When I was in kindergarten, I walked a half mile to school, each way.
We would gather other kids in the neighborhood as we passed their homes on route, until we reached school and our group would be 15-20 kids.
When I was five I had about 20 square miles of open prairie as my own personal playground that I shared with about ten other kids. We rode bikes, motorcycles, camped out, hunted for tarantulas and red racers, had BB Gun Wars (one pump... one pump only... yeah right) and had a blast. It was my home away from home from age five until we moved when I was twelve. We had to dodge teenagers who were out there smoking and riding their own motorcycles and would beat the crap out of us if they caught us, we stayed away from the underpass because there was a scary guy living under it, and feral dogs. We had broken bones from crashes and falls, bloodied noses and busted lips from fighting with each other, and several cases of dehydration (Colorado summers are no joke). Good times. The scariest thing that happened to us was playing in “caves” that were literally washouts between the berm of a gully and the other side of the berm. My dad very quickly put a stop to that. We had no idea how much dirt was over our heads and what would’ve happened had they collapsed. Letting a five-year-old walk a couple of blocks to a pond in a gated community with security... c’mon. Hemming mama up like that... I sincerely hope this backfires on everyone who had a hand in getting paper put on her.