What happened to unstructured summers?

Mpls (red)Star Tribune ^ | 6/21/02 | ROBERT KLOSE

[Valin]

Whatever happened to those long, hot, aimless days of summer, when playmates were always an arm's length away and there were no adults directing our activities?

When we poured into the streets early in the morning and romped until well past sundown, returning home only to stoke our little furnaces with bologna sandwiches and Kool-Aid?

[Valin]

Alas that was then, this is now

[goodieD]

Thanks for the memories.

[SouthernFreebird]

No way can my children head out the door and return hours later.....sadly alot of children don't return. The perverts steal our children so we have to have safe places for them to play.


Summer camp is about it and even then you still worry about the pervs molesting them at camp.

Parents have to work during summer and can't just leave the kids to play stick ball or roller skate unattended... So I think most parent just want their children to have some fun activities in the time they have and organize in that way.

We do what we can and adapt to our suroundings.

[Dialup Llama]

Kids are too busy at their computer cram camps so they can attain the joy of being an overworked unix admin who gets kicked to the curb at a moments notice.

[DoughtyOne]

Strange hugh. I thought socialization, playing with your contemporaries was very important. Wasn't that why home schooling was supposed to be so bad. So summers and playing with the neighbors should be of prime importance.

[hangin' chad]

making small tepees out of branches in my backyard.

The thought of doing this hadn't crossed my mind in the last 25 years...but this sentence brought it all back like a revelation. Great article. My neighbor and I were just talking about this subject this afternoon...how parents today want to be involved and supervise (or have someone else supervise)everything their children are doing. I am so happy when I see kids just being kids on a long summer afternoon. Thanks for the memories.

[Lennie]

Yup. Grew up in Sioux City, Iowa in the 50's. What's the difference? DRUGS!!!!

A kid then could go anywhere and the parents didn't have a worry. Now, a parent has to be concerned about their child's every encounter.

[Momaw Nadon]

I long for the days when my biggest concern was what game to play.

I live near the ocean and had fun just playing with rocks, or trying to catch insects in my garden.

It would be nice to once again not have a care in the world.

[Lizavetta]

I suppose I am hopelessly behind the times. At the very least, I am hopelessly outnumbered by the parents around me who are busy filling out registration forms to plot out their kids' summers in exact degrees, minutes and seconds.

There, there, Valin....not to worry.

Some kids still have it pretty unstructured. My four will be riding dirt bikes, shooting guns and arrows (Dad-supervised), playing with their hot wheels in the dirt, making gravel cities in the dirt, swimming in the lake, hugging their chickens, re-enacting Harry Potter scenes with our old brooms, helping in the garden, going to the library, avoiding camps at all costs, camping out in the back of Dad's truck with sodas and glow-sticks, watching Kirk Douglas in "Ulysses" and Steve Reeves in "The Trojan Horse", playing with the dogs, their Legos, and each other, reading lots and lots and lots of books, and making batches of cookies now and then.

All the while reminding us how bored they are.

[arm958]

No way can my children head out the door and return hours later.....sadly alot of children don't return. The perverts steal our children so we have to have safe places for them to play.

It depends on where you live. Like the author of this post, I have great memories of unfettered, simple summers in my New Jersey youth. My daughters (ages 10 and 13) now enjoy the same sort of summers. When you live in a small Wyoming town 100+ miles from the nearest interstate, the possibility of perverts kidnapping your children isn't even on the radar screen. That's not to say it couldn't happen, but a lightning strike is more likely. BTW, my wife and I would probably be considered over-protective by most people's standards.

[SamAdams76]

Great article. It brings back fond memories of my summer vacations as a child. I'll never forget the feeling of the last day of school and having a seemingly endless number of summer days stretching in front of me. I did go to Boy Scout camp and Bible Study camp some of those years but the rest of the time, it was definitely unstructured. We would stay outside from the time we got up in the morning until the streetlights came on at night. Mothers would hand out peanut butter sandwiches and "bug juice" (Kool-Aid) through the windows. Going into the house was not an option unless you wanted to have a broom thrust into your hands and be put to work. I remember just playing in the yards all up and down the street. In those days, you had free rein of all the yards, people didn't seem to mind in those days if you ran through their yards. I also remember marathon games of Risk or Monopoly being played on a picnic table all day long. Kids don't play board games anymore. Then there was the endless games of stickball, whiffle ball, kickball, etc.

We kids always found ways to entertain ourselves and adults were pretty much out of the mix. My parents usually sent me down to Alabama to stay with my grandmother on the farm for a few weeks every summer. Those were great times. I got to hang out with my cousins all day and we'd find all sorts of adventure. We'd hunt snakes, feed flies to spiders, stir up fire ants, or just wander out in the woods to fish or swim in the creek that ran back there. The summer I was 13, my grandmother handed me a .22 rifle and some cartridges and told me it was my rifle for whenever I came down there to visit. (Of course, I had learned all about how to use one on previous visits.) Still, that would never happen today - even in Alabama. Things are different now.

School vacation started in my neighborhood last week and the streets are completely empty of kids. They are all inside watching TV, playing Nintendo, etc. I enrolled my kids in several weeks of camp only because there is nothing for them to do around here. I don't want them sitting inside all day like the others.

[tubebender]

Our 13 year Grand son just got out of school and cancelled his summer camp plans. I told him that this summer will be vey special in his memories as he does the things every 13 year old should do in the good and wholesome sense of child hood. We will be learning to fly fish together and he will bring his friends over to shoot paint balls and ride his motor cycle and my ATV. He will help us around the yard and earn a few bucks. And I will do the things with him that I didn't have the time to do with his Mother and Uncle...

[Valin]

That's great! It does my heart good to know that some kids still get to be kids. We used to spend our summers playing (among others) Ulysses, and Voyage to the center of the earth. Not to mention baseball games that when on for weeks at a time.

[gas_dr]

After living in Minnesota for 8 years, and more recently departing, I know the answer to this...BECAUSE THE DFL OUTLAWED FUN. Games might hurt our self esteem, so we won't keep score. Fire Hyrdrants -- oh no, can't open them, gotta save water for the enviroment. Thunderstorms, outlawed, ozone from lightning might ruin the atmosphere.

I moved to Florida 8 weeks ago and heard Governor Turnbuckle is not running again. Any comments on what Soucheray or Jason Lewis had to say about this? I really miss that part of minnesota -- KSTP was the best...

[sistergoldenhair]

We kids always found ways to entertain ourselves...
because there is nothing for them to do around here

Growing up, the kids in my neighborhood always found things to do.
Parents were concerned about the amount of free time, since there was nothing to do.

[PresbyRev]

Fine article and was privileged to have experienced much
the same growing up in suburban Detroit and semi-rural
SouthCarolina in the '70's and early '80's. Happily, this is similar to what my children, 8 & 4 are experiencing now in West Virginia, still a relatively safe & fun place for
children to be children, not miniature adults.

[SonnyBubba]

Even though I grew up in
a small Alabama town, I can
relate. Great writing!!!!!!

[Dakmar]

Your kids have it made. I still enjoy a lot of those activities, especially hot-wheels stuff, and I'm pushing forty!

[monkey]

On the last day of school, we safety patrols were treated to a day at a fair/amusement park. All the rides were free (before the admission only format had come to amusement parks), all the kids were other patrols my age, and we had only the freedom of summer ahead of us. We were too young to know the truth about people, and we had many small mysteries to uncover over the summer, about bees nests, fishing and tire swings over water, walking miles to the store, sleeping out and playing TV tag.

Except for the day years later when we drank bergin with the boy who later killed his father and hasn't spoken since, it was the grandest day of my youth.