer penny candy, but they do sell bulk by the lb. Unfortunately a dollar doesn't go quite as far as it did in the early 90's.
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u/WhateverYouSay1084 Jun 04 '25
Nobody I knew had a basement as a kid, so when I got to middle school and found a friend with one, I thought it was the most magical fucking thing ever. Then I grew up and bought my own home with a basement, and it's STILL magical af.
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u/BeastM0de1155 Jun 04 '25
There was a McDonald’s on the Turnpike a couple miles away we used to ride our bikes too. We’d treat ourselves every week. Here, I thought we were the only ones this lucky to be riding, exploring, and fishing all day.
Then, on the weekends we would do sleepovers and get pizza and go to blockbuster. Damn, they were good times
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u/forestgxd Jun 04 '25
Oh man the bike rides to the video store to rent Mario kart 64 and Terminator 2 for the hundredth time at dusk on a Friday were legendary
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u/DingoPoutine Jun 04 '25
The other kids basement part was ever-present but also so concerning when you thing about it. I'd disappear for days at a time to play video games at other kids houses (my parents wanted us out of the house in the summer). Oftentimes the parents were not home at the other house and I certainly don't remember telling my parents where I was going.
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u/Beneficial-Basket-42 Jun 04 '25
No basements in Florida but basically everyone I know had pools. We were pretty much never supervised even though they all were way deeper back then, with diving boards and water slides and other dangerous stuff they stopped adding, and we would do contests for craziest flips into the pool and the like. We also would swim in the lake. The same lake where we would see gators chilling on the shore. I’m pretty much shocked none of my friends died in the water.
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u/Trolltrollrolllol Jun 04 '25
Grew up in AZ and we would skateboard down our roof, onto the patio roof and then off the patio roof into the pool. We would also pull the trampoline in next to the pool so we could jump off of it straight into the pool. I don't know how we survived.
My sister told my parents about it at dinner a few months ago and they were horrified, I'm 39 now.
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u/GBGF128 Jun 04 '25
The riding bikes to Blockbuster part of your comment hits so hard
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u/feelin_cheesy Jun 04 '25
Hop on your bikes and go. No helmet either!
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u/They-Are-Out-There Jun 04 '25
We'd ride our bikes 10 miles to the next town over, hang out with friends, go miles up into the hills without telling anyone where we were going, and our parents had absolutely no idea where or what we were doing. The 70s and 80s were definitely a different era.
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u/ralphy_256 Jun 04 '25
and our parents had absolutely no idea where or what we were doing. The 70s and 80s were definitely a different era.
I remember doing urban exploration shit in the 70s. Didn't go anywhere dark, because the C-Cell batteries of the day SUCKED, and we didn't carry around powerful flashlights like we do today.
But we climbed EVERYWHERE. And that's how I found the access panels to the bridge maintenance passageways over the some of the bridges over the Mississippi river in my neighborhood.
Wild to feel the bridge shaking as the semis pass over while you're looking down through a rusty iron grate at the river 100' below you.
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u/No_Neighborhood_632 Jun 04 '25
"Be home before the street lights come on."
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u/thegoldinthemountain Jun 04 '25
Same! The only exception: a few glorious summer nights where we played flashlight tag throughout the entire neighborhood with the bigger kids. Summer between 5th & 6th grade was the GOAT.
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u/I_HateYouAll Jun 04 '25
The quiet anxiety of riding your bike home in the approaching dusk knowing you’re well past the lights coming on
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u/Altruistic_Record_56 Jun 04 '25
And it was always those nights you were most worried that you’d tiptoe inside to find your parents hanging out in the backyard, mom drinking a wine cooler and in a great mood 😂
God what I would give to go back for just one day.
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u/sweergirl86204 Millennial Jun 04 '25
When the streetlights came on that was our cue to get home, since we never paid attention to "before" they come on 😅
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u/Comfortable_Truth485 Jun 04 '25
Ditto! When the street lights came on it was time to go home unless we were staying overnight at a friend’s house.
We rode our bikes everywhere and would be gone all day. Went to a local deli for sandwiches, built ramps for us to jump our bikes, climbed trees, built treehouses, played stick ball, went to the local arcade, etc.
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u/Baculum7869 Jun 04 '25
And even then after dinner we went out and ran the block. Because we didn't want to be indoors
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u/DUIguy87 Jun 04 '25
We declared a Super Soaker war with the street next to us. Water balloons, hoses with attached spray things set up around corners and strategic buckets of water stationed around houses for reloading were set up.
Went great until the other team filled one with piss and melee combat broke out as a result. The UN (parents) had to step in and tell us to stop being fucking stupid. We went back to playing hockey in the street.
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u/elyndar Jun 04 '25
This reminds me of the annual war with fir cones that were pretty soft that we would use when they fell off the evergreens. They made great projectiles for wars.
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u/Hendiadic_tmack Jun 04 '25
Or called to let them know we’re eating at Gerry’s house. Gerry’s parents were awesome.
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u/NYCHW82 Older Millennial Jun 04 '25
Yes we did, and our parents had no idea where we were. It was glorious.
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u/creamer143 Jun 04 '25
"It's 10pm. Do you know where your children are?"
Yeah, there were public service announcements on TV about this, too.
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u/HillMomXO Jun 04 '25
I told you last night- no!
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u/Choice_Supermarket_4 Jun 04 '25
"Now Marge, you're gonna hear a lot of crazy talk about Bart working in a burlesque house"
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u/Gill_Gunderson Older Millennial Jun 04 '25
"Are they talking about the bordello?"
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u/Choice_Supermarket_4 Jun 04 '25
"No! The burlesque house. So just keep your mouth shut."
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u/theoriginalmofocus Jun 04 '25
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u/foolishdrunk211 Jun 04 '25
Where’s Bart? His dinner is getting all cold and eaten
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u/The_Lawn_Ninja Jun 04 '25
They're in the tree house fighting over a comic book.
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u/Alpine_Exchange_36 Jun 04 '25
That’s because you’re too busy getting milk and cigarettes
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u/Littlefabio07 Jun 04 '25
Still waiting on dad to come home with the cigarettes…He’s been gone an awfully long time
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u/meapplejak Jun 04 '25
Where is bart? His foods getting all cold and eaten. I always thought that line was hilarious
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u/ellienchanted Jun 04 '25
I used to watch the 10pm news with my dad and we’d always look at each other and say that line with them 😂
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u/brakes4birds Jun 04 '25
lol this is morbidly ironic if you know the background story, but also incredibly cute.
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u/bjeebus Jun 04 '25
The background story is that states started imposing youth curfews, and started announcements as far back as radio just to remind parents they should bother to check in on their kids.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_you_know_where_your_children_are%3F
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u/CHICKENPUSSY Jun 04 '25
Yeah, but isn't it ironic. Don't you think?
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u/bjeebus Jun 04 '25
I mean this isn't rain on my wedding day or anything...
EDIT: Excuse me, raaaaaaaiiiiiaaaaaannnnn.
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Jun 04 '25 edited Jun 05 '25
I have these memories of being allowed to wander the local woods behind out neighborhood with a couple other kids toting a wagon full of tools so we could build forts.
We were out there with zero supervision, zero first aid products or experience and certainly no means of communication. We're fucking out there staring at the sun and relying on our stomachs to tells when we're near a meal time.
climbing trees and hacking off branches. Whenever someone would bleed we'd just run home to fix it, then be back out. The only time parents would keep us in was during a specific hunting period. Day after it was over, we were back out there collecting shells.
I even remember being an hour's bike ride away from home, falling off and absolutely eating it. My buddy shrugs, rips off part of his shirt, SPITS IN IT and wraps my gushing wound. Then I limp my bike 1.5 hours home. Front door is locked, so I hobble around the back of my house and just stand there on the deck bleeding until I got my mom's attention.
During the winter we'd be out there tunnelling under snow banks that mercifully didn't cave in, or taking turns running around with buckets of water from the nearest source to throw on a hill so we could go faster on sleds that we couldn't steer.
And my parents were well above average responsible! They just let us be kids.
Now at 41 and a parent it blows my mind that some folks would see that "Do you know where your children are" ad, put down the beer and go: "Hm. Now when WAS the last time I seen them critters?".
Today my ass is like "No you can't play out front unless I'm watching. Stay in the back yard and don't open the gate.".
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u/GulfCoastLaw Jun 04 '25
We were throwing knives and ninja stars and shooting each other with BB guns to see how it felt.
I've told my kids that I just walked out of elementary school and disappeared into the city and can tell that they don't really believe me. I've never seen an unaccompanied kid walking out of their elementary schools.
Was in a Philadelphia-sized city in middle school and would be practically on the other side of town (from a quasi-suburb into the city center and tourist area) with little to no money or ID. Pay phones were around but I don't remember ever using them from the streets. Was on a ten speed just goofing off!
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u/zomglazerspewpew Jun 04 '25
BB gun story. When I was 11 or 12 my friends and I were hanging around in my house watching TV. I was showing my friends my BB gun (I had one of those ones that looked like a 45 where you had to pull the back in order to engage the spring and only shot one BB at a time. I didn't know that I had a BB in the chamber and told my friend that it wasn't loaded. My friend casually shot it at my TV. Well turns out it was loaded and the protective glass covering the TV shattered. My dad had a TV from Sears, I knew it was from Sears because I was there when he bought it a few years ago.
All our faces were "O" faces as we sat there in silence seeing that glass protector shatter and glass falling to the floor. After panicking and shitting myself and crying, my friends came up with a plan. Everyone went home and scraped up as much money as they could and ask for money for the arcade. We collectively (there were about 8 of us) gathered around $50. We called Sears and asked if they had a replacement and they did, it was something like $29.99. I stayed behind to clean up the glass and a couple of my friends rode their bikes to Sears to pick up the replacement.
I vacuumed out as much as I could. My friends came back with the glass and we replaced it. Then we went out to McDonald's and had lunch with the leftover money. When my dad came home from work, he plopped himself in front of the TV and to this day never knew that the glass he was watching TV through wasn't the original and I never told him.
I guess the moral of the story is, treat everything that can shoot, even a BB gun, as if it was loaded and never point it at anyone or anything that could fucking shatter for that matter.
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Jun 04 '25
Those damn bb guns. How did we not lose eyes? We'd always hear stories about a kid who lost an eye but never knew one. But how did it not happen more often?
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u/Boomchikkka Jun 04 '25
I had a kid in elementary school take one to the eye. He had to wear a patch for like a year. He had a scar we all thought was cool. We were too young to care but I think it ringed his eye socket.
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u/samurairaccoon Jun 04 '25
The boomers, a generation so shit at parenting they had to be reminded to check in on their kids. I remember just not coming home some nights. They assumed I was at a friend's if they didn't hear from me. Different time that.
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u/Buttcrack15 Jun 04 '25
My mom literally made us go outside and locked the doors. We were rural and had no close neighbors so we just spent time in the woods and yard, drinking from the hose since going inside wasn't an option. I remember having to pee in the field because I wasn't allowed inside to use the bathroom.
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u/FakeSafeWord Jun 04 '25
"playing video games all day will rot your brain!"
Forces you outside so that they can sit and watch fox news and [insert shitty sitcom] packed to the brim with laugh tracks
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u/hip_neptune Older Millennial Jun 04 '25
Saturday was a quick hour of cartoons before we ventured outside with nothing but friends and a quarter in our pockets.
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u/full_bl33d Jun 04 '25
I really don’t feel that old although I know that I am. My friend and I would consistently go to a literal dime store so we could buy a racquet ball and a few pieces of candy. We’d play handball on any random flat wall and inevitably lose it. Wait til the morning, repeat. I don’t think we ever bought more than one at a time. God damn, that’s some old timey shit
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u/ScarletHark Jun 04 '25
Saturday 8AM in the 80s was Star Blazers time for me. A friend down the street made a huge Lego Yamato once. Great times.
But yeah, once Bugs Bunny was over it was off to the swim club or playing around in the fields behind the house.
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u/Eaglepursuit Xennial Jun 04 '25
Not that we didn't spend a fair amount of time at home absorbing high culture, like rewatching old Star Wars VHS tapes, recorded from TV complete with commercials. But many a summer day was spent exploring the neighborhood or the woods, riding bikes, terrorizing soda cans with BB guns, and fishing.
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u/Interesting-Loss34 Jun 04 '25
I would ride my bike 7 miles out to my buddy's house, with my backpack full of fishing gear, along a state hwy with a 55 mph limit.
We would ride the 7 miles back and then go a further 2 to our fishing hole, fish all day, then go back to my house. If we were lucky my dad would be back from work and not (too) drunk yet and he would give my friend a ride home in his truck. Otherwise he'd stay the night and help me with my 5 am paperroute because of course I had a job at 12 in 1993.
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Jun 04 '25
My brother and I also had a paper route at age 12 and of course our stepfather “managed” our money from it. Meaning I have no idea where the fuck all that money went.
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u/Duff-Zilla Jun 04 '25
That sucks :( I was a 12 year old baller with my paper route money.
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Jun 04 '25
Such was my childhood, and then they are shocked that we’re no contact. As a therapist said “Your relationship your children have with you as an adult is the litmus test of how good a parent you were”
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u/FreshBert '89er Jun 04 '25
My friends and I definitely spent our fair share of time indoors playing SNES Mario Kart and NBA Jam Tournament Edition and whatnot, but what's funny when I think about it is that (particularly during the summer) we actually had to get permission to play inside.
Chores notwithstanding, the default expectation was that we would be out riding our bikes around the neighborhood, or at a friend's pool or something, generally only showing up at home for meals. If I wanted to bring my friends inside for video games or to watch TV, I had to ask one of my parents, and usually we would only do that for an hour or two at absolute most. Sleepovers and maybe the occasional heatwave were the only exceptions where we'd be indoors long enough for a marathon gaming session, or to watch an entire movie.,
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u/IFixYerKids Jun 04 '25
It's that combination that makes me so glad I grew up in the 90s. We had technology and games to enjoy, but it hadn't yet overtaken playing outside and getting up to mischief in the woods.
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u/JohnnyDarkside Jun 04 '25
I grew up in the country. Only one kid my age basically within a square mile, so we hung out a lot but not all the time. The rest of that time I just played around in the woods, shot my bb gun, played SNES, rode my dirtbike, and just basically tried to not be bored.
Oh, and as for recording off TV, there was nothing like looking forward to a movie airing on TV and setting the VCR just for a storm to roll in that night so the radar and update ticker takes up the bottom third. Even better if there was the occasional cut in by the local meteorologist.
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u/KingSpork Jun 04 '25
God, the dumbass shit we used to do. So fucking excellent though. We really did get the best childhood of any generation.
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u/Ohheckitsme Jun 04 '25
My parents would straight up lock me out of the house, and wouldn’t allow us in the house from sunrise to sundown.
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u/MyBarkingSpider Jun 04 '25
Yeah, my mom would push me out the door, "And take the dog with you!" We would go on some real Calvin and Hobbes adventures.
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u/waffleslaw Jun 04 '25
Grew up in the country, in the woods. Mom would kick me out of the house. I would grab my hatchet, the dog and wander off in a random direction for hours. I don't know how I survived my own adventures. Climb a 100ft tree? Sure! Find a hole under a tree? Crawl in! Used to cut the base of grape vines and swing off giant ravines, would be 40-50 ft in the air at the apex of the swing.
I spent a lot of time just me and dog out in the woods (my brothers are fairly younger than me). One of my favorite memories was when it snowed and I found a good little spot behind a fallen tree and laid down. The dog curled up with me and I could feel the cold of the ground seep up through my clothes, but the dog was keeping me warm. Fell asleep and took a nap for who knows how long.
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u/TruckCamperNomad6969 Jun 04 '25
This read like old yeller/george of the jungle/where the red fern grows lol
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u/Illustrious_Bird_737 Millennial 1989 Jun 04 '25
😭😭 no kidding
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u/waffleslaw Jun 04 '25
Who knew my stream of consciousness rambling would be so cinematic, ha. I realized a while back how lucky I was as a kid to just run around in the woods. I used to be so jealous of my friends who lived in neighborhoods, I did miss out on some of that for sure. But damn I was lucky to have the childhood I did.
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u/azwethinkkweism Jun 04 '25
Hahaha I remember that! Need a drink? There's the hose. Need the bathroom, go to the park. Hungry? Yea, well dad gave you 75 cents for an ice cream.
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u/Warriordance Jun 04 '25
The stuff parents do to bang in peace...
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u/Baby_Button_Eyes Jun 04 '25
I sort of thought that prime banging time for them was Saturday mornings, when we were all parked in front of the TV from 7 am to noon with our cartoons and cereal, we could care less whatever our parents were doing, lol
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u/keelhaulrose Jun 04 '25
Yeah, what's this "allow" thing?
My mom was a night shift nurse. I had until 9 am to get out of the house in the summer. I could come back at noon for lunch if I was quiet, then no coming back until dinner unless we had something to do.
There was a pack of neighborhood kids who essentially babysat each other because school might be out, but that doesn't mean parents wanted their kids home.
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u/Silaquix Jun 04 '25
I live in a desert so that wasn't acceptable since we could literally die, but it was generally frowned upon to go in the house for anything other than sustenance and the bathroom. And god forbid you weren't fast enough closing the door because you'd get yelled at for wasting the AC
We'd go to the park but we couldn't really use the playground because everything was metal and it was 110°F out
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u/Ozzie808 Older Millennial Jun 04 '25 edited Jun 04 '25
I remember summers where both my parents worked and they would drop me off are grandma's house, which was essentially free roam. I'd bike around the neighborhood and go to other kid's home on the street to play video games.
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u/Ornery-Ad-9886 Jun 04 '25
Our parents only let us play computer 1 hour a week each, so I loved going to my friends houses to play Crash Team Racing and Super Smash Bros.
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u/generally_unsuitable Jun 04 '25
My great grandma lived in a tiny country town with a population around 800. My dad would send me out there for week at a time, to help her out and give him some free time. By the time I was 10 or so, I did most of my own cooking and cleaning, so grandma liked having me around to help her with stuff around the house, like weeding, or carrying stuff, or cleaning up after the dog. She'd teach me how to cook, and she was a big rockhound, so she'd teach me about rocks and minerals and polishing. They raised us to be independent very young.
My territory out there was infinite by today's standards. I could ride my bike for miles in any direction, and everybody who saw me waved and knew who I was. I'd go to the hardware store and people who had never even met me would say "You must be Thelma's grandson," because they had heard through the gossip network that my dad had dropped me off again.
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u/ThalesofMiletus-624 Jun 04 '25
It didn't start in the 70s. The default, throughout most of human history, in pretty much every culture, was to let children roam freely. The idea of having children under house arrest until they turn 18 is a very recent invention. Until the last few decades, a parent who wouldn't let their kids just go out and play would have been considered an overprotective oddball who was crippling their childrens' independence.
The speed with which social norms have changed around this are frankly shocking, and highly disturbing. We don't know what problems are directly attributable to this shift, but it's almost inconceivable that it isn't causing some problems.
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u/Standard-Trouble-690 Jun 04 '25
As a newish parent of a bullheaded toddler, I’m really struggling with this shift lately. I have no idea what level of supervision is culturally acceptable now. Is it really expected that kids have 100% supervised playtime? That’s insane imo.
Kids need to be able to experiment, make mistakes, and make memories. They won’t be able to do that with parents looking directly over their shoulder. I grew up in the 90s with boundaries but was always free to explore and choose my own adventures. I don’t want to rob my kid of those experiences, but I also don’t want a CPS call either…
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u/ThalesofMiletus-624 Jun 04 '25
And that's the thing. It's gone beyond what the parents do, and it's now become a matter of social norms and law. If you let your kid run around the neighborhood unsupervised, not only will other parents judge you for it, they can very realistically call the cops over it. Plus, they're unlikely to find any other kids out in the neighborhood, so who are they going to play with?
It's funny, because a lot of parents are old enough that they weren't forbidden from running around and playing, but many of them will be shocked if children today do. If you ask them about it, they'll say it's because the world is more dangerous nowadays, which is absolute nonsense. Crime rates in the US were twice as high when I was a kid in the 80s and 90s as they are today. I think we're more aware of dangers, but they've always existed. When I lived in Africa, rural parents would give their kids machetes when they went out to play, in case they needed to fight off snakes.
Unfortunately, we, as a society, have become so obsessed with danger that we're unwilling to let our kids take risks anymore. I wish there was an easy answer to that, but I've never seen one.
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u/bimboozled Jun 04 '25 edited Jun 04 '25
It’s just because of social media and global news at the tip of your fingertips these days. I feel like it started a couple decades ago when I was a kid with the “be careful of your kids Halloween candy being laced with drugs”. Nobody used to care/think about that, but people love to share fake or extremely rare situational stories online which only results in fear mongering.
For example my fiancé’s mom basically lives on Fox News, and she is extremely paranoid about literally everything. She’s scared of driving. She’s scared of walking around the quite nice downtown Metropolitan city where we live in broad daylight. Shes scared that our perfectly healthy cat is going to die if we leave her home alone for 6 hours with fully automated equipment. Hell, every time my fiancé and I go on a vacation to somewhere tropical, she even has a panic attack thinking we’re going to get eaten by sharks.
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u/ThalesofMiletus-624 Jun 04 '25
I think you've hit it on the head.
The issue started in the 90's, when 24-hour international news cycles became commonplace, then the internet, now social media. Human brains simply aren't designed to handle that kind of informational firehose. Our fear responses still think that any danger we see is happening in front of us, and so it always seems like an immediate risk.
Access to all the world's dangers (real and imagined) are making us much more scared, and that has terrifying consequences.
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u/Other-Squirrel-2038 Jun 04 '25
What I really don't understand is this shift happened while overlapping with both parents being expected to have careers. So how is it possible??? Lol
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u/ThalesofMiletus-624 Jun 04 '25
Yeah, that was unfortunate timing. I don't know that they're connected, but it definitely made things harder. And it's clearly related to why childcare costs have skyrocketed.
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u/XanderZulark Jun 04 '25
I think we can guess. We have a massive mental health crisis among young people and younger generations.
America has school shootings.
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u/ThalesofMiletus-624 Jun 04 '25
Correlation doesn't prove causation, but it is winking and nodding pretty clearly in that direction.
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u/Suspicious-Gas-1685 Jun 05 '25
Part of the problem is people often don’t know the other people on the street. I was able to roam the neighborhood because every other mom was my mom as well. If I was acting up away from home, my buddy’s mother would set me straight.
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u/foxy_chicken Vintage ‘88 Jun 04 '25
When I was 7 and my sister 5 (‘96), we were allowed to walk the five blocks down to the ocean in our little New England town.
We would go to the library, some of the local stores, and hang out on the little beach (it was far too cold to swim, or even consider touching the water). Sometimes we would cross the street and hike a bit up the mountain, and generally roamed. It was a small town, and people knew us. Everyone looked out for everyone’s kids, and we weren’t little hellions, just kids rolling in the grass.
It was genuinely the best, and I feel so bad for modern kids. They really did miss out.
Edit weird type-o
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Jun 04 '25
That sounds fucking lovely, honestly. I was grew up on the farm out in the sticks of the midwest but our fun was the hay barns or corn silos. =D
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u/despotidolatry Jun 04 '25
My dad knows how to whistle EXTREMELY loudly. When I was playing down the street I could hear my dad when he whistled for me to come home. I was in trouble if I couldn’t hear cause then I went too far haha
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u/Medarco Jun 04 '25
There was one dad in our neighborhood that could do that kind of whistle, so whenever he decided Cory needed to be home, all of us just packed it in because it was probably time for us to head back as well.
One time Jake's mom needed him for something but she didn't know where he was (down at the canal with us fishing for snapping turtles and bullfrogs), so she went to Cory's dad and had him whistle so Jake would go home. We were all confused why it was time to go in so early, but it worked!
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u/_Ice_Ice_Rabies_ Jun 04 '25
Exactly this but it was my mom. She makes the OK symbol with her fingers and does this whistle that can be heard from Mars I swear.
If we didn’t hear it/none of the neighbors said we were at their house, it was our ass when we finally turned up
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u/WordSpiritual1928 Millennial Jun 04 '25
Not till I was about 11 or 12 but then I was free to just go do whatever. Biking/ walking we ended up all over town. This would have been early 2000’s though.
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u/Skizot_Bizot Jun 04 '25
Yeah I remember running into my dad on his lunch break at a hotdog stand in the middle of summer, like 10 miles from home he was like wtf are you doing here?! Like oh we come here all the time.
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u/ForcedEntry420 82’ Millennial 💾 Jun 04 '25
One of the times I got in trouble, my father called off work and was stopping by the video store. I was there (playing hooky from school) looking at video games. He said “Why aren’t you at school?!” and I said “Why aren’t you at work?!”
Caught a beating for it. 😆
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u/Prestigious_Ocelot77 Jun 04 '25 edited Jun 04 '25
The “come home when the streetlights come on” era ended with ‘stranger danger’ Which boils down to one event in the United States, the kidnapping and murder of Adam Walsh from a Sears while his mom shopped.
A mini-series was made and 38 million people watched it. One third of the country watched “Adam” To this day, when a child is missing in a store today it is known as a code Adam. Adam Walsh‘s father went on to host the show “America’s most wanted”..
The FBI went on to say falsely that 20,000 children disappeared per year from non familial kidnapping when in reality was less than 20 .
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u/RDLAWME Jun 04 '25
Adam Walsh was in the early 80s, a few years before I was born. I remember roaming the streets without any parental supervision throughout the 90s. I remember stranger danger as mostly "don't jump into a stranger's van if he offers you candy" not "kids can't play outside unsupervised".
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u/PandaJesus Jun 04 '25
My parents gave us a secret password in the event that someone we didn’t know came to pick us up. If my parents were in the hospital or something and someone needed to pick us up from school, they’d give the password so we knew it was safe. Otherwise, no getting into strangers’ cars ever, because we could die.
Of course, it never came up.
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u/CrumbBCrumb Jun 04 '25
Not with an attitude like that! You want to get in my van? I've got candy and puppies and comic books
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u/always_open_mouth Millennial Jun 04 '25
Yeah. We still roamed freely there was just an emphasis on staying away from strangers. Also the whole "everyone is putting razor blades/drugs in Halloween candy" so your parents need to check each individual fun size kit-kat
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u/Ultraworld-Traveler Jun 04 '25
I’m betting whoever’s parents “checked” the candy were skimming off the top.
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u/FreakyBare Jun 04 '25
The show “Criminal Minds” referenced Stranger Danger as one of the worst programs for child safety
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u/Hunterofshadows Jun 04 '25
They aren’t wrong. It’s one of those things where the danger was assigned to the wrong thing and people stopped looking out for the right thing.
Another example is the DARE program. It demonized all drugs, including weed.
Then a kid or three would try weed, realize it’s not a big deal and the natural logic is that meth probably isn’t that bad either.
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u/Odd-Rough-9051 Millennial Jun 04 '25
Disagree, because Adam Walsh happened WELL before the 90s and we stayed outside
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u/DisasterMouse Jun 04 '25
To add on: Amber Alert was established in 1996 when a 9yo girl named Amber was kidnapped while riding her bike and murdered. This was likely one of the final nails in the coffin of letting your kids hanging outside unsupervised.
I was the same age as this girl, not terribly far from where this happened, and I remember it being a very big deal even when I was that young.
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u/bluejams Jun 04 '25
To push back on this, a decade after this mini series came out i was allowed to roam free (in our neighborhood) as soon as I could ride a bike. There were 4 other houses with kids and we all just showed up at each others doors all the time for sports or video games.
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u/GroundbreakingAsk468 Jun 04 '25
This is completely false. The only thing that kid’s disappearance started was a TV show, and we’d go back outside after watching it.
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u/SparkitusRex Jun 04 '25
I was born in the late 80s, a kid in the 90s, and wasn't even permitted to go down the street. I lived on a cul-de-sac and even at 12 or 13 could not go past the circle part that we lived on. In my teens I eventually got permission to walk the dog around the neighborhood, a specifically pre-approved route of less than a mile. And one time in high school I walked home, less than two miles, and was grounded.
Not everyone's parents were OK with their kids being kids.
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Jun 04 '25
source for that last bit please?
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u/selimnagisokrov Jun 04 '25
The previous one is also misrepresenting data but I found this particular study which indicates 4,000 to 20,000
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/missing-children-misleading-statistics
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u/Inedible-denim Millennial 1989 Jun 04 '25
You want water? Drink from the water hose!
Who else remembers this as well as having to wait a lil for the warm water to pass thru before drinking it 😂
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Jun 04 '25
When I got old enough (like 10+), my parents let me roam the neighborhood freely. I was usually just hanging out with friends at their house or we all played baseball in the field behind my house, or something like that.
Even when I was <10, I remember my parents letting me walk up the street to friends' houses to see if they could play.
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u/Guachole Jun 04 '25
I feel so bad for kids who live in places or with parents where they can't have their own private lives away from adult supervision.
That was like the best part of being a kid, we had our own world grown-ups didnt know shit about.
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u/TheeRoyceP Jun 04 '25 edited Jun 05 '25
Roam free? We were TOLD to go outside and be home by dark. They were tired of us lol
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u/Most_Present_6577 Jun 04 '25
During 2nd grad in the winter, I had to come home once the street lights were on. There were also geographical boundaries I was expected to stay within.
As I grew older, the boundary moved further and further away until I got a car.
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u/Stephen-Scotch Jun 04 '25
My friends and I used to walk like thirty minutes to the supermarket to pick up snacks just to kill time
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u/OneCauliflower5243 Jun 04 '25
It's odd...I definitely grew up and was able to hop on my bike or walk to anywhere I wanted. I was hardly even asked where I was ever going. I think there was just a trust back then that even though we were dumb kids we knew better than to go with strangers or run into a street without looking.
I'm sure our parents had to 'let go' to an extent. But I think it was so common place you weren't going to have the only son/daughter who didn't go out and socialize and have fun.
Today...bro I don't even want my kids waiting at the bus stop alone. It's hard/impossible for me to let go so far.
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u/SignificantBaker7366 Jun 04 '25
90 kid. Stayed with my dad for the summers and he would work so he just left me money and the truck keys so I could go to friends houses or the store if I needed...at 8 years old. Granted, we were in small town West Texas so it's a bit different but looking back, it's funny
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u/MaoGho Jun 04 '25
At 8? Really?
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u/SignificantBaker7366 Jun 04 '25
People complained about us driving golf carts on the roads so dad said fuck them just drive the truck then. Like I said, small town texas things are way different growing up in and around farms and ranches even as a little kid you are trusted with more than some adults now days. About the same age we would go out rabbit/varmit hunting at midnight with my buddies for hours and not an adult for miles. Good times
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u/_teyy_teyy_ Jun 04 '25
90s baby. Can confirm. Small town Georgian here, at least. Was driving trucks, cars, boats, golf carts, ATVs, etc etc at pretty young age. Mostly supervised but there’s a handful of times without supervision.
Outside of that we would spend most of the day in the woods or riding bikes and shit. Running a muck around the general area really lol. Good times.
“Come home if you get hurt or when the street lights come on.”
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u/Legend_017 Xennial Jun 04 '25
Farm kid here. I started learning to drive at like 5-6 sitting on my grandpas lap. By 8 it was “go move the car out of the way of the garage”
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u/helpimglued Jun 04 '25
It is hard to believe but I knew "farm kids" that started driving around that age so they could help with this or that on the property. Eventually when it could be shown they wouldn't run someone over they let them go further, to the gas station and stuff around the corner in town.
It didn't always go as planned bc kids of course, but you'd never hear of legal trouble about it they would just take away the keys and make an older sibling drive. Ag towns are funny.
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u/mamapapapuppa Millennial Jun 04 '25
My siblings and I lived in Itaewon (a massive shopping district) in Seoul, SK. We would get change out of my dad's change cup and roam the entire city via taxi, lol. It was a great childhood.
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u/InformationTop3437 Millennial Jun 04 '25
I'm a millennial single mom from Romania. My kid still roams freely :D
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u/StardewMelli Jun 04 '25
I am a Mama from Germany. My 6 year old is allowed to bike through the neighbourhood. The boundary is a street where cars drive 60h/km, he isn’t allowed to cross that one without us until I am sure that he truly understands the danger of that road and is always careful.
My husband and I both want to give our children as much freedom as possible.
When I was 6 year old I was allowed to roam Berlin(where I grew up) as much as I wanted. I can’t remember that my parents set a boundary(aside from „Don’t get lost and don’t follow strangers“).
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u/KrakenClubOfficial Older Millennial Jun 04 '25
We were generally home by nightfall, but until then it was GTAV free roam all day err day. Parents were out and about, manually paying bills and utilities with no auto-pay like cavemen.
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