As a child, were you allowed to do things at an earlier age than the other kids in your neighborhood?

Oh god… I grew up on a 80 acre farm.

Every summer we would do “hay”. My dad let me drive a 2 Ton truck (automatic) while the bailer drove behind it shooting bails of hay on the truck that teenage boys would stack 15 feet high on the back of the truck. I was 8 years old.

We had two creeks running through our farm. My dad had a lot of lumber he would let us cut unsupervised with circular saws and table saws to build forts in the trees running along our creeks. Cut the lumber, grab some nails and a hammer, build a tree-house hanging over a creek, and be back by dinner.

We had a big barn that was about 30 feet high. 75% of the barn was bails of hay stacked to the rafters. The remainder was broken up bails of hay we would have to shift to the cows every morning before school. So we would climb up into the rafters and jump into the broken up bails. Like dropping into a itchy swimming pool.

Here is where we lived – Rectangle roof.

When I was five I was often complained by my mom that I was too much into cartoons, because my neighbors’ daughter watched soap operas and could start conversations about those movies (which my mom considered more matured than sticking to cartoons all day). I remember being “soap opera trained” at one point by her. Needless to say I understood nothing.

I can now watch and understand film-noir. If only she knew.

I used to watch SNL, too. Before I was in high school, I had also watched: Jaws, Halloween, and the Exorcist. But none of these movies scared me as much as this. The only other thing I can think of is that I used to drink wine during dinners.

Nothing. I wasn’t even allowed to spend the night with a friend for a long time.

My mom used to let me stay up late watching TV with her when my dad was at sea.

I never had a curfew. I came home at a fairly reasonable hour on my own until I turned 19. Then I turned hellion and stayed out all night.

My daughter is 4 and I let her play Minecraft and Terraria. She’s too young to really play them and know what’s going on, but she has fun doing it.

When I you young during the summers I would pack a bag lunch in the morning and spend the day roaming the 200’s of acres of woods surrounding our house. late afternoon I had to start back so I’d be in ear-shot of the iron dinner bell.
It was a different era. I’ve told this story before, but when I was a kid my mom would stand me next to the door of the discount store. One day she came back, and was furious because I was sitting in a chair, looking at a book. The cashiers calmed her – I was such a good kid they had designated a chair and books for me to use when I came in.
I remember one time (probably pre-teen) I fell down, jammed a stick in my leg, and it broke off with about ½” sticking out. They were good with me pulling the stick out, disinfecting and putting a bandaide on it.

One of the best times we had as a kid was when my grandmother would let us play in the gutters during/after a rain. Her street had been a streambed and the water could easily reach 1½ feet or more. We’d make paper boats and otherwise play in the deluge. She also let us walk to the store all the time. Probably 14–15 blocks, round trip.

This is different now, but other kids my age could do it in my neighborhood. We walked EVERYWHERE. We walked to school, we walked to the library (and went in alone! now kids can’t be alone in the libraries under 12, but I was 7 and going there myself and picking up books) We walked to the YMCA, we walked to Murphy’s and bought candy.

Most of my childhood memories involve roaming the sidewalks all over the small town I lived in.

Oh yeah and we walked to each other’s houses. This “playdate” thing is kind of silly and sad at the same time. We never needed playdates as a kid. Kids just roamed the neighborhood knocking on doors to see who could come out to play.

My Mom put me in charge of watching my younger sister, and just turned us loose in the neighborhood. This was in Florida, and we had a canal in the back, that led to Tampa bay. It rose and fell with the tides. No fence. Yep. I was 5 and I was in charge of keeping an eye out for my 2 year old sister, no adult supervision what-so-ever. I will never forget the time she fell off the sea wall. Fortunately, the tide happened to be out. If it hadn’t been my folks might have lost 2 kids that day.
Our neighbors had an indoor pool. I fished my little sister out of that pool more than once.
As an adult, I do not understand why they even moved there.

She also sent me to the store that was probably a half a mile away. I had to cross a very busy 2 lane highway. Once I went with a friend. She was just too cool. She went and stood in the middle of the highway, on the yellow line, while cars whizzed past her on either side. I watched from the shoulder, thinking she was stupid. We were 6 and 7 years old.

She and I also set out on a boat to reach an island in the middle of Tampa bay. Mom packed us a picnic lunch. No life jackets. And there were probably alligators on the island. Smh.

Oh, and I watched the Godfather at the theater when I was just 13.

My siblings and I had the advantage in that our parents were so busy working to support us, that we were probably doing a LOT of things that might have raised eyebrows. It was a much different era back then. But I have a story.

When I was 11, my grandmother bought a brand new lawnmower, and I was awarded the privilege of mowing her considerable lawn every couple of weeks. One day, her next door neighbor offered me 5 bucks to mow her lawn as well. Well to make a long story short, without any thought beforehand, I stumbled into a considerable business mowing people’s lawns. By the end of the summer, I had not only built the business to the point that it eliminated my normal funtime, but when school began in September my weekends were devoted damned near from sunrise to sunset pushing the mower around. My poor parents had no idea about the scope of the enterprise, though my sisters were just the sort to snitch me out were it not for the fact that I was such a ready opportunity for extortion in the form of “loans”. My folks were just gratified that I was doing something productive, though they did notice that the phone was always tied up with incoming calls for me. I have to leave now, but I’ll get back to this.

I went to a Deep Purple Concert when I was probably in 6th grade. I went with the people who ran the recreation at the park across the street. I was way to young.

@Judi At least it was a decent band. When I was that age, my friend and I went alone to a Brian Adams concert. Brian Adams. BLEAH.

No, I think it was all pretty age appropriate. There was a group of 5 or 6 that grew up and ran together in a very suburban environment that still had plenty of fields around them.

Nope. I was highly sheltered.
Occasionally my Dad would slip and let me watch an “Adult” program (like “All in the Family” or “Sanford and Son”..ooh, and lots and lots of “Hogan’s Heros” which I didn’t really care for..) ..but he was less on-board with the extreme religious/natural food upbringing. Unfortunately, he was a pretty absent parent (worked a lot, not involved much in our younger years).
My Mom, our primary caregiver was the one who (overly) sheltered us. Good reading was anything we got from the Christian book store (age appropriate!) and we were permitted to only listen to only non-secular music like this.
To this day I know ever word to each of those “Agapeland” songs. (Which I do not see as a positive, BTW.)

Not so much “allowed” as “turned a blind eye to”.

My mother was too wrapped up in her personal dramas and my dad was super easy going (and often high on weed). I was a latch key kid at age 10 and they worked a lot.

I figured out early that as long as I kept good grades (which, frankly, was far too easy) and was home in time for dinner, I could pretty much do anything I wanted — and did.

There was no censorship at all, as far as I’m aware. When watching movies, our parents would advise us to cover our eyes if there was a chance we’d get scared – sex scenes and other mildly “inappropriate” material, we just watched. I think that stopped us from considering sex taboo. We never turned into giggling eight-year-olds out of embarrassment, not even when we were eight.

We also went on the first week-long holiday together when we were 16 and 13, respectively, along with two friends of the same age. No adult supervision at all. We stayed at a family-friendly holiday park the first year, then upgraded to living in a horse-drawn caravan for a week, camping out in the woods. We were just very trusted, I think. Which actually stopped us from needing to “act out” – self-fulfilling prophecy.

Part of SNL was not just the material, which wasn’t that huge if a deal I don’t think, but the hour it was on. For most little kids it was past their bedtime. The fact that my girlfriend’s mom used to wake her up to watch it is the part I loved the most. She would have been around age 10 I think.

That’s what I remember. No parental supervision. When I was about 9 we went to visit my aunt and uncle who owned a cabin on an Oklahoma lake. We kids were all out swimming in the lake. There was a floating dock about 30 feet offshore. We swam out there and my cousins talked us into swimming down and coming up under that dock.
If it had been me, I would have been watching my kids….and I would have flat freaked out when they dove and didn’t come back up!

We went out another year, when I was about 14. Met some guy. With my parent’s permission, he took me on a boat ride…a flat bottom we paddled with oars. I barely escaped getting raped.

No supervision. I don’t know if it was all good or bad or right or wrong. We just learned to take care of ourselves.

I’m probably too scaredy cat about this, but I think anyone swimming—even adults should ideally have one “lifeguard” type person watching everyone swim. People don’t drown in the middle of the action with everyone watching. They tend to drown on the sidelines where nobody is watching.

I know you can’t really do that for a lake, but I just prefer it—even for adults—especially for adults if beer is involved.

Yeah, drowning is done quietly. My mom came to visit once. She rented a hotel room because it had a pool. The kids were swimming, I was idly watching. Suddenly….I couldn’t see Chris, who was about 3 at the time. I started looking around frantically…saw his head come up and go back under. He was going down for the 3rd time. I hauled him out.
He was scared and shaking and he said, “I couldn’t even say ‘Momma.’ ” About broke my heart.
Took 30 minutes to get him back in the pool, and he didn’t go in the deep end again.

I try to never swim alone. I’m a good swimmer, but my mom drummed it into my head. He old drains that don’t have the safety will pull an adult under and you drown if the water is above your head. What if you have a heart attack while swimming? It’s best to have a second person there. Buddy system.