s/o how / how much did you move at age 11?

[Indigo Blue]

I rode my bike a good ways from home unsupervised or played in the woods. My friend took dance, but there was nothing else to do in our neighborhood. Just rode my bike so much. And made camps in woods. I did ride the bus to school. No walking. I was very tiny, and the bus was crowded with people standing in the aisles because the seats were full. People were constantly shoving and just generally being wild and I just remember being terrified each day that I would get knocked down or trampled. I survived. lol. 
 

Otherwise I was reading or drawing in my room. 

[historically accurate]

Hmmm, 11. We lived in the camper for most of it, so we were outside most of the time in good weather; my mother was not built for "tiny-house living" with a teen and a tween LOL. During the summer, we were in a campground, so we were playing in the river often and I played on the playground a lot. The winter was brutally cold and snowy and we moved to a trailer park in town; we spent a lot of time huddled around a space heater. But we did have access to THE sledding hill in the town park practically next door. From the trailer park, we walked to school (about 3/4 mile one way for me). 

I did gym class every day in school, but I seem to recall it was the year I failed it because I couldn't do the flexed-arm hang.  I don't think I got a lot of exercise in gym class; I spent a lot of time hiding in the outfield praying the ball wouldn't come near me.

It was the year of my first doctor-issued diet, so I remember my Mom tried to make me do some Jane Fonda video (she gave that up after 1 or 2 tries since our living space was so tiny). The diet pills made me feel icky, so I probably got less activity than normal honestly.  

My parents started working nights around that time (I was 11 or 12 when they started nights) so my brother and I had different babysitters in the evenings - we watched a lot of TV at their houses. Played some board games. I don't remember a lot of physical activities with them.

[Farrar]

3 hours ago, Eos said:

I'm seeing some metadata here that suggests most of us were active outside and did minimal organized non-school sports.

This feels more different from the conversation about food to me. The overall diets that people were talking about didn't feel as removed from today's kids as this conversation does. I feel like more of our kids had organized athletic activities at that age and roamed the streets a lot less. Even schooled kids I know that age typically don't walk to the bus the way many of us are describing.

[SKL]

11 minutes ago, Farrar said:

This feels more different from the conversation about food to me. The overall diets that people were talking about didn't feel as removed from today's kids as this conversation does. I feel like more of our kids had organized athletic activities at that age and roamed the streets a lot less. Even schooled kids I know that age typically don't walk to the bus the way many of us are describing.

I feel that way too, though I'm not sure my feelings are scientifically sound.  🙂

Living in the suburbs, I have had to be "intentional" about my kids' movement, though I love the idea of just letting them go out and play.  They have a nicer yard than I had, but they would get bored because there are no other kids around.  Other than one park that is about a mile away (which they walked to, with an adult, from age 1.5), everything for kids is out of walking distance.  So I put them in activities.  I bought kid yoga and "Baby Ballet" videos.  I drove them to different parks.  They had daily exercise, but most of it was at my behest.  So, they did not have that feeling that going off for a frolic is fun and freedom.

I really don't know whether they are more or less active than they would have been as 1970s kids.  I mean, yes, we played outside, but it wasn't all cardio, right?  We walked or biked to a destination, but often did something quiet / sedentary at that destination.

That said, if I hadn't pushed movement, in our actual neighborhood, I do think my kids would have moved less than I did.  One kid really did not like moving, LOL, and the other kid didn't like doing things without her sister.

At 11, my kids chose to participate in school sports, in addition to their favorite long-standing activities (horse riding for one, gymnastics for the other), plus we were still doing TKD and AHG.  Their school day included some gym/recess, and their aftercare program included playing outside.  So, I was still OK with their level of activity.  With the Covid shutdown at age 13, everything went back to square zero, losing whatever momentum their busy-ish childhood was meant to provide.

Now they are 17, and they choose their own adventures.  Surprisingly, my less athletic kid has decided to join school sports (as a senior), for the social aspect of it.  My other kid likes running and is conscious about her figure, so she's motivated to stay fit.  Neither are what you'd call very active, by a long shot.  But, when I was 17, I wasn't doing anything other than chores (laundry, shoveling, ...), babysitting, and walking / biking for relaxation.

[Ali in OR]

My brain is linking this to the article from the American Pediatrics a couple weeks ago about the rise in anxiety linked to this decrease in autonomy, so perhaps the real benefit isn't the cardio workout but the mental health of roaming free without parental/adult oversight all the time.

Edited January 9 by Ali in OR

[SKL]

4 minutes ago, Ali in OR said:

My brain is linking this to the article from the American Pediatrics a couple weeks ago about the rise in anxiety linked to this decrease in autonomy, so perhaps the real benefit isn't the cardio workout but the mental health of roaming free without parental/adult oversight all the time.

I do agree that there's a big benefit to the autonomy aspect, which is very hard to duplicate in today's suburbs.

Do you think it applies to technology / internet freedom also?

Edited January 9 by SKL

[Ali in OR]

1 minute ago, SKL said:

 

Do you think it applies to technology / internet freedom also?

Not to me. I'm thinking body movement, course of your actions, still doing physical stuff. Tech is so passive to me, and even if you think you're controlling what you're doing, you don't realize how much control is being exerted on you by others who determine what you see and where you go (thinking of my dd following TikTok, Be Real, etc and students hooked on particular games).

[SKL]

Just now, Ali in OR said:

Not to me. I'm thinking body movement, course of your actions, still doing physical stuff. Tech is so passive to me, and even if you think you're controlling what you're doing, you don't realize how much control is being exerted on you by others who determine what you see and where you go (thinking of my dd following TikTok, Be Real, etc and students hooked on particular games).

The influence is an interesting point.  When I was a kid in a working-class, big-city neighborhood, there were many influencers on us in our physical wanderings.  I remember around age 11 or 12 seeing a book that explained subliminal advertising, so that made me somewhat aware that it was everywhere.  In addition, the whole bad apple / birds of a feather thing.  I didn't pick up every bad habit I was exposed to, but I certainly adopted some of them, and became desensitized to others.  My folks probably don't know about 90+% of this.  🙂  Though, in their childhood, they had other bad influences.

[Farrar]

25 minutes ago, SKL said:

I feel that way too, though I'm not sure my feelings are scientifically sound.  🙂

Living in the suburbs, I have had to be "intentional" about my kids' movement, though I love the idea of just letting them go out and play.  They have a nicer yard than I had, but they would get bored because there are no other kids around.  Other than one park that is about a mile away (which they walked to, with an adult, from age 1.5), everything for kids is out of walking distance.  So I put them in activities.  I bought kid yoga and "Baby Ballet" videos.  I drove them to different parks.  They had daily exercise, but most of it was at my behest.  So, they did not have that feeling that going off for a frolic is fun and freedom.

Just pulling this because I grew up in the suburbs (at least at that age) and nothing for kids was in walking distance - no playgrounds at all, no libraries. And yet I still just roamed and walked. I don't feel like it's the suburbs per se. I mean, yeah, the suburbs can make it structurally harder. But I think the bigger thing is a cultural shift.

But yeah, scientific. Who knows.

[HomeAgain]

I moved a lot at age 11.  We had morning recess/break and a 45 minute lunch period in school, and then after school was hanging out with friends, walking to each other's houses, roller blading, climbing trees...and then playing Nintendo or computer games when it was too hot out.

In contrast, my ds is in middle school.  They get a 20 minute lunch, weather sucks in the winter so they don't play outside, and ds gets most of his activity through organized sports and weekly commitments. For the past two years the kids have all been weird.  They don't hang out from Sept. 5th-June20th, but the minute school vacation hits I have a line of kids at my door asking about ds.  This year has been more in line with how I grew up, but still weird.  The kids like to wait until near dark, or decide to ride bikes when it's 30F out.  Crazy children.

[SKL]

3 minutes ago, Farrar said:

Just pulling this because I grew up in the suburbs (at least at that age) and nothing for kids was in walking distance - no playgrounds at all, no libraries. And yet I still just roamed and walked. I don't feel like it's the suburbs per se. I mean, yeah, the suburbs can make it structurally harder. But I think the bigger thing is a cultural shift.

But yeah, scientific. Who knows.

Yeah, I don't understand why, but there are no kids playing outside here.  When I was a kid, there were at least a dozen other kids on our short street, and they came and knocked on our door and asked to play with my then-preschool-aged brothers on the day we moved in.  "Let's go see if __ can play" was the usual agenda among neighborhood kids.

We have one family with similar-aged kids about a half mile away.  My kids knew their kids because they were both on the rec soccer team.  My kids walked down there to visit a few times, but it didn't stick, and those kids never walked up here.  Even on Halloween, we get less than 5 trick-or-treaters every year.  Maybe we're just in the worst neighborhood.  😛

[PaxEtLux]

Can I just say I'm impressed by how much y'all remember about your daily activities when you were 11?  I have vague memories of gym class and lunch, but I could not tell you for the life of me if gym was daily or once a week or something in-between.  I'm sure lunch was daily 🙂 , but I have no idea how much time we had for it, or really any other details.

[Arcadia]

PE and once a week recreational swimming lessons, that is all the exercises I did. My husband is my age and he only did PE for exercise. 

[Insertcreativenamehere]

At 11, I was playing two seasons a year of soccer along with one season of basketball. I was also getting a lot of time outside running around and riding bikes. I'd ride my bike for hours around town in the summer. Once I started middle school though, most of that activity stopped because I was too self-conscious to try out for the school teams, thinking I wasn't good enough. I did still ride my bike quite a bit in the summer to friends' houses, etc. It wasn't until college that I started getting more intentional activity - running, cycling, etc. 

Edited January 9 by Insertcreativenamehere

[QueenCat]

I walked almost everywhere. Easily 15+ minutes to friends, the library, grocery store. In the summers, swim team in the morning, gymnastics several days a week. That's about the age I started playing tennis. The rest of the year, synchronized swim team, gymnastics, still walking a lot of places.

And I walked to school until high school. Middle school was about a 15-20 minute walk.

Edited January 9 by QueenCat

[prairiewindmomma]

3 hours ago, Ali in OR said:

My brain is linking this to the article from the American Pediatrics a couple weeks ago about the rise in anxiety linked to this decrease in autonomy, so perhaps the real benefit isn't the cardio workout but the mental health of roaming free without parental/adult oversight all the time.

For me personally, this hasn't proven out. I had a lot of roaming free privileges as a child/teen but I was way more anxious as a child and teen than I am now. Most of my friends growing up still struggled with anxiety despite us being in high autonomy/high responsibility/connected to our community situations. I think connectedness to a larger community, self-awareness, genetics, stability in home life and finances, and a number of other things play in to the factors surrounding whether anxiety is present. 

[KungFuPanda]

11 hours ago, Eos said:

I'm seeing some metadata here that suggests most of us were active outside and did minimal organized non-school sports.

I forgot to even mention cheerleading practice after school, and chores at home. 🤣 We had a large property, vegetable gardens,  and a wood burning stove so there was always weeding, carrying wood (that Dad chopped), or cleaning in the house. 
 

I kept my kids busy because it seemed normal to me. Dd did a lot of dance classes and DS spent a lot of time in the pool. This was before streaming or tablets-for-all. Still, they spent more time indoors and didn’t have chores associated with managing a large property. THEY grew up with air conditioning and inherited my DH’s intolerance for heat. 

[Terabith]

I am with @SKL.  I think my kids moved more than I did up through about age 9, because we homeschooled, and I facilitated it.  When we homeschooled and when they were preschool aged, I held fast to a "three hours a day outside or in structured class" rule.  But I drove to a lot of playgrounds and natural areas.  Some of that was spent running around my in-law's neighborhoods and playing in yards, but not a ton.  We did a lot of classes, both because I wanted to give them life skills (like swimming) and sensory stimulation (like gymnastics), but also because *that's where the other kids were.*. I really wanted to give them autonomy, but there wasn't anywhere they could safely bike to, and all of the other kids were in organized activities after school.  Their best memories from childhood are from running around in Grandma's neighborhood, sometimes with a handful of other kids.  It was the closest we could come to "That 70's Summer," which is what I've always tried to strive for in summer camps with preschoolers:  as much freedom, free play, running around, messiness, drinking from the hose as I could facilitate.  I think the independence and freedom and sense of exploration was what made that magical.  

When they went to school, all of that stopped.  For one, we couldn't afford many extracurricular activities on top of Catholic school, for another most extracurriculars went from fun, once or twice a week kinda things to super formal, "This is who you are," many hours a week at about that age.  And also, after they spent a full day at school (where there was a short recess and pe like once a week), they were emotionally exhausted and did not have the spoons for any group activity.  

But I think there is significant movement from movement that is utilitarian (chores, transportation) and freedom of movement and a community of children that existed outside to movement that is structured and organized by adults and that being where other kids are found.  

[Eos]

20 hours ago, SKL said:

I do agree that there's a big benefit to the autonomy aspect, which is very hard to duplicate in today's suburbs.

Do you think it applies to technology / internet freedom also?

To me, no.  Tech for kids is the anti-movement, anti-autonomy substance. The tracking and conditioning that's happening to kids now via tech will produce symptoms in the future that we can't know yet.

Edited January 10 by Eos

[popmom]

I didn’t read the previous replies. I’m just adding my experience because I commented on the food thread.

I have huge memory gaps of my childhood due to…well, developmental trauma. I wasn’t athletic at all. My mother never put me in any extracurriculars like she did my younger siblings, but I do have memories of playing outside in summer with my siblings and neighbor kids. 
 

I read a lot and played stuff indoors mostly. I was very sickly—especially ages 5-8–so winters were definitely indoors. In spite of this (or maybe because of it), I was underweight for my entire childhood. It wasn’t until I left home that I reached a normal weight. And I was a “really good eater”. Not picky at all. Not undernourished either—except as an infant. My mother was 17 when I was born and she didn’t know that babies needed to be fed around the clock. She just gave me a pacifier when I woke for night time feedings. (She told me this many years ago.) And also she said that she was told by the pediatrician to feed me Viva (which was name brand 2%) milk after 6 months of formula. She thought “Viva” was the same as skim milk, so I was fed zero fat skim milk starting at 6 months which is slightly horrifying. lol 

[Familia]

Let’s see, when I was 11 I was in 4th grade. I walked to school each day, about ½ mile. I played outside with friends or by myself most days, either walking or other active play – probably average of an hour a day or a little more.