Kids rarely play out like we did - it’s a great shame

Known locally as ‘the swings’, it was a popular place, particularly on a weekend and during school holidays.

My husband, who was with us, asked the reason for the name - a question that would never have been asked back in the 1960s and 70s.

Hidden from view, a flat meadow gives way to a steep, wooded slope leading down to a beck. When we were children rope swings or, as we knew them, tarzys - we all watched Tarzan on TV back then - hung from the upper branches of several trees. The braver kids among us had climbed up to tie them on.

We would jump on to the large knots at the bottom of the rope and swing over the beck. We used stones and mud to dam the watercourse and, once a pool had formed, we would swing out and let go, dropping into the water.

Needless to say, the bankside was devoid of vegetation - just earth, worn hard by so many feet running and jumping.

Today, you would never know it had served such a purpose. Nature has once again taken over, as generations of children ignore the possibilities of fun to be had in this mini valley on their doorstep. Or maybe it’s because, and I suspect this is the real reason, they simply don’t go there.

The only places kids might use rope swings is at leisure attractions such as Go Ape.

Kids no longer, as we would have said ‘play out.’

We used to make our own rope swings

There have been countless surveys over recent years, concluding that children no longer play outside, instead spending more and more time focused on screens. It’s not all down to them. Parents’ concerns about safety also result in children remaining at home, or going out with family, in their free time.

A 2022 survey by OnePoll found that just 27 per cent of children said they regularly play outside their homes, compared to 71 per cent of the baby boomer generation, into which I fall.

To reach the swings, we walked around the cricket field. In my youth, on a summer evening, even on a school night, it would have been busy with children, knocking balls around, or just hanging about having a laugh. We found it deserted.

Life is so very different for children nowadays. In a life dominated by phones and laptops, they don’t go out and play and explore like we did.

As well as helping children develop independence and social skills, spending time outside with friends has got to be better for mental health than gaming at home.

Like my friend said on our walk: “We would be out all morning, run home for a quick snack at midday, and go out again. We wouldn’t go home until it was starting to get dark.”

Having this sort of freedom as children leaves you with happy memories. Of course we got into scrapes, but that was part of the fun. A life like that gives you so much to look back on. My friend often starts a sentence with the words: “Do you remember when we used to…?”

You can’t reminisce about playing computer games.

I admit I’m a hypocrite - I didn’t allow my own kids to roam free, due to worries about traffic - there are far more cars on the roads nowadays - and other concerns.

It’s a different life nowadays for children, and certainly not a better one.

*Interestingly, the word tarzy seems to be confined to the area of North East England where I grew up. Looking up how to spell it, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) says the earliest known use of the noun is in the 2000s, with the OED’s earliest evidence being from 2003, in the Evening Gazette, Middlesbrough’s local paper.