My best friend and I would play "house" all day long. We'd have some crazy stories. A lot of times we would play "spies" and would save the world from the Soviets. But even as we were saving the world, we had our babies on our hips. Whatever the story was, we had our babies with us.

There's NO WAY I'd let my kids run the neighborhood today like we did, back then. It's a different world. Now we go to the Y and have play dates at the park, and such.[/quote]

I agree that no way would I let my grandkids run around the neighborhood like we used to. They are not even allowed in the back yard without someone with them. The world they are growing up in has changed so much and not for the better. Kids just aren't safe anymore. We used to play at the park a block away and run all over the neighborhood. Played a lot of swing tag, jacks, jump rope and double dutch. We'd be gone all day and only show up for meals and at night when dad whistled all the kids in the neighborhood knew it was time to go in.

All of the above except ice skating. We sure had fun and friends galore.

You guys are bringing back a lot of fond memories for me. We played kick the can, hide n seek, ice skated, rode horses, we played cards a lot too. It isn't a game, but I had a secret closet that I put all my dolls in and set up nice little school for them and taught them all things I learned!

It is sad to think how things have changed, but perhaps something good can be had for the close supervision parents have to administer for the kids today!

It was such a different time then when I grew up in the 50's and 60's. I played most of the things already mentioned, but the one thing that's in my mind is that we played OUTSIDE. We were out all day long and it seemed like there were always alot of kids to play with. I live in a subdivision now of about 1,000+ houses, and even though almost every house has a "swing set" (now they are made of wood and are pretty expensive) I hardly ever see children playing outside.

I was addicted to Paper Dolls,,,had shoeboxes full of them.

I agree about the lightning bugs. It's all the development taking over the fields. They have no where to breed anymore. We played freeze tag, Mother May I?, Simon Says, hopscotch, Jacks, climbed trees, and caught tadpoles at "The Big Ditch" which was really a stream until they paved the thing. Then, no more tadpoles or fish or turtles to catch.

Every one of these games sound so familar. I was a child in a coal camp and so there were lots of children. My folks were very strick holiness and they did not allow us to play with children whose parents smoked or used 'bad' words. So, I did the quite stuff alone, mostly. My favorite was to stand under the apple trees and try to catch the fallng apples in a basket. We had several tomato baskets that we used and in the fall we tried to see who could catch the most leaves. We pulled up daisies and chained them together to see who could make the longest chain before mom called for a mealtime. making mud pies and playing house, my husband was usually a chair and he would hold the baby while I fried the eggs! No video games nor tv shows back then.......pure imagination.

Ghosts in the Graveyard, flashlight tag, running through the sprinkler during the summer.

Also rode my bike everywhere. Had friends in the country that I would visit, not that the town I lived in was very big. But they lived a couple of miles from town.

Wow. What great memories.

I don't think things are that different today - I think it is the perception that the world is a more dangerous place. Faces on milk cartons, Amber Alerts, 24 hour news channels,we hear about it more and sooner.
We had a child molester living across the street from us, I remember my mum sitting us down and explaining it to us. This was 50 years ago. Another kid who used to baby sit in the neighborhood was also a child molester.

We hear nowadays about how many millions of kids are "missing" every year - 99% of them are non-custodial parent abductions - not stranger abductions.


PS - how do you play Ghosts in the Graveyard - that sounds fun!

Plus there were no cell phones, so there was no way for parents to keep in touch with their kids 24/7 unless they kept them in sight.

I think kids today suffer greatly from being overly supervised and scheduled. Spontaneous, undirected play, is an important part of a kid's development. I cringe when I see 5 and 6 year olds on an organized sports team, what is wrong with just turning them loose in a field with a ball and letting them make something up?