There’s something I’ve been thinking about lately as I watch my grandchildren navigate their childhoods, which look nothing like mine did growing up in the 1960s.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful they have helmets for biking and parents who actually know where they are at all times. But I can’t help noticing how different things were for those of us who grew up in the boomer generation.

We had a particular kind of childhood that, looking back, shaped us in ways I’m only now beginning to fully understand. It wasn’t always pretty, and I’m not suggesting we should return to those days. But there’s no denying that certain aspects of how we were raised created a specific kind of resilience.

Here are ten ways our boomer childhoods forged some remarkably tough adults.

1) We were sent outside and told to come back at dark

I remember my mother opening the back door on Saturday mornings and basically shooing us kids out like chickens. “Go play,” she’d say. “Be back when the streetlights come on.”

And that was it. No cell phones, no GPS trackers, no scheduled playdates with other parents hovering nearby. We just went. To the creek, to a friend’s house three blocks over, to build forts in the woods behind the neighborhood.

Were our parents being neglectful? By today’s standards, maybe. But what it actually did was force us to navigate the world on our own terms. We learned to assess risks, solve problems without adult intervention, and develop a sense of independence that’s harder to come by when someone’s always watching.

I scraped my knees, got lost a few times, and once fell out of a tree and knocked the wind out of myself. But I also learned I could handle things on my own.

2) Failure wasn’t cushioned with participation trophies

Here’s a truth that might sting: when I struck out at little league, nobody gave me a trophy for showing up. When I came in last at the school track meet, there was no ribbon waiting for me.

And you know what? I survived.

Losing taught me something valuable about competition, about effort, and about the fact that sometimes your best just isn’t good enough, and that’s okay. It motivated me to practice harder or accept my limitations and try something else.

I’m not saying kids today don’t work hard, they absolutely do. But there was something about facing genuine failure, without the softening of “everyone’s a winner,” that taught us to handle disappointment and bounce back without external validation.

3) We entertained ourselves without screens

When I tell my teenage grandchildren that I grew up with three television channels and no remote control, they look at me like I’m describing the Stone Age.

But here’s what happened when you couldn’t default to endless streaming content or video games: you got creative. Really creative.

My brothers and I built entire cities out of cardboard boxes. We invented elaborate games with nothing but sticks and our imaginations. We read books because there wasn’t much else to do on a rainy afternoon.

This forced creativity built something in us. We learned to generate our own entertainment, to problem-solve, to cope with boredom without having it instantly alleviated by technology. It made us resourceful in ways that extend far beyond childhood play.

4) Physical discipline was standard

I need to tread carefully here because I’m definitely not advocating for spanking or physical punishment. But it was absolutely the norm in most boomer households, including mine.

My father kept a paddle in the kitchen drawer. My third-grade teacher had a wooden ruler she wasn’t shy about using. Schools still had corporal punishment in many places.

What did this create in us? A kind of toughness, certainly, but also a wariness and a learned ability to regulate our behavior based on consequences. We understood that actions had real, sometimes painful repercussions.

Again, I’m not suggesting this was the right approach. In fact, I parented my own children very differently. But it’s undeniable that it shaped how our generation thinks about boundaries, authority, and consequences.

5) We were expected to work from a young age

I had my first job at twelve, delivering newspapers before school. By fourteen, I was mowing lawns all summer. At sixteen, I worked weekends at a local grocery store.

And I wasn’t unusual. Most of my friends had similar experiences. We worked because we wanted spending money, sure, but also because it was simply expected.

Growing up in a working-class family in Ohio, I watched my father leave for double shifts at the factory. Work wasn’t something you did when you felt like it. It was what you did to survive and contribute.

This early introduction to work taught us discipline, responsibility, and the connection between effort and reward. We learned to show up even when we didn’t feel like it, to deal with difficult bosses and customers, and to manage our own money.

6) Emotional expression was actively discouraged

I’ve mentioned this before, but when I was young, phrases like “boys don’t cry” and “don’t be a baby” were thrown around constantly. I’m ashamed to admit I probably used them with my own son a few times.

Emotions were seen as weakness, something to be suppressed rather than expressed or explored. Particularly for boys, but girls got their own version of this with messages about being “hysterical” or “too sensitive.”

Now, I want to be clear: this wasn’t healthy. It created generations of people who struggled to identify and communicate their feelings. But it also created a kind of stoicism and ability to push through difficult emotions without falling apart.

We learned to function even when we were sad, scared, or angry. Not always the best coping mechanism, but it definitely built a certain toughness.

7) Safety standards were basically non-existent

We rode bikes without helmets. We sat in the front seat of cars with no seatbelt, sometimes even standing up. We rode in the back of pickup trucks on the highway. We played with toys that would be recalled today for choking hazards.

I once built a go-cart with my neighbor Bob that had absolutely no braking system. We rode it down a steep hill and crashed spectacularly into a fence. Did our parents freak out? Nope. They told us to be more careful next time and sent us back outside.

Were we lucky to survive? Probably. Many kids weren’t as lucky, which is why safety standards improved. But for those of us who made it through, there was a lesson in assessing risk, dealing with minor injuries, and understanding that the world isn’t always safe.

8) We had to figure things out without Google

When I needed to know something as a kid, I had to go to the library and look it up in an encyclopedia. Or ask someone who might know. Or experiment and figure it out myself.

There was no instant access to information. If you wanted to learn how to fix your bike chain or understand a homework problem, you had to work for it.

This created a different relationship with knowledge and problem-solving. We became resourceful. We learned to persist through frustration. We developed research skills and the patience to dig for answers.

When you can’t just pull out your phone and have the answer in seconds, you develop a different kind of mental toughness around not knowing things immediately.

9) Economic uncertainty was just part of life

I grew up as the middle child of five kids in a working-class household where money was perpetually tight. My mother performed miracles with the household budget, stretching every dollar until it screamed.

We didn’t have new clothes very often. Christmas was modest. Family vacations were rare. And we understood, even as children, that financial security wasn’t guaranteed.

My immigrant grandparents had built their life from nothing, and that story was part of our family mythology. You worked hard, you made do with what you had, and you didn’t complain about it.

This created a kind of scrappiness and appreciation for what we did have. We learned to be grateful rather than entitled, resourceful rather than wasteful.

10) We learned to cope with boredom

This might sound similar to the point about entertaining ourselves, but it’s slightly different. It’s not just that we had to create our own fun. It’s that we had to learn to simply sit with boredom.

Long car trips with nothing but the scenery. Waiting rooms with nothing but old magazines. Summers that stretched endlessly with nothing scheduled.

We couldn’t pull out a device and immediately escape uncomfortable feelings of restlessness or monotony. We had to develop an internal capacity to tolerate those feelings.

And here’s the thing: boredom is often where creativity and self-reflection happen. When you can’t constantly distract yourself, you’re forced to turn inward, to daydream, to think.

This built a kind of patience and comfort with ourselves that’s increasingly rare.

Final thoughts

Look, I’m not suggesting we should parent the way our parents did. Many aspects of boomer childhoods were genuinely problematic, from the physical discipline to the emotional suppression.

But as I watch my five grandchildren growing up in a much safer, more supervised, more connected world, I sometimes wonder what we’ve lost along with what we’ve gained.

The toughness our generation developed came with costs, some of which we’re still dealing with. But it also gave us something valuable: a belief that we could handle whatever life threw at us, because we’d already handled so much on our own.

Maybe the goal isn’t to return to the past, but to find a balance. To give kids safety and support while still allowing them space to develop their own resilience.

What aspects of your own childhood do you think made you tougher? And which ones do you wish had been different?