You sometimes hear older people complaining about how kids are not outside enough, and how parents are too helicopter parenting and all that. And while there are benefits to keeping track of your kids more, its also very clear where this comes from, because a lot of the stereotypes about kids running all over are pretty accurate.
They say the TV would ask “Do you know where your children are” to get parents to remember to check on their kids. Its definitely true.
When I was young, my friends and I definitely just sort of, wandered all over. We had a fair number of regular outside activities.
The core activity was riding bikes. We would often just rude up and down the snakey road that was our neighborhood. We would try to do all sorts of trucks and such too. Pop wheelies. “Jump” them with little bunny hops. Riding with no hands was a big one, I could ride back and forth up and down the neighborhood with no hands eventually.
There was also a woods area with some trails where you could bike, with hills to get actual air when jumping.
Sometimes we would ride down to the grocery store to spend our allowance on comics and candy.
The other big activity was “playing guns”. This generic term meant many different activities themed around plastic guns. Sometimes we would assign teams and do little wars with “bases” around the neighborhood. Other times we would all be on one team and just sneak around the area like we were on a spy mission. This usually meant carrying one gun, and a backpack with other guns.
This evolved a bit eventually with Super Soakers. Because it meant actually shooting something and not just making “gun noises” with our mouths.
We definitely got in trouble some. I remember once getting chewed out (rightfully) by a woman upset after we were trying to race cars through the neighborhood. There was also a crabby old lady down the street that didn’t like us jumping our bikes over the irregular sidewalk in front of her house.
