Stuff you did as a child that wouldn’t be contemplated now

I cycled to infant school from day one with stabilisers on my bike. The naughty boys used to hang on the luggage rack at the back and shout at me to pedal faster. One day a lady ran out of her house, grabbed the ringleader and gave him a mighty clip round the ear and a massive verbal dressing down. I never saw the naughty boys again. She was a total stranger, but adults seemed to feel free to tell off any random child who was misbehaving.

I walked to school on a path through the woods until grade 6. It was safe then but I shudder to think who could be lurking there nowadays. My friends and I rode our bikes around all day (without helmets lol) and only came home for meals. Our parents never had to worry about us. Somehow we lived through no seatbelts in cars, dangerous playground equipment,talking to strangers and other horrors.

I walked home from school, I have to say there were some men around that did scare me. One had learning difficulties, & used to follow me. We used top call him Dandelion because he was always about picking dandelions for his rabbits. Another lived with his mum & my Mum always used to warn me off him because he used to chase her & her sisters when they were young.(he was a quite overweight & I was fairly sure I could outrun him).
Neither of them ever did anything more than follow or stare, but I don't think strangers lurking in woods are any more numerous today than they were then - we just hear more about it.

Another one here who walked up to the shop for my dad’s fags aged about 6 or 7. I took the money in my little basket, handed it to Mr F, saying “Can my dad have 20 Park Drive, please, Mr F?” He would hand them over to me with the change and off home I would trot. Across a road that is now swarming with double decker buses and cars, but which we used to play on with a skipping rope spread right across the street because the only person I knew who owned a car was my friend’s dad up the road who was an insurance agent! And we’d be out playing hide and seek or whatever until after dark. And we’d go off to the woods and play. How on earth did we ever survive it all? I’m guessing that some didn’t, but we never heard of any.

There was a chap locally who was known as Cheeky D….. and we used to laugh at him and run away pretending to be scared. Very cruel, as I think he simply had learning difficulties. My mum looked after him when she was an old people’s warden and said he was a lovely chap.

Walked at nearly two miles to primary school alone with my younger brother every day. Went out to play with friends and disappeared for the day, no mobile phones, just arrived home in time for tea, my mother had no idea what I'd been up to and where I'd been! So much freedom in the good old days, definitely appreciate now the freedom we had and the total innocence of childhood.

My 6 year old neighbour walked me to my first day at school when I was 5. At home time she went back without me and I walked back by myself. My mother, who was very protective, told me later that she was worried when she saw the other child but not me, however she was reassured when I turned up.
When I was older but still at primary school I used to spend all the summer holidays out of the house, playing in the local park with my friends. We were given sandwiches and left the house in the mornings returning at tea time. My mother had a job by then but didn’t have to worry about childcare. The only time there was any suggestion that there was cause to worry was when the Moors Murders were in the news.

We were RAF brats living in Aden . I was about 7. I had an accident and hurt my knee . Taken to hospital and was there unable to walk for what felt like months. My parents were forced to leave me in Aden in the hospital and they returned home to UK . I was left in the hospital for at least a month before being casivact home alone on a plane . Still unable to walk . I was taken to a hospital in Wiltshire and put into an adults ward . I had no visitors for a long time until one day my mum walked through the door . My parents had not been told I was now back in the UK . I look back and wonder how my poor mother coped being 4000 miles from her 7 year old child . Strangely enough it was never talked about again . I can't imagine that ever happening today .

Yes, we were so lucky that there was so little traffic. I grew up in a Scottish tenement. It was a block of four - six families in each. When we moved out in 1964, only one resident had a car, out of twenty four families. He was a single chap, still living with his parents.

Toetoe

We were RAF brats living in Aden . I was about 7. I had an accident and hurt my knee . Taken to hospital and was there unable to walk for what felt like months. My parents were forced to leave me in Aden in the hospital and they returned home to UK . I was left in the hospital for at least a month before being casivact home alone on a plane . Still unable to walk . I was taken to a hospital in Wiltshire and put into an adults ward . I had no visitors for a long time until one day my mum walked through the door . My parents had not been told I was now back in the UK . I look back and wonder how my poor mother coped being 4000 miles from her 7 year old child . Strangely enough it was never talked about again . I can't imagine that ever happening today .

Yes, I was in an adults’ ENT ward for a mastoidectomy when I was ten. The whole of my middle ear was removed because of very dangerous ear infections and I was in hospital for two weeks and off school for nearly half a term. Slightly different from your circumstances in that my mother was able to visit me but nothing like today. My mother was not allowed to visit me on the day of the operation and I was last on the list. No consideration was made for the fact that I was a child and no explanations given about treatment; even the basic information that I would not be allowed out of bed for a few days after the operation and I would need to use a bedpan- understandably, I knew nothing about bedpans previous to this. I was terrified that the removal of the stitches might be painful - again no understanding whatsoever. My mother has since said that there were patients dying of cancer in there but, thankfully, I was blissfully unaware of this at the time. The injections were unpleasant then, too. Paediatric medicine is definitely one area that has changed out of all recognition since then, thank goodness. This was 1975.

I think we had the best of times

beachcomber76

From the age of 6 I walked/ran to school in all weathers which took me along a stretch of one of the busiest main roads in Bristol and took 15 minutes. When I was older we would play marbles in the gutters all the way home, and play in the bomb sites...no rush to get home at all.

When older[8,9+] we would bike out to countryside [now choked with row upon row of houses], build dens, pick apples, plums, pears, blackberries, paddle in a stream and go home when we felt like it. We'd also knock on farmhouse doors for drinks of water if we were thirsty. So trusting!

With one friend I would go to the swimming baths [aged 7/8] and we had to take her younger sister [6] along. Neither of them could swim, but I could. They always managed not to drown though and got home ok.

No one ever knew where we were or when we'd be home. When I was a brownie I would knock on strangers doors for 'Bob-a-Job' week and go inside to do all sorts of tasks! Again no adult knew where we were or what house we were in! Nothing bad happened, Thank God.

When 11 I cycled along the very busy main roads and bus routes from one side of Bristol to the other [6-7 miles] to go to a friends house. Took ages and was scary. Then had to do a longish bike ride with her...then cycle the traffic choked roads back home afterwards. Exhausted but lived to tell the tale. Mother didn't seem bothered.

Not quite as adventurous as this, but pretty much that way. Off rambling with friends in the then fields/: long bike rides from 9/10 eventually going as far as the 18 miles there and back to the seaside at 10.

My mum bless was great with us girls. None of the "don't do this or that, go jump that river swing" "hey, you got all the way up the tree". and of course walking to school from 5.

We were fortunate, weren't we? Maybe the last generation where parents felt able to do that.

Mind you my son was brought up in a very small country town in the 80's-90's and yes it was safe for sensible groups of them to wander round - yes even in the dark

(as young teenagers, not younger, but it was safe for younger ones in daylight)

My DGC live in a very isolated place. `none of them can use a cycle, so its lifts from mum and dad to see friends. the primary school was just about walkable to, but they got lifts because of the lack of other children to walk there with and it was a lonely walk,

Its such a lovely place, in Co Durham, but my son and DiL have created a situation I wouldn't have myself chosen because of matters like this - nothing nearby, even a playground/park.

We also live in a very isolated place. Our three children walked back from the school bus every day (primary school dropped them within sight of the house, secondary school at the main road crossroads). Because they were so remote, they learned to play by themselves and probably learned to do a lot of stuff their friends didn’t. (Their friends used to love coming here to stay over. As one put it, “This place ROCKS!!”) It’s not necessarily a bad thing to grow up in a remote setting. Having said that, one of them now lives in the nearest big town precisely so that his children can do all the things that he couldn’t! (Though his children absolutely love coming here because it’s so different to their own lives.)

Arthur Ransome summed up attitudes from our youth.

'Better drowned than duffers, if not duffers won't drown'.

Maybe a bit extreme, especially for today's chikdren.

My friend and I used to play hockey with two pencils and a globule of mercury till we were caught. She was blonde and petite and got sent to sit at the front. I was skinny with glasses and got left at the back...

Walked a mile to a bus stop and caught a bus to school at 5 years old and was allowed to play in the local woods and ride bikes all round our town.It was a lovely childhood and. I didn't even break a bone.

Such an interesting thread. The common experience was walking unsupervised to school; taking a child to school, either on foot or by car, just wasn't a concept. I grew up in a well-off family but we walked or cycled a quarter of a mile to the bus stop, then three miles to the boys school which ran a small private class for local girls. We walked up a hill to a hut, heated by a central stove. The lav was outside. We wore itchy tweed skirts and long socks. I always got chilblains and was cold all the time in the winter, including at the posh boarding school I went to aged 12.

1930s. My chum and I were forbidden to climb the hill to the quarry pond, a beautiful but dangerous place. But we went there just the same. We were forbidden to go down to the river Tweed to play but we went there just the same to catch minnows.

I stole an egg from someone's hen pen, by squeezing through the wire netting and then the hens' tiny door into their shed where the nests were. My mother made me take the same risk again to put the egg back in the hen's nest.

I was born in 1957 and started infants school in 1962. The school was around a mile from our house. We lived in a large village. I must admit that most mothers walked their children to school and chatted at the school gates. I don't remember anyone walking to school on their own at the age of 5, although some were escorted by older siblings. I'm quite surprised at the number of posters who were catching buses etc alone at that age. I did however always get the bus alone into town when I was 11 and started senior school.

An old lady who looked like a witch lived at the corner. We were scared of her and used to shout here's the witch.
I probably look like her now!

As an add-on to what I said further up thread about my children walking back home from the school bus in the 1990s/early 2000s, I’m not sure I would feel okay letting them do that nowadays. The walk from the secondary school bus was a couple of miles long, through our nearest village and it was safe then. Nowadays, we have become part of a much-hyped and busy tourist route so there is no knowing who might be around. Even in our remote spot, modern life has caught up with us.

S itting on the bar of my dad's going to school at 4yrs.
Putting old pennies on the railway track for the the train to flatten!
Beating the older girls who put my head down the lav. at school with my little umbrella, when I caught up with them. Of course had to see the headmistress with my mum. Luckily, when she heard the whole story she said she would have done just the same. Dread to think what would happen today. I was about 7yrs. at the time

I was smacked by my mum for laughing at a man who was standing in his front garden waving his willy at us. I was holding hands with mum when she whacked me round the head and pulled me down the road as fast as she could. I had no idea what was going on, I was only four. I got another smack because mum told me to stop crying and I couldn't. Parenting was rather different back in the 1950s.