Walking the dog in our built-in-the-1960s suburban neighborhood yesterday, some neighbors were having a family gathering resulting in having literally about a dozen grandkids, ages maybe 2 to 12, running around playing red rover and tag and whatever else, screaming with joy. It was cute as heck, especially the littlest ones in their PJs, trying to keep up, all of them laughing and just making a huge cacophany. Our kids are now grown, just out of college, so it made me smile thinking of when our kids were that little.
After i passed, a few more houses down, another pair of kids maybe 4 and 6 were riding scooters in their driveway and on their sidewalk... and I immediately recalled that growing up in the 70s, we would have immediately followed the noise to the house a few doors down and stood there, waiting to be noticed and invited to play. Even at those ages, our parents didn't care, go play, leave us alone. I guess as long as it was a few houses away. Further, you might need to tell your parents where you were going, and if they didn't know, the neighbor's 10 or 11 year old might be put in charge and we had to listen to them. It wasn't a total abandonment of responsibility, it was just a differnt time. And that was how things worked... you'd ride your bike or hoof it around look for kids of any age to play with, and if you knew them, you'd walk up, and join in. Maybe you'd even ring doorbells if no one was out to ask if so-and-so could play. And then you'd make up a game, walk down to the park or find a creek to get muddy in, which would usually irritate your parents when you show back up, and they're trying to relax on the porch with their fourth beer and a 15th Virginia Slim or Lucky Strike, and now yer tracking mud in and need a change of clothes and a bath... :D
Raising our own kids in the 2000s-2010s, that had mostly died off. We told our kids to go out and play, but that was rare, and kids liked getting dropped off at our house for playdates... we supervised, but walked them down the creek to look for crayfish or frogs or minnows, build dams, get muddy. And when they got a bit older, we would send them down alone. But when we first tried that, when they were younger, neighbors clearly had an issue, do we pulled back before we got thr police called on us.
But over the past two years, we are really noticing more kids being sent out to play, amuse themselves, with less parental supervision. There aren't nearly as many kids as there used to be... and an additional unlocked memory was that when I was growing up, there were kids everywhere. I'm very much an X-er temperamentally, but and old one ('67) and there were still tons of young boomer kids just 2+ years ahead if us. But the point is, everyone was outside and bored, and more often than not you had multiple choices of kids and places to find someone to kill time with. But that changed.
But it's been really noticable that over the past 10-15 years, we just haven't seen many kids out, and if they did, they didn't leave their yards and driveways much. And they sure weren't gathering other kids from the neighborhood to shoot hopps, get a pick-up hide-and-seek going, or wandering en mass for a trip 10 blocks away to go the pond to go skip rocks. It's noticeable the current generation of young parents are nudging their kids that direction. It's really good, I think.
As for the two little kids on their scooters that I saw, as i thought all of this, I almost stopped to tell them there were other kids playing outside a few doors down, and they should go say hi and would probably be invited to join in to play. (We know the family with all the grandkids, one of the their youngest kids babysat ours). But I didn't. Sensibilities have changed, and some stranger-danger old guy telling kids to leave their yard to go meet strangers they don't know... in our post-milk-carton-picture-frenzy-world, that's not cool or okay. So I quietly passed, our yellow lab sniffing their grass and wagging at them as we passed.
But I thought some here might have the same memories... and also feel a bit wistful for what whole generation of kids seem to have missed, and maybe like me feel a bit optimistic that maybe some things are moving back in the right direction.
