An analysis published in Spain highlights nine “life lessons” that marked those who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, from boredom that led to creativity to free play on the street, and suggests that some of these learnings (without nostalgia or romanticization) help to explain a greater tolerance to frustration and uncertainty.
The Spanish portal La Razón describes a childhood with fewer screens and more streets, but also with fewer emotional “buffers” and less constant supervision, a contrast that continues to fuel debate among parents, educators and experts.
The list brings together nine ideas: boredom as a driver, learning to lose, patience, playing without supervision, autonomy, dealing with death, ingenuity in scarcity, learning by example and the community as a network. Even so, the text itself warns: it is not about saying that “before it was better”, but about understanding what these experiences may have left as a psychological legacy.
What psychology recognizes in these nine lessons
The first is boredom. Today, the Child Mind Institute highlights that moments of boredom can help children develop creativity, self-esteem and the ability to find solutions when there is no immediate entertainment.
The second involves living with failure. Resilience psychology tends to value “manageable” challenges and learning to cope; in simple language: failing with support (without humiliation) can strengthen internal resources, instead of weakening them.
The third is patience and “postponing the reward”. The famous “marshmallow test” was associated with the idea that waiting brings better results, but more recent studies have relativized the strength of this long-term prediction, remembering that context and social factors matter a lot.
Autonomy: playing, exploring and resolving conflicts
The fourth lesson is free play, without an agenda and without adults intervening in everything. Scientific American argues that unstructured play is important for social, emotional and cognitive development, including dealing with stress and solving problems.
The fifth is growing up without permanent attention: parents present, but not always available “every minute”. In terms of development, autonomy is also trained when the child has space to decide and resolve, and the APA recommends precisely helping young children gain the confidence to make appropriate decisions and face problems.
There is an essential nuance here: regaining autonomy is not returning to “anything goes”. It means creating safe conditions for the child to experiment, make mistakes and adjust, an important difference at a time when the real risks and family logistics have also changed.
Real life: loss, scarcity and learning by example
The sixth, more sensitive lesson, is to face death and grief with fewer “filters”. Current guides remind us that children learn about grief by watching adults and benefit from honest, age-appropriate explanations rather than total silence.
The seventh is ingenuity in the face of scarcity: reuse, repair, invent. Research on creativity and innovation shows that resource constraints can push towards more creative and adaptive solutions, although not all scarcity is “virtuous”, especially when it becomes deprivation.
The eighth is to learn by example, not by “speeches”. This ties directly into social learning theory: people learn many behaviors by observing role models (parents, teachers, role models) and the results of those behaviors.
The community that cared for, and what remains today
The ninth lesson is the community as a support network: the “neighborhood” looking out for everyone. In research on “collective efficacy” (social cohesion and informal control), there are associations between more cohesive communities and better results in indicators linked to the well-being and behavior of children and young people.
In the end, and according to , the point is not to idealize the 1960s and 1970s, but to choose what makes sense to recover in 2026: more time of productive boredom, more free play, more tolerance for error and more real connections to the community, without giving up what we know today about protection, mental health and children’s rights.
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