Can someone remind me how kids kept themselves occupied before screens?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Reading/ being read to. Playing. Helping around the house. Napping. Drawing.

I think the idea that a kid old enough to read isn't old enough to go outside without Mom is a pretty new one. Both because we've pushed the age of reading down, and because we've pushed the age of playing outside along up.

[Anonymous]

We played. Outside. With friends. Something no one is allowed to do now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Virtually no talk ever of a child being "anxious" or a chld needing to be medicated for anxiety. I suspect being out in the sunshine for hours was somehow protective against this.

Kids learned to figure things out on their own.

Ha ha ha ha. No.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Virtually no talk ever of a child being "anxious" or a chld needing to be medicated for anxiety. I suspect being out in the sunshine for hours was somehow protective against this.

Kids learned to figure things out on their own.

Np. You are wrong. Kids had anxiety but no one talked about it. They were the kid who grew up to sell medicate with booze or drugs.

[Anonymous]

Depended on your financial and living situation. If you were on a farm, there was space to roam around and be cared for by older siblings. If mom was working the farm, she would carry the little one on her back a lot. There was also a lot of sitting on the floor crying while mom and dad worked, if dad was a factory worker living in slums. And then probably around 4 years old running around the slums following your siblings and such. By young age on the farm, they would start helping out. If you were wealthy, then you would have help that would take the kid to walks until they could run around. Raising your kids, for most people back in the past meant raising your kids, as in give them some food and hope they don't end up dead. Nobody excepted that we should be entertainment, teacher, driver, cook, shopping assistant, work day and night in factory and on the farm and play the piano to the kid.

[Anonymous]

early 1980s - I was playing outside with my friends until dusk. I don't even remember coming home for lunch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think there was a lot more parental neglect. Older kids probably did a lot of the childcare. Kids told to go off and play or do chores. No one worrying about whether they were getting too much screen time or falling behind in math or reading.

There was no screen time so no one worried about it. If you fell behind in math or reading you repeated a grade. No other options. I lived in 3 areas and don't recall parental neglect.
There were large families before birth control so hand me downs were common.

How old were you that TV wasn't an option?

I was born in the 60's and my parents were the "strict" parents, and had a rule of one hour of TV a day per child. Which mean that I got to watch my hour, my sister's hour, my brother's hour, the evening news, whatever show(s) my mom watched in the evening.

We didn't have screentime in the car or a restaurant like kids do now, but we had plenty of it at home!

[Anonymous]

We are managing just fine with about 1.5 hours of screen time a day, and only 1/2 an hour of that is a TV show, the rest is either a math or reading game or a dance/music/yoga class.

My kids spent an hour outside today digging up the yard.

[Anonymous]

Probably watching their younger siblings. Per 1950s big families were common. Mom had to wash dishes and clothes by hand and/or hang things to dry, meals took a lot of time to prepare (no instapot), there was mending and sewing to do, canning and gardening, you get the picture. Mom was not playing board games with kids all day long. They fended for themselves and watched the younger ones and did chores.

[Anonymous]

There is a LOT of idealizing on this thread.

I grew up in the 70s, so there was TV but nothing was really on most of the time, and no video games or internet yet. I remember being really sad and lonely much of the time.

Adults did not play with you. Pretty much ever. Sometimes grandparents would if you had really great grandparents. Adults would not drive you to see a friend, so you were dependent on whatever houses you could walk to. If your neighbors were empty nesters or had teens, you were SOL. Maybe at the height of the baby boom there were hordes of kids wandering the streets playing stick ball or whatever, but I don't think that was true for most decades. (My dad, who is much older, had ONE kid in his town. He walked miles to a school that had a total of 10 kids in the WHOLE SCHOOL.)

I read a lot. Like a freaky amount. But, honestly, if you read more than 4-5 hours a day, it gets kind of depressing. During the summer, the days were really long.

I had a lot of chores, but that was also depressing. I don't think they were fun chores like milking a cow or picking apples from a tree. They were depressing chores, like trying to scrub the crap off the bathroom grout. Or dusting the legs of all the furniture.

Sombody mentioned crafts. I feel like that was maybe a child of the 80's. I don't remember any stores like Michael's or Hobby Lobby existing before the mid-80s. I don't remember anybody getting things like craft kits for their birthday, or working on crafts. (The only thing I can remember is coloring books, and maybe paint by number sets.) Most parents weren't buying things like craft sets for kids. There wasn't really a widespread belief that it was parents' job to come up with things for kids to do. My grandmother sometimes had me do knitting or such with her, but my mom certainly never taught me anything, and I don't remember anyone "crafting" in the way we talk about today. Crafts also would have been kind of inconsistent with the adult worldview back then, which was that kids should not make messes in the house.

Someone else mentioned playgrounds. I don't think I ever remember seeing a playground in the 70s! Some of the elementary schools had playgrounds, but they were not really fun like the playgrounds nowadays. They were just basically a metal slide that your legs stuck to, some swings, and maybe some metal thing that spun around if you were really lucky. Before they invented heavy duty plastics in the 80s or so (and before adults became convinced that it was important for kids to have someplace to play), playgrounds weren't really that much of a thing most places. (I'm sure someone from someplace fancy like NYC will point out that they had some beautiful playground in Central Park in the 60s....most of America only saw that on Sesame Street.)

I had siblings but they were all older and didn't want to play with me anyway, so not that different from being an only child. Even if families were bigger, that didn't necessarily make for "instant fun" -- just like today, siblings don't always want to play with each other. Increasing the family size from 2-3 to 5-8 doesn't really solve that problem. I spent a lot of time just talking to my stuffed animals. Or playing board games against myself, which is not actually that fun. Especially if it's a game like Monopoly.

I remember when Pong was invested. Kids would spend HOURS just watching the damn dot go back and forth across the screen. Yes, that's how bored we were. We were desperate for entertainment. (I did NOT get a Pong. I was jealous.)

Anyway, I feel like people are always quick to say "Oh, it was so great before. No kids were depressed or anxious! Kids all played together and didn't bully or exclude! Everyone was creative and came up with fun things to do that didn't involve their parents giving them any help or support to do any of it!" That's just not the case. Lots of kids were sad, or anxious. If kids weren't anxious, why do you think they created Grover? Or Charlie Brown and Linus? Those characters were all created to help children who were anxious deal with their feelings and not feel so alone. When Charlie Brown said "I got a rock," there were a lot of kids out there feeling like they got a metaphorical rock.

[Anonymous]

unsupervised

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is a LOT of idealizing on this thread.

I grew up in the 70s, so there was TV but nothing was really on most of the time, and no video games or internet yet. I remember being really sad and lonely much of the time.

Adults did not play with you. Pretty much ever. Sometimes grandparents would if you had really great grandparents. Adults would not drive you to see a friend, so you were dependent on whatever houses you could walk to. If your neighbors were empty nesters or had teens, you were SOL. Maybe at the height of the baby boom there were hordes of kids wandering the streets playing stick ball or whatever, but I don't think that was true for most decades. (My dad, who is much older, had ONE kid in his town. He walked miles to a school that had a total of 10 kids in the WHOLE SCHOOL.)

I read a lot. Like a freaky amount. But, honestly, if you read more than 4-5 hours a day, it gets kind of depressing. During the summer, the days were really long.

I had a lot of chores, but that was also depressing. I don't think they were fun chores like milking a cow or picking apples from a tree. They were depressing chores, like trying to scrub the crap off the bathroom grout. Or dusting the legs of all the furniture.

Sombody mentioned crafts. I feel like that was maybe a child of the 80's. I don't remember any stores like Michael's or Hobby Lobby existing before the mid-80s. I don't remember anybody getting things like craft kits for their birthday, or working on crafts. (The only thing I can remember is coloring books, and maybe paint by number sets.) Most parents weren't buying things like craft sets for kids. There wasn't really a widespread belief that it was parents' job to come up with things for kids to do. My grandmother sometimes had me do knitting or such with her, but my mom certainly never taught me anything, and I don't remember anyone "crafting" in the way we talk about today. Crafts also would have been kind of inconsistent with the adult worldview back then, which was that kids should not make messes in the house.

Someone else mentioned playgrounds. I don't think I ever remember seeing a playground in the 70s! Some of the elementary schools had playgrounds, but they were not really fun like the playgrounds nowadays. They were just basically a metal slide that your legs stuck to, some swings, and maybe some metal thing that spun around if you were really lucky. Before they invented heavy duty plastics in the 80s or so (and before adults became convinced that it was important for kids to have someplace to play), playgrounds weren't really that much of a thing most places. (I'm sure someone from someplace fancy like NYC will point out that they had some beautiful playground in Central Park in the 60s....most of America only saw that on Sesame Street.)

I had siblings but they were all older and didn't want to play with me anyway, so not that different from being an only child. Even if families were bigger, that didn't necessarily make for "instant fun" -- just like today, siblings don't always want to play with each other. Increasing the family size from 2-3 to 5-8 doesn't really solve that problem. I spent a lot of time just talking to my stuffed animals. Or playing board games against myself, which is not actually that fun. Especially if it's a game like Monopoly.

I remember when Pong was invested. Kids would spend HOURS just watching the damn dot go back and forth across the screen. Yes, that's how bored we were. We were desperate for entertainment. (I did NOT get a Pong. I was jealous.)

Anyway, I feel like people are always quick to say "Oh, it was so great before. No kids were depressed or anxious! Kids all played together and didn't bully or exclude! Everyone was creative and came up with fun things to do that didn't involve their parents giving them any help or support to do any of it!" That's just not the case. Lots of kids were sad, or anxious. If kids weren't anxious, why do you think they created Grover? Or Charlie Brown and Linus? Those characters were all created to help children who were anxious deal with their feelings and not feel so alone. When Charlie Brown said "I got a rock," there were a lot of kids out there feeling like they got a metaphorical rock.

This is so, so true. I can't remember ever going to playgrounds. There was a lot of time unsupervised and honestly, a lot of bad stuff went down if there were kids left together. It was not idyllic at all.

[Anonymous]

My sons are currently 27 and 28. My boys first electronic device was the Gameboy which they received in 3rd or 4th grade. They didn't have a phone until high school and this was all quite normal in my upper middle class neighborhood. I am exhausted hearing the younger parents discuss the weekend activities, not even to mention $$ camps. During the elementary years, rec sports was the norm. In between, they played outside or had playdates at a friend's house. You guys entertain MUCH more than I ever did.

[Anonymous]

When I was 5 I was allowed to play all over the family farm by myself for hours at a time.

It was glorious.

Today's helicopter moms don't let their kids have any independence

[Anonymous]

When I was younger it was spending a lot of time babysitting younger sibling
That was ok some of the time, not fun. Unpaid work, not fair on the younger sibling
No teenager is ready to play mini mommy when they are not the parent, I still sometimes feel guilty for not having more patience

With my kids we enjoyed baking cookies together
I buy puzzles and we take days doing a 500 piece puzzle

I sometimes enjoyed a coloring book when I was younger. My brother had lots of Legos