Who else remembers the joy of the unsupervised childhood?
Parents: Let your kids out to play
Parents: Let your kids out to play
(John Mac Ghlionn, The Blaze) - My childhood had a simple structure: Leave the house, come back when hungry.
Nobody tracked my location. Nobody scheduled my fun. I roamed a small Irish village with a rotating gang of kids, knocking on doors to collect whoever was free, wandering fields we didn’t own, climbing trees we absolutely shouldn’t have.
Our treehouse — built from stolen timber, held together, technically, by two bent nails — would have given a structural engineer a full breakdown. We were enormously proud of it.
Bumps and bruises
There were scuffles. Real ones, occasionally bloody, always brief. Someone would throw a punch over some perceived injustice. A disputed goal, a broken rule, an insult that landed a little too cleanly. Five minutes later, we’d be back at it, whatever it was that day.
No adults mediated. No one processed feelings. The fight resolved itself because the game needed bodies, and everyone knew it. You learned, quickly, that…