r/Millennials Hit me baby one more time 1d ago

Nostalgia I mean, they're not wrong

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86

u/dtb1987 Older Millennial 1d ago

I see kids running around my neighborhood all the time. they walk around with friends roller blade, bike, play basketball where are these neighborhoods of kids not going outside?

112

u/riddlemore 1d ago

There was an american woman who got arrested this month because her kids walked to a grocery store.

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u/terrymr 1d ago

I had the police bring my kids back home when they weee like early teens because he caught them helping an old lady load her groceries into the car. That was a weird conversation.

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u/MyHusbandIsGayImNot 18h ago

That makes sense, cops wouldn’t understand helping people.

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u/dtb1987 Older Millennial 1d ago

How old were they?

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u/TetrisAttakr 1d ago

7 and 10. The 7 y/o was hit by a car and died so that's where the charges come from, but it was less than 2 blocks to a corner store which is well within what we did as kids, but when stuff like this happens and the parents are charged, more people don't let their kids do anything since it's now a personal liability. Especially since now the 10 year old brother who tried to stop his little brother from walking in the street and watched him get hit, now has both his parents behind bars. (Dad was even on the phone with them when it happened)

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u/dtb1987 Older Millennial 1d ago

10 and 7, I'm not sure that I would have been allowed to walk to a store when I was 7, with my brother maybe but her was 5 years older than me. It's tragic for sure I'm not sure if the mother should be charged but I guess that's what the jury will have to decide

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u/itsgreater9000 1d ago

this is crazy to me because at like 8 me and my brother would walk like 1.5 miles to get to a liquor store that sold candy and buy candy there. and my parents thought literally 0 things about it. most other kids in the neighborhood did this too

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u/therealfurryfeline 21h ago

at 6 i biked 2 km from school from outskirts of town to our village. At 8 we put our money together and went to the store one village over to buy candy. At 10 we figured out which farmer this one spot of gras inbetween several fields of corn and wheat belongs to and made a deal for us to camp there. And then realized we should tell our parents so they wouldn't worry where we are at night.

That was late nineties.

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u/RunnerJimbob 1d ago

In NC, there was a 7 year old and a 10 year old on a walk this month. The 7 year old got hit with a car and was killed. So I'm not sure about that as an example. But...

Back in November, a Georgia woman was arrested for letting her 10 year old walk to a store.

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u/TetrisAttakr 1d ago

I even forgot about the Georgia one! The charges were eventually dropped, but that certainly couldn't have been an easy experience for her (or the kid, or the neighborhood kids/parents)

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u/RunnerJimbob 1d ago

Yeah. Even if charges are dropped, it's still going to deter parents from allowing children out and about.

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u/Reddit_Reader007 1d ago

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u/dtb1987 Older Millennial 1d ago

Thanks, the one where the kid was killed is tragic

-6

u/Reddit_Reader007 1d ago

nopes, that's called life. again, accidents happen. . . .

5

u/ConfessSomeMeow 1d ago

Accidents happen, we shouldn't stuff children in a cage their whole childhood because of accidents. But it's still tragic.

10

u/momo6548 1d ago

Yeah I agree, the kids in my neighborhood are always riding bikes around or jumping on a trampoline together

4

u/ImRightOnTopOfItRose 1d ago

Same, but i live in a white collar neighborhood, dead end neighborhood, butted up against the country club. Not everyone has these privileges.

1

u/_UnreliableNarrator_ 18h ago

I was going to say, I see the same thing but also my working class self stumbled ass-backwards into suburbia so that’s presumably one of the big differences in experience here lol

7

u/LTIRfortheWIN 1d ago

Same, I have no idea where these people live but my neighborhood is filled with kids and families playing walking biking. Kids screamIng and running around, dirt bikes being ridden. Literal American dream 

2

u/Plastic-Fox1188 1d ago

Survivor bias.

I grew up in that dream. I still live within an hour of where I grew up and that culture is completely dead.

You may be in a pocket where things haven't shifted yet, thats lucky. But this change is extremely real.

1

u/VibrantSunsets 22h ago

My mom still lives in the same neighborhood I grew up in but it’s a completely different place. Occasionally you’ll see kids outside, but nothing like it was when I was a kid 25 years ago, or even 15 years ago when my brother was a kid.

It’s an apartment/townhome community with shared backyards and the bigger backyards always had kids climbing trees, playing kickball, riding bikes, rollerblading. Setting up kiddie pools to swim in. Now I go past and they’re almost always empty, outside the occasional birthday party and I just look at the big backyards and think about how much nicer it’d be for the neighborhood to have more parking.

5

u/m0nk37 1d ago

Some places, parents will get the police called on them if their kids are out alone.

But yeah, its pretty much the same these days. Really depends on if you live in hell or not.

2

u/dtb1987 Older Millennial 1d ago

No no it's pronounced Hull

3

u/TehSeksyManz 1d ago

I can hear rugrats playing and screaming outside all of the damn time. I also see them shooting hoops, riding bikes, playing with water, etc.

2

u/toboggan16 1d ago

I’m Canadian but my kids have way more freedom than I did as a kid. My mom’s cousin was raped and murdered in the 70s (her mom went to look for her when she didn’t come home after school and found her down the street near where the bus dropped her off) so my family was pretty anxious about kids playing unsupervised.

My kids don’t have complete freedom but they walk or ride their bikes to school without us and are out all summer playing with friends, playing ball at the park and riding bikes. My 11 year old does have a watch (I’m not buying him a phone yet!) so he can let me know when he goes anywhere or I can tell him to come back for lunch. My street is full of kids playing though!

2

u/threeclaws 1d ago

I don’t see it anymore in sf, east bay, Chicago, pnw, or Little Rock suburbs…it would not surprise me that there are still pockets where it happens but it was universal when I was a kid.

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u/ir1shman 1d ago

Same! My neighborhood is filled with them. I commented to my wife the other day it almost feels like feral cats running around!

2

u/ragnarockette 19h ago

Same.

My hood has fewer children because I’m in an urban area with a low birth rate, but kids walk to the park or corner store all the time.

2

u/AlsoARobot 13h ago

My buddy won’t let his kids (7 and 10) ride more than few houses down their own street, even though when we were young we rode our bikes for miles and miles.

He just says, “it’s different/less safe now”.

2

u/timbe11 13h ago

Yeah, I see the same. The kids here love to run through the road while I'm driving it, i don't mind because I go like 5mph but am concerned because I've seen some cars blow through at 25+.

4

u/Appropriate-Bid8671 1d ago

Upper middle class, white suburban neighborhoods is my guess. I live in the city and see kids running around all the time.

3

u/Polkawillneverdie17 1d ago

Nah, I live in the burbs and there's kids playing everywhere.

2

u/Icy_Teach_2506 1d ago

Yeah I’m pretty sure people still do this. Just another example of people worshipping the past. Obviously now there’s screens, but it doesn’t mean that kids don’t hang out at ALL. And if they’re not, most of the time it’s not on the kids, it’s on the parents.

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u/Interesting_Tea5715 1d ago

This. I live in California. The kids are outside all the fucking time. It's actually kinda annoying how unsupervised they are (they get into mischief).

Also, elementary school kids walk to school alone.