"Back in my day, we used to walk 5 miles to school in sub-zero temperatures without batting an eyelid. Not like you spoiled little brats these days!" We all have an older relative who says things like this about raising kids. They are despairing the coddled youth with their smartphones, crappy music, and parents that seemingly can't say no to their every demand.
And you know what? They might actually have a point on the parenting styles of today. Although the world might seem like a more dangerous place now with higher safety standards required, kids of previous generations had to make their own entertainment. They had to learn to look after themselves from a younger age and take far more risks while doing so. Parents didn't have things like Mumsnet to help them with parenting tips, alternatively, guilt and stress them out for letting kids go out of the safe environments and learn from their own mistakes.
To celebrate the eccentric approaches of old-school parenting and child safety, we here at Bored Panda have put together a list of parents and their kids doing things that would horrify the mommy and daddy bloggers and Instagrammers of today. What's your opinion on the evolution of parenting over the years? Scroll down below to check out the vintage photos for yourself, and let us know what you think in the comments!
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Me Back In 1991 Just Your Typical Aussie Kid Drinking Xxxxlight Beer(I Wasn't Aloud Heavies Back Then) And Holding A Baby Crocodile
My Mother And Grandmother Demonstrating Safety Standards In The 1960s
If Your Mum Didn't Lay On The Ground Making Herself Into A Ramp For Your New BMX, Did She Even Love You? 1980's
California Marijuana Initiative Rally 1972. That’s Me In The Box And My Parents In The Picture
My Dad And His Veterinarian Mother, With Their Pet Lion Which They Raised For Two Years, 1959
Princess Yvonne And Prince Alexander In Germany, 1955
A Couple Ice Skating With Their Baby, 1937
Infant Me, My Mother & Father At A Bar Because That's How Parents Rolled In The Early '80s
The Pinnacle Of Parenting: 1930s Swimming Lesson
My father threw me into Tampa Bay. I was about 3 years old. I learned to swim in a hurry, because there were scary things swimming around in that water! Google "Horseshoe Crab" and you'll understand.
Car Seat Safety In 1958. Not Strapped In To Anything, These Seats Relied On The Mother To Put Her Arm Out And Stop The Baby From Falling Forward
My Hilarious Father (With The Magazine) And My Grandfather, Grandmother, And Uncle At His Bar Mitzvah In 1972
My Mother-In-Law Riding A Bear At 2 Years Old
Harley With A Baby Seat, 1962
Safety first! Remember to properly attach the baby seat with the convenient succion cups to the gas tank before putting your baby in it.
A Photo Of Me Dressed Up As My Dad, With My Dad (1982)
My Dad Showing Off His Parenting Skills 1985
And his Awesome fashion choices. Cut off tummy top, micro running shorts and Sears Roebuck velcro kicks was my go to in '85 too! but he tops it off with that cherry Tom Selleck stash. Your dad is a legend.
My Mom In The Hospital After Giving Birth To My Sister. Canada 1978. Smokes And Roasted Chicken
Back In The Day. 1950s To Be Exact. Checkout That Car Seat
We had one when we were kids. There was the button in the middle for the horn.
My Mom Showing Off Her Parenting Skills 1978
Me, 1958, Relaxing After My Bath With Toby, I Was Never Again This Cool
13 Y/O Dad Having A Taste While The Grownups Are Busy Playing Cards; Upstate New York, August 1954
Meh, we did this all the time when I was a kid and I turned out just fi– wait...
My Father And His Pet Lion Priscilla, California 1970's
My Adorable (4 Year Old) Mother At A Zoo In Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 1970
Just A Photo Of Yours Truly (At 11 Years) Petting A Full Grown Tiger. My Mom Calls It Her "Bad Parenting Moment"
From the infamous Thai temple tiger farm. https://www.traffic.org/news/thai-seizure-of-a-dozen-captive-tigers-resurrects-farming-threat/
Forgot to mention, drugged out of his head plus probably teeth pulled out-tiger... I HATE this.
I remember you could touch (and feed) killer whales trapped in a tiny 'petting pool' at Sea World in the 1970s early 80s.
I got to do that, can't remember if it was late 80s or early 90s. The trainers had us pet their tongues and I was a little to short so I had to lean into the tank to do it!
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Wow. Those were rough times. I grew up in Detroit in the 60's. We were three doors down from a park where I could go and play. I could so many blocks in this direction, so many blocks in the other direction, just come home when the street lights came on. We walked to school - by ourselves - without parents monitoring our every step. We could play on the playground equipment, jungle gyms, slides, etc., all without someone to make sure we didn't hurt ourselves, each other, set the world on fire, etc. I remember all the kids that were killed by such recklessness....except that no one ever was. Oh the humanity!!!!
I do appreciate the fact you shared these photos with us. Parents have definitely changed over the years.
Not exactly a bad parenting moment more a cruel and torturous operator. They are chained and drugged these poor majestic beasts.
My mother and her brother on the bike, in the middle of the road, while daddy "is watching" IMG-201611...25b8a2.jpg 
My Mom on the bike with her brother, in the middle of the road, while daddy "is watching" IMG-201611...16fe8e.jpg 
Don't worry. It was probably stoned shtless so it wouldn't maul paying tourists.
Somewhere there is a similar photo of me sitting with an equally large tiger. The only difference is that she was dying, and on the floor of the sanctuary owner's living room being tended to.
There are places in Thailand, that have tigers. I think you can still pet them.
No we don't!! Tigers are still drugged and chained, elephants whipped into submission for rides, donkeys carrying tourists beaten when they drop from exhaustion, marine animals trapped in tiny pools, bulls slowly tortured to death, African beasts killed for trophies, domestic dogs bred for fighting..... et al
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Not at all really, the animals are beat into submission and drugged up to the eyeballs, it is an living hell for the creatures.
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There's something to be said for letting your children live freely, yes it's a much more dangerous way to grow up but it has it's benefits for those who survive. I'm not saying we should roll all of our safety norms back, but the super insulated lives some kids have today is too restrictive. Personal opinion from someone who grew up getting kicked out of the house until the street lights came back on.
Totally agree. I'm almost 15 and some of my friends aren't allowed/are too scared to spend the night at a friends house. I told my friend's mom I get dropped off at the mall and SixFlags alone/with a friend and she gave me the most shocked look.
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This is a somewhat curious, yet weird series. On the one hand, this seems like the ideal to counter helicopter parenting and the over-caring we witness today. On the other hand, we must be thankful fot better safety (improper restraints must have killed thousanda of children in car accidents) and carelessness (for example regarding smoke).
It is not only carelessness. They just didn't know. Like with radioactive material. At some point people used it as medicine until they realized it will kill them.
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We will leave the same impression. Diesel vehicles still permitted on the roads anyone? Single use plastic used absolutely everywhere? The non-safety issues from the 1950ies could have terrible consequences for that one person but we have scaled the game up so much that we are now risking our whole species.
Why should a Diesel engine be restricted and petrol ones not? They have different emmissions but both are equaly dangerous.
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I was a 1969 Australian baby. I believe the 70's and 80's were the best decades to grow up in. Yeah things were a little unsafe but that just made us more aware of our surroundings. We learnt to be independent at an early age. My siblings and I got our bikes for our 8th birthdays. Once we had that we were allow to take off in the morning, after chores, with a packed sandwich and we'd come home when mum rang the cow bell, which is odd cause we didn't live on a farm :). I wouldn't want to be a kid these days. The fear taught by their parents, the pressures at school, the bullying, the cost of living in the future and the environmental issues. Poor little blighters.
To be fair, on all the drinking ones my dad let me try beer when I was really young. I was probably seven or younger. He called it "Colorado Kool ade". We were vacationing in Colorado at the time. It's probably the reason I don't like beer to this day and I'll be 38 in June.
I was allowed a rum and coke in a pub in the Northern Territory when I was 7, because as the barman said "Why the **** not?". Unlike a lot of my friends, I never got black out drunk on weekends because i never had to sneak booze. My parents made some very bad choices in some things they did, but I think they got that absolutely right. I've never been a big drinker.
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Not only we went 5 miles on foot sub-zero, but we also went uphill in BOTH directions!!!
Well, it seems we have a very different appreciation of danger... It's so disturbing to see how confident they all look.
You must be under 35 then. Us older folks don't get nervous in any way when looking at any of these. Don't ask again why call you all a bunch of coddled pussies, haha. ;-P
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Maybe these photos show why parents were much less stressed out back at that time and having children did not mean one had to change his or her whole lifestyle. Children were just part of life, like having a job or a place to live. And because children were not treated as a holy cow, they were also much more independent and chill. Just saying
javascript:void(0);Bingo. They were part of life, they weren't life itself. I've seen too many people I know cease to exist after the kids were born. They became sustenance givers and nothing more.
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At 78, I survived somehow. No helmets either riding bicycles. So much more not told in these pics.
The people who died aren't posting. It's called 'survivor bias'.
Load More Replies... Why no pictures of the 80s playground full of steel deathtraps. Steel Merry go round with crushed rock at the base and the see saws
Chalk it up to perspective, personally I mis those playgrounds. I also don't think the plastic ones are any safer. On a side note, the last time BP posted one of these articles there was a picture of an older teen/young adult that was using his rear motorcycle wheel to power the merry-go-rounds spin, and that looked pretty dangerous.
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Not really sure how the human race evolved with all this sort of crazy around. Maybe our ancestors made duvets and just sat wrapped in them instead of hunting for food.
I don't know how kids of today will survive with zero survival skills, mind.
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When I was 6 or 7 I was allowed to sit on the nose of a speedboat while zooming around on the local canal system - with no life jacket or restraints. Totally irresponsible and it could so easily have been a disaster, but it's still one of my favourite memories!
My daughter can't even be told to wash the dishes without a nervous breakdown. Sometimes I just wanna give her a beer.
No, no it's not. It's proof that not everything little thing is worth freaking out about. We all were raised like this so statistically it's proven to be much safer than people fear.
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I'm from before the vintages shown here, back to the Great Depression when we used to see hobos every day riding the rails to Chicago, looking for work. I worked in factories. I cleaned electrotypes with a solvent that made my predecessor pass out. I biked everywhere and only got hit by a car once. Walking to school in deep snow in the winter, a given, Only 1 1/4 mile though. When Churchill was asked what the ideal family size was, 4. 2 to replace the parents, 1 to add to the world and the 4th would die early. A much different world. When I think of some of my dangerous experiences, I realize I'm here because I was lucky, even though I recognized a lot of the dangers.
We didn't have pet lions (what was that all about, eh?), and didn't take pictures, but I spent many blissful childhood years in the '70s rolling around the back of our station wagon totally unrestrained. Long road trips spent flat on my back, head on a pillow, reading book in hand., no seat belts in sight I survived as will today's kids survive all the rules and regs we're drowning them in.
There was a time we would sit on dad's lap when really young and pretend to drive. We'd hang in the trunk area of the family station wagon. We'd ride off into the woods on our bikes and be gone for hours, parents would have no idea where we were. And it was mostly zero problem.
When I was 11, my friend's parents let us sit on the open tailgate of their station wagon, dangling our feet, while driving down the freeway. I think that was probably their finest parenting moment. (But damn, it was fun!)
My parents let me and my brother drink at 11. My stepdad also tried to get me to smoke marijuana at around that age but I had a bad asthma attack when I tried and I decided I was never going to do any smoking. First time an asthma attack was ever good for something.
Hate to break it to you but giving your 11 year old kid weed is just bad parenting in any decade.
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And that’s why those kids are stronger and better equipped for the world than today’s generation will ever be.
Its also why the life expectancy is 20 years higher
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i think a lot of our resilience and the ability to enjoy/appreciate certain freedoms comes from being born pre-80s-90s. Seems like so much changed, and not necessarily for the best as far as parenting attitudes. Helicopter parenting took away so many freedoms & learning to deal with life. I realize that crime has a lot to do with it & you can't leave your kids to run the neighborhood until the streetlights came on (like we did) because of kidnappings, drive-byes, and such--I just find it so sad...
I don't think so. I live in Germany and things like drive-byes or kidnappings are non-existing here. Still we have helicopter parents too. There is no need for real danger for some parents to be freaks.
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I still remember when I was around 7, so 1994, and my sisters car seat moving forward against the front seat where I was when my mom braked. She told me to get out and buckle your sister in as she pulled onto the highway. lol, good times.
I have thought, and said aloud , that I would like to turn the clock back for many reasons, my main point being little ,or no family time, modern technology in many aspects are negative, a few positives but not enough, the children in day care, or sitters,no time for parents, to be parents, at least in part as the teens of today are not happy, they have no direction in their life. !!!
I honestly don't see anything wrong with these photos...none of them makes me question parenting choices. I feel badly for the animals in captivity. I think people in general are waaay too concerned with what other people do with their lives nowadays.
While there are those parents who go overboard in a helicopter parent sense, a lot of today's rules are there precisely because of what happened in the past. Namely rampant child abduction and unnecessary injury and death. Sure, you made it and turned out just fine, but A LOT of kids weren't as lucky. Generations after you learned from mistakes of the past. It's how humanity grows and evolves.
this is GREAT...think of all the people that LIVED thru these horrible times...wait they are still a live!!! Just shocking!!!!
My favourite photo of my mother is from 1975. Tight top, high shoes, mini skirt, my big brother (9 months at the time) in one arm...and cigarette in the other. haha. She insists that smoking wasn't bad for you in the 70's.
I think folks are too freaked out about all this stuff. None of this stuff was dangerous. Stop being such worry warts. Go outside to play once in a while.
If I could, I would share the photo of 2 year old me with a tobacco pipe in my mouth and a can of beer in my pudgy little baby hands!! I LOVE that pic of me, it makes me laugh way too much!!
Were you actually drinking though, or was it a joke picture?
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I grew up on the beach. I remember coming home from school and immediately heading out into the Gulf. My mom and/or dad would come get us when they got home from work or it started getting dark.
- When I was 4 y/o, my dad and I used to watched the 8 O'clock news together. He drank an espresso with a touch of grappa (strong Italian spirit), and I always got to drink 7 spoons of that from his saucer. - My best friend and I used to make 'witch potions' around that same age, 4/5/6/7/8/... years old. It usually contained all sorts of cleaning products we could find. And we found them. Always. Used the stuff to kill mosquito larvae in buckets filled with still water. It worked. We may or may not have cause some small scale environmental disasters in our parents' gardens. - That same friend and I used to roam the streets in the middle of the night, whenever we had sleepovers. And we had those often. Our parents never notices. This went on from around the age of 6 to... well... basically when we left highschool. - etc. XD (I must add that I'm 28 now, so this all happened in the mid to late 90s... not that long ago)
While ago I was checking some old pics from my parents...we had an car accident , the car turned out like 7 times , in the middle of the desert at night(we were in Africa), no seat belts, and we all survived... I am amazed that we(ppl my age) could survived without any safety or warness in about everything....
There's something to be said for letting your children live freely, yes it's a much more dangerous way to grow up but it has it's benefits for those who survive. I'm not saying we should roll all of our safety norms back, but the super insulated lives some kids have today is too restrictive. Personal opinion from someone who grew up getting kicked out of the house until the street lights came back on.
Totally agree. I'm almost 15 and some of my friends aren't allowed/are too scared to spend the night at a friends house. I told my friend's mom I get dropped off at the mall and SixFlags alone/with a friend and she gave me the most shocked look.
Load More Replies... This is a somewhat curious, yet weird series. On the one hand, this seems like the ideal to counter helicopter parenting and the over-caring we witness today. On the other hand, we must be thankful fot better safety (improper restraints must have killed thousanda of children in car accidents) and carelessness (for example regarding smoke).
It is not only carelessness. They just didn't know. Like with radioactive material. At some point people used it as medicine until they realized it will kill them.
Load More Replies... We will leave the same impression. Diesel vehicles still permitted on the roads anyone? Single use plastic used absolutely everywhere? The non-safety issues from the 1950ies could have terrible consequences for that one person but we have scaled the game up so much that we are now risking our whole species.
Why should a Diesel engine be restricted and petrol ones not? They have different emmissions but both are equaly dangerous.
Load More Replies... I was a 1969 Australian baby. I believe the 70's and 80's were the best decades to grow up in. Yeah things were a little unsafe but that just made us more aware of our surroundings. We learnt to be independent at an early age. My siblings and I got our bikes for our 8th birthdays. Once we had that we were allow to take off in the morning, after chores, with a packed sandwich and we'd come home when mum rang the cow bell, which is odd cause we didn't live on a farm :). I wouldn't want to be a kid these days. The fear taught by their parents, the pressures at school, the bullying, the cost of living in the future and the environmental issues. Poor little blighters.
To be fair, on all the drinking ones my dad let me try beer when I was really young. I was probably seven or younger. He called it "Colorado Kool ade". We were vacationing in Colorado at the time. It's probably the reason I don't like beer to this day and I'll be 38 in June.
I was allowed a rum and coke in a pub in the Northern Territory when I was 7, because as the barman said "Why the **** not?". Unlike a lot of my friends, I never got black out drunk on weekends because i never had to sneak booze. My parents made some very bad choices in some things they did, but I think they got that absolutely right. I've never been a big drinker.
Load More Replies... Not only we went 5 miles on foot sub-zero, but we also went uphill in BOTH directions!!!
Well, it seems we have a very different appreciation of danger... It's so disturbing to see how confident they all look.
You must be under 35 then. Us older folks don't get nervous in any way when looking at any of these. Don't ask again why call you all a bunch of coddled pussies, haha. ;-P
Load More Replies... Maybe these photos show why parents were much less stressed out back at that time and having children did not mean one had to change his or her whole lifestyle. Children were just part of life, like having a job or a place to live. And because children were not treated as a holy cow, they were also much more independent and chill. Just saying
javascript:void(0);Bingo. They were part of life, they weren't life itself. I've seen too many people I know cease to exist after the kids were born. They became sustenance givers and nothing more.
Load More Replies... At 78, I survived somehow. No helmets either riding bicycles. So much more not told in these pics.
The people who died aren't posting. It's called 'survivor bias'.
Load More Replies... Why no pictures of the 80s playground full of steel deathtraps. Steel Merry go round with crushed rock at the base and the see saws
Chalk it up to perspective, personally I mis those playgrounds. I also don't think the plastic ones are any safer. On a side note, the last time BP posted one of these articles there was a picture of an older teen/young adult that was using his rear motorcycle wheel to power the merry-go-rounds spin, and that looked pretty dangerous.
Load More Replies... Not really sure how the human race evolved with all this sort of crazy around. Maybe our ancestors made duvets and just sat wrapped in them instead of hunting for food.
I don't know how kids of today will survive with zero survival skills, mind.
Load More Replies... When I was 6 or 7 I was allowed to sit on the nose of a speedboat while zooming around on the local canal system - with no life jacket or restraints. Totally irresponsible and it could so easily have been a disaster, but it's still one of my favourite memories!
My daughter can't even be told to wash the dishes without a nervous breakdown. Sometimes I just wanna give her a beer.
No, no it's not. It's proof that not everything little thing is worth freaking out about. We all were raised like this so statistically it's proven to be much safer than people fear.
Load More Replies... I'm from before the vintages shown here, back to the Great Depression when we used to see hobos every day riding the rails to Chicago, looking for work. I worked in factories. I cleaned electrotypes with a solvent that made my predecessor pass out. I biked everywhere and only got hit by a car once. Walking to school in deep snow in the winter, a given, Only 1 1/4 mile though. When Churchill was asked what the ideal family size was, 4. 2 to replace the parents, 1 to add to the world and the 4th would die early. A much different world. When I think of some of my dangerous experiences, I realize I'm here because I was lucky, even though I recognized a lot of the dangers.
We didn't have pet lions (what was that all about, eh?), and didn't take pictures, but I spent many blissful childhood years in the '70s rolling around the back of our station wagon totally unrestrained. Long road trips spent flat on my back, head on a pillow, reading book in hand., no seat belts in sight I survived as will today's kids survive all the rules and regs we're drowning them in.
There was a time we would sit on dad's lap when really young and pretend to drive. We'd hang in the trunk area of the family station wagon. We'd ride off into the woods on our bikes and be gone for hours, parents would have no idea where we were. And it was mostly zero problem.
When I was 11, my friend's parents let us sit on the open tailgate of their station wagon, dangling our feet, while driving down the freeway. I think that was probably their finest parenting moment. (But damn, it was fun!)
My parents let me and my brother drink at 11. My stepdad also tried to get me to smoke marijuana at around that age but I had a bad asthma attack when I tried and I decided I was never going to do any smoking. First time an asthma attack was ever good for something.
Hate to break it to you but giving your 11 year old kid weed is just bad parenting in any decade.
Load More Replies... And that’s why those kids are stronger and better equipped for the world than today’s generation will ever be.
Its also why the life expectancy is 20 years higher
Load More Replies... i think a lot of our resilience and the ability to enjoy/appreciate certain freedoms comes from being born pre-80s-90s. Seems like so much changed, and not necessarily for the best as far as parenting attitudes. Helicopter parenting took away so many freedoms & learning to deal with life. I realize that crime has a lot to do with it & you can't leave your kids to run the neighborhood until the streetlights came on (like we did) because of kidnappings, drive-byes, and such--I just find it so sad...
I don't think so. I live in Germany and things like drive-byes or kidnappings are non-existing here. Still we have helicopter parents too. There is no need for real danger for some parents to be freaks.
Load More Replies... I still remember when I was around 7, so 1994, and my sisters car seat moving forward against the front seat where I was when my mom braked. She told me to get out and buckle your sister in as she pulled onto the highway. lol, good times.
I have thought, and said aloud , that I would like to turn the clock back for many reasons, my main point being little ,or no family time, modern technology in many aspects are negative, a few positives but not enough, the children in day care, or sitters,no time for parents, to be parents, at least in part as the teens of today are not happy, they have no direction in their life. !!!
I honestly don't see anything wrong with these photos...none of them makes me question parenting choices. I feel badly for the animals in captivity. I think people in general are waaay too concerned with what other people do with their lives nowadays.
While there are those parents who go overboard in a helicopter parent sense, a lot of today's rules are there precisely because of what happened in the past. Namely rampant child abduction and unnecessary injury and death. Sure, you made it and turned out just fine, but A LOT of kids weren't as lucky. Generations after you learned from mistakes of the past. It's how humanity grows and evolves.
this is GREAT...think of all the people that LIVED thru these horrible times...wait they are still a live!!! Just shocking!!!!
My favourite photo of my mother is from 1975. Tight top, high shoes, mini skirt, my big brother (9 months at the time) in one arm...and cigarette in the other. haha. She insists that smoking wasn't bad for you in the 70's.
I think folks are too freaked out about all this stuff. None of this stuff was dangerous. Stop being such worry warts. Go outside to play once in a while.
If I could, I would share the photo of 2 year old me with a tobacco pipe in my mouth and a can of beer in my pudgy little baby hands!! I LOVE that pic of me, it makes me laugh way too much!!
Were you actually drinking though, or was it a joke picture?
Load More Replies... I grew up on the beach. I remember coming home from school and immediately heading out into the Gulf. My mom and/or dad would come get us when they got home from work or it started getting dark.
- When I was 4 y/o, my dad and I used to watched the 8 O'clock news together. He drank an espresso with a touch of grappa (strong Italian spirit), and I always got to drink 7 spoons of that from his saucer. - My best friend and I used to make 'witch potions' around that same age, 4/5/6/7/8/... years old. It usually contained all sorts of cleaning products we could find. And we found them. Always. Used the stuff to kill mosquito larvae in buckets filled with still water. It worked. We may or may not have cause some small scale environmental disasters in our parents' gardens. - That same friend and I used to roam the streets in the middle of the night, whenever we had sleepovers. And we had those often. Our parents never notices. This went on from around the age of 6 to... well... basically when we left highschool. - etc. XD (I must add that I'm 28 now, so this all happened in the mid to late 90s... not that long ago)
While ago I was checking some old pics from my parents...we had an car accident , the car turned out like 7 times , in the middle of the desert at night(we were in Africa), no seat belts, and we all survived... I am amazed that we(ppl my age) could survived without any safety or warness in about everything....
