How to occupy or entertain children without screens

[tortoise]

I'd like to start a list of how children were raised, occupied, and entertained before screens. The hardest skills to learn are those which we haven't experienced, haven't had modeled for us, and don't see often in our culture.

I'm hoping older members can chime in with their happy non-screen childhood memories. How did your parents and grandparents do it?

 

[tortoise]

My parents took us kids out for a picnic outside the local airport fence. Sometimes we didn't see any airplanes, but when we saw one we thought it was a BIG deal!

 

[samssimonsays]

I love The idea of this post! I may be one of the few left my age who will expect my children not to be entertained by screens.

I was a 1990's baby but just old enough to where I'm not a millennial who is heavily reliant on those screens.

I remember when i did get to watch "my show" it was a big deal. I wasn't forced to stay away from tv but it was usually just assumed i play. I was an only child and very early on my mom was a stay at home mom. We read, read and read some more, i had an active imagination of which i played with my toys, by myself on many, many occassions can ya believe it?! I also loved animals. So, in turn, my parents let me get them. I remember playing in the dirt or grass or heck, mud, all summer long. Piles of leaves on eh fall and blanket forts in the house all winter. I went frog catching. Dragon fly catching. We had chickens, cats and dogs, guinea pigs, rabbits, hamsters and fish with the occasional turtle i found or catterpilar. Tad poles were amazing. I still got to watch shows with my parents as i got older but it wasn't a "here's my phone, I'm busy" type of thing or a means of entertainment. It was more of they were watching it so i got to as well. Meaning, lifetime movie network, daytime soaps (if i was lucky enough to be out of bed when home sick), the news or the occassional movie as a family.

We went camping a lot, my parents best friends had three boys similar ages to mine and we rotated custody of the kids all summer lol. One week my house, the next i was at theirs. We rode bikes, walked or rode a mile to the lakes landing where we swam. Gosh, you name it, we did it. Even down to flashlight tag! Hide and seek in the dark and board games. We rarely WANTED to watch tv! I had a video game console that was barely used for anything but watching dvds and i played sims stories simply to design the houses on it pre curser to my day job i guess! I drew a lot. Listened to music for hours on rainy days. Just enjoyed being a kid!

 

[NH Homesteader]

Love this. We went to the mall a while back (hardly ever do that!) and everyone had their kids in strollers playing on their phones. Seriously?

We grew up playing in the woods, swimming, reading books... My daughter loves to read, play pretend, hang out with the animals...

We also used to go sit at the airport and watch for planes! Go fishing, play ball, ride our bikes... We also loved baking with my mom. We watched some tv, but not much. Mostly Saturday morning cartoons!

 

[sumi]

Our childhoods were much different and I dare say better pre-technology take-over… I remember playing outside, cycling when I was old enough to be allowed to head out by myself, reading LOTS and watching little TV. If I wanted to know something, I was encouraged to find a book on the topic in the library, so I learned early on to read and read lots. I wish I could get DS into reading more. He's addicted to his phone and games..

 

[Beekissed]

Here's the famous..."Back in our day" lead in. Back in our day, parents didn't feel compelled to entertain children..there just wasn't the emphasis on it that there is in this current culture. Adults were always busy and children better be too...any kid that complained they were "bored" were given chores to do, so if you were smart you occupied yourself elsewhere if you could escape chores. We had TV for awhile back then but it only had three channels and us kids only got to watch a little Saturday morning cartoons...the real stuff...Bugs Bunny, Road Runner, Foghorn Leghorn. Sometimes we even got to watch the Carol Burnett show and HeeHaw...both great shows!

We played...singly, small group or large group. We'd get together for a neighborhood softball or wiffle ball game and that took place on any yard big enough to hold the game. Back in those days kids actually played together, either organized games like ball or just "war", tag, hide and seek, mumbly peg, or just imaginary games of pretend....my sister and I had one Barbie each for all our growing up but man did those Barbies get a work out! They started out Miss America dolls and ended up pioneer women who rode Johnny West's horses, shot rifles, rescued stuffed animals that fell over "cliffs",etc.

We fished, rode our bikes, swam in the river, sold seeds to the neighbors to make enough money for candy purchases, and made tents out of sticks and old blankets to "camp out" in.

In other words, back in the late 60s and early 70s kids had FUN. We were rarely ever still, moving and grooving all day long as we looked for things to do.

Now, when my granddaughters visit, I try to keep them outdoors when the weather is fitting and I just let them make up the play or work beside me. Their mother is amazed at how long they "stay occupied" with no toys, tablets(yes, they have a 3 yr old who has her own tablet) or TV. Here they bring a sack of toys from home and never play with a single one, in most cases, and especially if they are outside.

The other day the 3 yr old doctored 5 pieces of wood all day in her "clinic"...wood pieces that had come off the project I was working on at the time. I did my work and she did hers, while I had to stop occasionally to drive the "ambulance"(my own two feet and a block of wood for a stretcher) to get her wood chip patients to the clinic.

As she gets older, I'm sure this great imagination of hers will be dulled by the screens and she'll come out here and complain of being bored...at which time she'll get what I got as a youngster~a job to do. If it's raining, she better grab a book...we've got no TV here, nor will I allow her to hunker over a cell phone when that time comes. I was always told there are no boring times, only boring people. If you've got a mind, you can use it.

Here's the grandgirl helping her great grandmother....and we hope to continue that trend of teaching her how to produce food, occupy your hands and mind, and be a useful person.

 

[NH Homesteader]

My daughter will play for hours with the cut off ends of wood from a project of DH's. My SIL bought her a tablet, DH and I were NOT happy. She rarely uses it though, rarely even remembers that she has it.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Wow - memories come flooding back. I was a child of... well of a long time ago, lol! There were no screens (except television) in my childhood. I was lucky enough to grow up in a neighborhood that was a bit isolated. It was actually 'company housing'. There were 22 houses that were situated at the end of a long, dead end road. Woods, bayous and fields all around.

I wish every kid could grow up the way I did. We would get up, have a bowl of oatmeal, make our beds, take our dirty clothes to the laundry hamper and then basically disappear until lunch! There were tons of kids in the neighborhoods and some are still life-long friends. We had pedal cars when young, bicycles with training wheels when older and older yet the 10 speed bike craze hit. Most of us had horses, go-carts and even motorcycles. There were trails everywhere to ride on.

We had huge neighborhood picnics, a circus one summer, volleyball tournaments - there was even a private lake. We had enough kids for baseball games...and the company even built us a regulation baseball field. There was another football field that we loved to play on....even better if it was muddy! On those really hot sultry days we'd spread a blanket in the shade and play monopoly for hours.

We built forts in the woods, and played 'tag' on horses. The game was played by 'doubling up' on the horse and chasing the other kids on their horses . You'd win by pulling the backseat rider off the horse. Last team with two people on a horse won! Then came the day when I was riding behind one person when we were chasing another team. The horse we were on decided to go home at full gallop. We went around a sharp bend in a trail that had a huge pine tree on the corner. My 'driver' couldn't keep the horse away from the tree and we were about to be brushed off against it when she stuck out her arm to push us away from the tree and shattered her wrist and arm... the horse actually hit the tree with it's shoulder and was flipped around throwing me off about 12 feet through the air. I landed on my back and thought I'd never breathe again. That was the first, and only time I've had the breath knocked right out of me. The adults put a stop to our game after that, lol. It's really a wonder that some of us survived our childhood. And, actually one of us didn't.

Motorcycles! One of our younger neighbors decided to take his big brother's motorcycle for a ride when no one was at home to stop him. No helmet, no protective gear at all. He was on a bike that was too much for him and he wasn't familiar with it. He tried to stop with the front brakes only and flipped the bike landing on his head. It was the first time most of us kids had to deal with someone we knew being tragically injured. What's even worse is that he was in a coma for years before actually passing.

My kids basically grew up the same way. Bicycles, go carts, horses... They would do a few chores in the morning, come home for lunch and spend the afternoon playing with friends. They didn't have the same freedom that I had as a child because we didn't live in such an isolated area. But if you ask them - they'll tell you that they had a great childhood. I really wish all kids could have that.

 

[Britesea]

My childhood was during the 50's and early 60's. We had a TV for a short time, until my mother got tired of hearing my brother and I arguing about which show to watch- cartoons or Captain Kangaroo- so she yanked the cord... OUT OF THE TV rather than the wall plug. I was a teenager before it got repaired.
I was something of a loner, but I loved reading books; I would go to the library and borrow the maximum number of books they would allow me, read them all and bring them back 3 days later. My brother and I would walk down to the high school every day during the summer to go swimming in the pool. I had pets to play with and take care of... everything from cats and dogs to a 3-foot iguana that loved to eat yellow hibiscus flowers. We went camping as a family to places like Big Bear Lake where I remember sliding down hills in a makeshift toboggan made from a cardboard box over pine needles instead of snow. I clambered all over the rocks and hills at Joshua Tree, and marveled at the stars you could see when you weren't in the environs of LA.
I remember spending hours working out an anagram of our phone number- trying to make the letters spell a word (the best I came up with was Maxican).
.... building a fort out of a bunch of concrete blocks in an abandoned lot, and being petrified when I realized the block I had just carried over and placed so carefully had an absolutely HUGE black widow spider clinging to the side THAT HAD BEEN NEXT TO MY BODY!

Yep, I think I had a much more fun childhood than kids today...

 

[CrealCritter]

I recall the fun we had as kids. Playing bass guitar in rock bands and neighborhood kick the can was my fondest memories. Hunting in the winter was my other and then there's the CB raidio and school rifle class, the list goes on and on. Then around 12 or 13 hormones kicked in, I dicovered girls and I got real stupid... How many times can you get arrested for tresspasaing and skinny dipping at night in the local rock quarry before you spend 30 days in the country jail? Well the 5th time the judge told me if he saw me one more time for skinny dipping I would spend 30 days in jail. I never seen that judge again TV wasn't something I had interest in at all it was boring although I did kind of like Gilligan's island but not enough to get really interested. Thinking back at some of the absolutely stuipid things I did in my youth - it's a wonder I'm still alive.

I started working a real job when I was 12 years old. I recall waiting for my social security card so I could pay taxes. I've had a job every since then. Get out of school,walk miles to work. Work several hours the walk several miles home. Until I was old enough to drive. Over the years I've been unemployed 2 weeks total when the economy tanked in the early 80s. I've worked at so many different places doing so many different things. Back then if you didn't like your job you could quit in the morning go across the street and have another job starting the next day all you needed was a SSN. There was no such thing as background checks or tests or... I tell my kids about that and they think I'm crazy... But it's the truth 100%. They have never experienced a USA like that before, so they can only imagine.