Did your parent(s) consider it their responsibility to keep you entertained?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Did your parent(s) “play with” you/your siblings? I don’t mean playing catch, Monopoly, cards, or going fishing occasionally, but play with you the way children play.

When I was a kid (born 1948), parents and children were considered almost separate species. Kids did kid things, which they were expected to come up with, such as build forts, play tag, pick-up baseball, hop scotch, play dress-up, play dolls, play cowboys, work puzzles, read, or otherwise amuse yourself. Parents sat and and talked about things kids didn’t care about, smoked, did paperwork, chores, had grown-up parties to which children were not invited, and entertained themselves separate from the children. Not that families never did anything together, but generally, their worlds were separate. And both groups seemed to prefer it that way.

If you were bored as a child, you were expected to find something to do, lest you be handed some chore to do. It was not your parent’s job to keep you amused; that was your job. In fact, as a child, one wanted to keep parents out of our world.

A book came out in 1957 called Where Did You Go, Out, What Did You Do, Nothing

He thought kids were over-scheduled in 1957?? :smack:

This post was triggered by a comment on another thread to the effect that today it’s considered reprehensible to let your child out of your sight.

I’m not unequivocally lamenting the passage of the good ol’ days. Plenty about those days sucked large duck eggs. Really just asking about parents feeling that their child’s boredom is something they have a responsibility to fix.

Please indicate your age when replying. Thx.

2

46yo white male

Back In the Day, admitting you were bored got you pushed out the door.
“Go. Don’t come back until dinner.”

3

Eh, I guess my Dad did in a sense. He did lots of things with me. And while I’m sure part of his motivations was to do these things for me, it sure didn’t hurt things that he was just a big kid himself.

My Dad and I used to go to the arcade and spend ridiculous amounts of money on Donkey Kong. We also went through a phase were we got into Putt Putt golfing. So much so, that we actually played in tournaments. And then there was all that time we BOTH spent on the Atari 2600 trying to best each other on a game called River Raid. (Pit Fall Harry should get an honorable mention too I guess.)
So lots of fun time had with the father unit. Mom was more of a book worm so she wasn’t exactly worlds of fun from a kid’s perspective. (Still a good Mom though)
42yo.

4

Age 52. No they didn’t. As a matter of fact, we got out of our parents sight as soon as we had the chance because if we were hanging around, looking bored, my mother would make us do chores.

I played with our daughters (now aged 32 & 30) much, much more than my parents did, but not nearly anything like parents do now. I have a couple of young friends with little kids (not babies, toddlers and older) and sometimes it really is annoying how the kids need to be interacted with constantly. I want say to them that letting children figure out how to entertain themselves is a good thing.

5

I’m 59. We learned early on that if we told Mom we were bored or didn’t have anything to do, she’d hand us a dust rag. I grew up in a neighborhood of row houses (no one called them townhomes) in suburban Baltimore. There were a gazillion kids around. We built tents, skated, biked, played dodgeball and Red Rover, we “explored” - AKA, walked along drainage streams - we went to playgrounds, and if we had the money, we sometimes walked a WHOLE MILE and went to a movie.

As the OP described, parents hung together and kids hung together, but their social lives rarely intersected… maybe if a couple of families had a cookout together. We knew which streets were the boundaries of our free-to-wander area. We knew when we had to be home. We also knew that parents had no qualms about telling other parents if their kids were up to mischief.

Unfortunately for our daughter, we always lived in fairly remote areas, so she never had dozens of kids just outside the door. But even when parents arranged to take their kids to play with other kids, it was pretty much “Drop 'em off at noon, pick 'em up at 4. See ya!” We also had a standing rule that our daughter was limited to one activity outside of school. So it was either gymnastics *or *piano lessons *or *dance lessons *or *softball. She tried all of them, never really found a passion for any, but she did get to experience a lot of different activities we didn’t have to spend our free time driving her thither and yon. The main advantage she had was we could afford to send her to sleep-away camp a few times. I’m the oldest of 5 with a SAHM - no way my folks could swing that for us. Oh well…

It seems to have worked out OK - she went to college on a full scholarship and she’s about to begin her 6th year as a teacher. Apparently managing her every moment wasn’t required.

6

I think many parents think of it as “cultivating” their kids more than protecting the tender flowers from boredom. There’s sort of the ideal of a kid who is well-socialized, healthy, athletic, a good team player, academically advanced, physically attractive and charming. A great many of these boredom-busting activities are designed to advance one or more of those goals.

7

I was born in 1970 and (extremely old fashioned) parents definitely were not “the entertainment committee” (their words).

I’ll take it one step further my parents (father particularly) were of the “seen and not heard” and “speak when spoken to” variety. My mother worked nights and therefore slept during the day. If you shared my father’s interests, then he was willing to hang out and be decent. He wasn’t going to fake interest in your interests, though. Very opposite of a helicopter parent, he would drop you off to your activity (track, cheer, baseball practice) and then pick you up when it was over. Extraordinarily selfish.

Always blamed it on his upbringing, he grew up rich with the help taking care of things, not his parents. I still think he could have gotten beyond that if he just had a little empathy. Water under the bridge now. “Luckily” I decided that fishing was kinda fun so therefore I spent a lot more time with him than my sibs did and he was an interesting guy, he just wanted the his kids to come to his level, not vice versa.

8

46 year old male. My father tried to help me get better at baseball. Just like in Field of Dreams I stopped way too soon and would do anything to just be able to play catch with him one more time. :sniff:

But other than that, we got pushed out the door. I was lucky in that there were quite a few kids my age on my block.

9

For the most part no.
Sometimes we’d play board games together but not very often. Dinner was family time and that is when we had our ‘quality’ time together.
As others have said you didn’t dare say you were bored because my mother could find plenty for you to do and you weren’t going to like any of it.

Not only did my parents not entertain us, they took us places where we were sure to be bored out of our minds, like visiting my grandfather or other elderly relatives. We were expected to sit down and shut up while the adults visited. Maybe somebody would turn on the TV for us but mostly we just sat there staring into space. You didn’t dare whine about going either.

Parents didn’t hang out at our activities. We got dropped off at the movies, or bowling or dance class. They sure didn’t stay and watch. Usually one parent would drop us off and another would pick us up. There would be more than a half dozen kids in the car, nobody cared about comfort or seat belts, we all just piled in where ever we could fit.

We were pretty much kicked out the door after morning cartoons were over and we came back for lunch and dinner and then we stayed out until the street lights came on. We were lucky though, we could come in to get something to drink, the kids next door had to drink from the hose or get sent to their room for the rest of the day.
Back in those days getting sent to your room was like being locked up in solitary, the best you could hope for was finding a book to read.

It’s funny though, because if you ask my mother she’ll tell you we did lots of stuff together as a family, and played cards and board games, etc.
If you ask my sister she’ll tell you we were neglected and my parents didn’t care about us or our safety.

Our parents didn’t worry about us falling out of trees, or falling off our bikes. A certain amount of bumps, bruising and scraping was expected. My knees were one big scab all summer. They didn’t worry about us drinking from the hose, or germs, or running barefoot.
They didn’t worry about us getting kidnapped or molested because while it did happen, it just wasn’t going to happen here. It wasn’t an obsession like it is today.

10

76, so my experience is old. When I got home from school, I threw my school bag into a corner of the living room and went right back out to play with the neighborhood kids. Came home for dinner, did my homework, then went off to read. We got a TV the year I started HS, but even then, I didn’t watch that much.

My own kids’ activities weren’t that different. In good weather, they stayed outside a lot. Still they participated in organized activity (hockey, a baseball league in the late spring, potting,…) which I never had. Their kids are never out of sight until at least HS and even then they are expected to keep the parents up-to-date on what they are doing. And every activity is scheduled: soccer, basketball, baseball, and especially drama in which they are all heavily involved. My DIL (the mother of the four oldest grandchildren) can be thought of as activities and transportation director. She is fortunate not to have to work, but once school ends there is an endless round of driving the four to their constant activities. As soon as the eldest got a license they got a third car so he could help (and drive himself). In the fall he is off to college, but no. 2 is about to get her license and will take over.

One thing that bothers me about this is that they live in walking distance of almost every school the kids attended (with one exception but only for no.2 in JHS), they were never permitted to walk by themselves. Occasionally the parents walked them (and my wife and I did when we visited), but they were almost always driven. Suburban living.

Making a slight hijack: When my youngest (born 1973) was in elementary school, I was a member of the parents’ committee. We were very concerned with the fact that one parent drove her precious to school every morning and picked him up every afternoon. Of course, there was nothing to be done, but we really didn’t like it. Today (well, any day during the school term) there are giant traffic jams around the school every morning and every afternoon of parents dropping off or picking up their kids. It has now become too dangerous to allow your kids to walk to school. Since the school wasn’t designed for this, they are at a loss for what to do.

11

Thanks for these replies. It’s kind of what I thought.

I’m also curious about the experiences of people who live or grew up outside the USA?

12

This has changed over the last ten years because of the violence, but my teenage kids who grew up in Mexico universally feel that it’s better to be a kid in Mexico than in the U.S. because of the greater freedom. School is academics-only, and generally over by lunch for elementary school. After that, they tend to roam the neighborhood and parks and play in packs, and as high school students in the U.S. they are very nostalgic about it. It’s kind of funny because jingoistic Americans tend to assume kids are happy to have the chance to come to the U.S.–but they generally aren’t, even if they now have a hand-me down PSII in the house.

13

It’s a skill I find valuable to this day, and one I find lacking in today’s youth.

“Can’t you just sit still without talking or fidgeting for five minutes? Please?”
People can’t do it. Literally can not sit quietly for five minutes.

14

Early 30s.

My mother would play with me when I was a preschooler but by elementary age, that was right out. I was an only child and I played by myself. I often went to the neighbors’ house to play with their kids, or vice versa. My parents were fine with me roaming the neighborhood if I wanted, though I rarely did. I took piano lessons for years, and my dad signed me up for sports leagues several times–which I hated.

15

From my experience living in other countries, it does depend heavily on where you live. In the places I’ve spent a lot of time in (South America and India), most kids are still expected to entertain themselves, though there’s a heavy emphasis on education in India (could just be my husband’s family), so once you get to school age, you might have an adult spend a lot of time with kids on academics.

I’m 38 - was definitely expected to entertain myself. I once went to a really helpful seminar where the speaker said that kids’ boredom was undervalued because they never get the opportunity to entertain themselves without either a parent or electronic babysitter in the form of video games. Having my own kids, I can definitely see that.

16

My mom had a saying: “Only boring people get bored.” I spent many a summer being bored and told to go outside and play. I’m in my 30’s, and haven’t been around any children now to know.

17

I’m 28. Our mom worked part-time and would push us out of the house (on threat of housework) on her days off during the summer. I often would just go read in the backyard. Other times, my sister and I would bike around and play with other kids our age. One of the neighborhood girls had central air conditioning, which was rare in our neighborhood. Her mom would let us play inside, so we liked to go there and play Barbies or board games. I was allowed to walk to and from school starting in 6th grade. It was a 3 mile round trip.

She did schedule us for a few things like girl scouts and softball. But I was allowed to quit that stuff in 7th grade. And for one year we did basketball too, and piano lessons. I joined band in 6th grade, though, and it became my only extracurricular activity soon after.

18

I’m 60 and my experience in Australia was much like this. Home from school, grab a snack and go off to do something until dinner time. I played a lot of sport so often I went to practice. If not I went and did stuff with friends.

My parents never had any concerns about me or my brothers being out and about alone. My mother recalled recently that the day we moved to Canberra, 50 years ago, my brothers and I went for a walk and were gone all day. I told her it was because we had no idea where we were and got lost. She had never known.

I was surprised when I started walking a lot around the local suburbs couple of years ago by the fact that I very rarely see any kids at all. The parks around me are usually empty and I probably see kids walking or riding anywhere very, very rarely. Sure I see them walking to or from the local schools but never just out and about. When I was a kid or teen if you went anywhere there would be other kids out doing stuff.

19

That’s a good point above. Until I was 12 there was no air conditioning in the house. Then we got one unit. In my parents bedroom. We didn’t get central air until the end of high school when I was we’ll past the “go out and play” age.

20

I’m 30. No, my parents didn’t play with me. I guess they thought that’s what I had siblings for. I walked to school and back, and home for lunch sometimes, when I was 9 and rode my bike 5 miles to my grandparents’ house routinely that summer.

My brother was nearly kidnapped once, not even a block from our house. He was praised for how he handled it (screamed and ran home) but nothing changed for us. My parents didn’t know where I was for most of my childhood, I think.

I have kids. They have toys and siblings and imaginations just like I did so they can figure out their daily entertainment. That’s not to say we don’t “do stuff”, but I expect them to basically take care of themselves between trips to the park/arcade/zoo, whatever.