Then my father was obsessed with where I was every minute. Example: He called the town police to find me when I wasn’t home by 5:30.

But I was always back inside for meals!

off, I knew it was about time for dinner. Thank you,

I had my bike, my skates, and my freedom. Being a kid was great.😊

🌈 Heaven

behind my house. Too scared to go out free ranging in the dark.

We wouldn't come home until it started to get dark or, in the summer, one of the kid's parents started yelling that dinner was ready. Then we'd all head home.

Dad at work
Mom at home
Kids at school or roaming the woods

My dad built our house in the oakland hills that he grew up playing in, so they advocated for that kind of play. (It was the late 70's-early 80's and there were also plenty of kids so we had a little group)...
But my mom was also pretty overprotective of me, she knew I was the "runt" of the kid group and my sister was not big on protecting me (she was the bully much of the time) so she'd hear me having trouble with them in the driveway and would conviently call me upstairs to "help" her bake cookies or something to get me out of the struggle...
She also insisted on driving us to school, no bus. and often was one of the 'parent drivers' on field trips.

But gosh! Do I have memories of roller skating in the neighbor's long driveway with one of the neighbor girls for HOURS. we'd meet at the tree af6ter Saturday morning cartoons and chores, and spend the day riding bikes, making rope swings, etc

In 1977, my Dad bought 40 acres in the redwoods, and we spent a lot of weekends up there - After breakfast, I'd pack a lunch and go into the woods and spend hours by myself sitting in the trees, singing to the animals like snow white.

God I had a really great childhood! Thanks, Mom & Dad

i was the 6th of 7. the older kids had more hovering, but not that much. at 5 my oldest sister once walked the mile to see her grandpa. pretty much mothered by that sister.
there were eyes all over the hood, tho. whether it was getting in trouble or getting hurt, there were many ppl watching over me.

my house was the 1 where the other kids liked to hang, tho. always food in the fridge, had a color tv early on. and a well stocked liquor cabinet!

the others. Thank you for the memories.

my 1st born, 1975, in my small hometown, used to love to go to the drug store for a paper, at 4. she’d get money for a candy bar. she used to go visit neighbors. she was 1 of those kids who cd talk to adults for hours.
the other 4, 10 yrs younger+, were raised in the big city. they werent feral enough, as far as i was concerned. but by their teen yrs, they were riding the cta, and had friends all over town.
middle child had a pager and then a cell phone, cuz it was the only way to keep track of her.

didnt know it then, but on the spectrum. he once refused to knock on the door of his buddy next door, knowing that another friend had brought his nintendo over.
i just let him b.

We all were. Those were definitely different times. I would be gone all day only going home to eat.

I don't remember even being asked "What did you do today?"

playing with Barbies.I didn't have a watch, but watching the sun and hearing the Mill siren you knew it was time to go home to eat,

boundaries but they were large enough to feel free.

We had a lot of open fields in and around our neighborhood with creeks to play in. Lots of good bicycle riding neighborhood streets that were totally safe then.

Once I hit about 5th grade that stopped because it was time for me to learn to be what the boys will be looking for, a good housewife. THAT was not MY plan so it was harder to have any fun but I managed to get some in. We had a woods right behind our house and my mother was terrified of it so that was a great option to hang alone and sing or just mess around until my Dad came home.

Especially when I inherited my brother's bike. My BFF and I went everywhere.

Four kids and mom in a 4 room apartment, she loved when we were all out.

In summer after corn got to tall for cultivating, beans no longer needed picking, hay was in and cows taken care of free range.😊

Half the time without shoes.

It is a miracle that we survived when I think about the places we used to play unsupervised.

Tons of fun. And of course Biking.

Especially in the summer, when we'd just have to be home for dinner. If we weren't, my mom would stand on the front porch and shout our names. But we did have one helicopter, our dog Poppy, a beagle-Sheltie mix, who was always dozing just in sight wherever our adventures took us. She had slowed down since the car-chasing days of her youth but always made sure she was around for our protection.

My dad was a navy officer so up to the age 13 I grew up on Navy baes which were fairly safe. On NAS Memphis, he had run of most of the base. There was a large, opened field in base housing where we’d meet up with other kids and play baseball and football as well as walking to and staying at the base pool all day during the summer. We’d stay outside from mid-morning until lunch, after lunch until our parents called us in for dinner, and then after dinner until it was time for bed. Often times, we’d sneak off-base by crawling under the base’s perimeter fence and walk and walk about a mile to the local 5-and-dime store for candy. The early 60s were were a good time to be a kid.

Much more explicit than any other kid I knew got.

My dad would be at work or night school or fishing and my mom would be hammering away at her typewriter, God save anyone who interrupted her.

We were expected to make our own breakfast and lunch, sometimes dinners, do our own laundry, and look after one another.

My parents grew up in a similar fashion, my mom in much more dangerous environments, either gritty urban environments or shipped off to her grandparents' ranch which was about as far away from civilization as you could get in the 48 states.

I guess my mom figured we were safe in the suburbs.

When we did spend family time together it was high quality time, especially travelling, which we did quite a lot of. My parents behaved much like feral children themselves when we were traveling, they never had any fixed itinerary.

We lived a few hundred feet from a big city park with baseball diamonds & basketball hoops.
We were there practically every day in the summer by the time we were 8. It was "Mom, I'm going to play baseball." & I was gone for a couple hours.
We weren't far, but none of us kids had parents who could see the park from the house.
By 9 or 10, we'd go bike riding though I doubt we ever got more than a couple miles from home.
I lived a mile or so from school and walked or rode my bike every day it wasn't winter cold or raining.
My parents wanted to know where I was, but there was no leash nor was there hovering.
Not sure if that's free range" or not.

Mom and dad both worked. Only caveat was we had to call them at work to let them know where we're going.

much limited to our cul-de-sac. One place out in the desert there was noplace to go unless I wanted to count tumbleweeds and avoid rattlers. Another place I was forbidden to cross the highway - US395, and was not tempted to break that rule: the town had a speed limit but cars ran down that road like there was no such thing as speed limits, and the town didn't have a PD to enforce anything (the town relied on the County Sheriff and his deputies, and it being the largest county in the US I expect they were spread too thin to pay all that much attention to speeders). Otherwise, I was pretty much all over the place, limited only by how long it would take me to get back home for meals.
Our boys were free range too, but nowadays, if I had my grandkids, no way in hell!

… “but don’t you dare get into any trouble!” (I didn’t.)

If we weren't in school, my parents usually had little idea where we were or how we got there.

of benign neglect. Both parents were always working and spent little time watching me.

More like 'There and Back Again'! (That was the name of the story that Bilbo Baggins had written in 'The Lord Of The Rings'. It is basically the story told in 'The Hobbit'.)

When I was around nine, my parents once were unable to find me. They drove around the wilderness looking for me. (We lived in the absolute sticks, so there was nothing but trees and a few farms.) They finally found me at a boy's house about ten miles from our place. They were not happy, but had never said not to ride ten miles away from the house, so...

I was one of those 'ride my bike all day' types until I was around 13-14. I used to ride my bike 15 miles to take drivers ed.

I mis being able to do that anymore. Very much.