A summertime run through the playground.

Growing up, summertime meant spending hours outside, playing on jungle gyms and with neighborhood friends, eating ice cold bomb pops and playing hide and seek behind oak trees, even though you could easily be seen.

And we HAD to play outside. There was no running back and forth inside, and there were real consequences “if you let them mosquitoes in my house!” And what kid could pay the electric bill because “y’all are going to let all my cold air out!”

We had to stay outside until nap time or dinner time. In sunshine and heat. All day.

It’s what child psychologists today call “unstructured playtime. ” To us, it was just childhood in the 1980s. [Read more…]