Come Home When the Streetlights Come On

When I was a kid, the rule was pretty straightforward: have fun and come home when the streetlights come on.

For hours at a time, we were largely responsible for ourselves. We took stupid risks, got hurt, wandered into places we shouldn't have been, fought with our friends, worked things out, and occasionally learned the hard way why our parents had rules in the first place.

Some of what we did was genuinely dangerous. I'm not interested in romanticizing that.

But as we've made childhood safer, more supervised, and more structured, I wonder if we've also taken away some of the experiences that prepared us for adulthood.

In this episode, I talk about risk, independence, conflict, screens, changing communities, and the difference between knowing someone will rescue you and knowing you can handle your own shit.

Maybe the problem isn't that kids today are different.

Maybe we gave them a completely different childhood.