Loved spending the night at my maternal grandparents. They loved to pull their bed onto the back porch in the warmer months and sleeping outside. Many thought they were crazy. They would make a pallet on blocks so I could sleep there also. We would just lay there and be lullabied to sleep by the night sounds. One night a skunk woke us up. Grandpa didn't know just how near he was so we ended up going inside to be on the safe side. If they had a hard time sleeping in the winter, they would crack a window about an inch or two so they could get to sleep.

The question started "if you could give a memory". Are you giving memories? Every Sunday my Mom (97) starts the week (besides going to church) by sending an email to all her off-spring - 5 generations and over 120 people. She wishes happy birthdays to each person having a birthday in the following week, gives the general news of the week, gives an inspirational thought for the week, and shares a family story (she's a genealogist) or a personal story from her life. I have learned so much about my mother and my family history. We all treasure these emails and get very nervous if we haven't heard from her by noon! Some of us "reply all" every week and some reply occasionally. Though we are scattered all over the nation/world these emails keep us close. Maybe this would work in your family.

Playing outside without worrying until dark, seeing cherry blossoms growing up in Japan, beautiful! !

I'm 55 and no grands here. but I remember playing outside till the lights went on and being able to roam the neighborhood without a care of someone snatching you. I remember when I was 8, my mom leaving my sister outside the grocery store with the other carriages of sleeping babies. You'd have your kid stolen now or the cops called. that's how it was back then.

Several have already written what I thought of first - playing outside, no adults, just being with friends. And I lived my first 9 years in New York City! We were safe, everyone on the block knew every kid. My father had a car, always a spot in front of our building, and if it rained my friends and I would just get in the car to play, it was never locked. The freedoms of childhood continued when we moved to NJ. Kids would be somewhere in town with their friends, parents never worried, and when the 8 p.m. siren went off that meant time to start for home. Parents walking you to and from school? Maybe the first few days of kindergarten. After that, you walked with your friends.

This is the one that means the most to me also ,,adding to it growing up in the country where we leaned the meaning of working together for the good of the family.

Walking up a country road picking and eating wild black berries and huckleberries. Playing all day all over town without worry. Spring days in my mothers yard with rows of blooming lilacs with every color of butterfly's fluttering around and the sweet smell floating in the air.

Let me recommend a book by the renowned author Katherine Paterson called "Stories of my Life". She grew up in China, went to Japan as a missionary and then became world-famous as a multi-Newberry award winner with many other international awards. A friend took her idea and wrote stories about her own growing-up experiences (67 pages) for her grandchildren. It might encourage you to write down those precious stories! Good luck.

I would give every child 1 solid week with nothing electronic, so they could learn what childhood should be, fun and innocent.

My best childhood memory was climbing my DU yellow plum tree, and eating sun warm plums....mmmmmm! He also had a huge Collie dog, that would keep everyone away from the tree, because I would throw him plums. I did not know until many years later, that DU never figured out why eveytime we visited, his big collie spent the next two days with diarhea! Lol!

Sleeping under line dried cotton sheets that were starched and ironed.
Gathering corn as a family, cleaning and freezing it for winter. That corn moved from field to freezer in less than an hour with a big pot cooked on the stove for us to eat in celebration of a job well done and anticipation of good winter eating.
Pond or river fishing with fish for supper.
Watermelon on the picnic table outside. Pass the salt please!
Picking blackberries for jelly and a cobbler if we were lucky.
Doing yard work every Thanksgiving when we finished cooking and waiting for the men to come home from hunting. And waiting, and waiting, and waiting!
Learning to sew on Mama's treadle.