I’m more appalled by how much so-called “protection” some people attempt to apply today.
My parents trusted me quite a bit… and I was very grateful, and it inspired me to continue to deserve their trust, in their eyes. Sometimes I got up to things I should not have, almost always because of the other kids I associated with, who had much stricter parents and were therefore acting out in sometimes quite delinquent and in some cases dangerous ways.
Trying to overly control children leads to problems. Often, worse problems than you’d have if you didn’t overly control them. That’s kind of the point. You can’t control people entirely. And if you try too hard, they will resent it, and act out to make up for it, often over-compensating, or even developing life-long unhealthy behavior patterns.
So “How the heck was I allowed to do this”? I know how. I was a good kid blessed with parents and teachers who mainly trusted me, because I continued to seem to deserve to be trusted.
The things I did that were most crazy, were as some level or other of accomplice to kids acting out against their parents who were trying to tell them they couldn’t do things, to an unreasonable degree. This generated attacks on society. Rocks flying through the neighborhood. Tires rolling down steep hills into busy streets, hitting cars. Sabotage of parked cars. Calls to the police. People calling police because people (8-year-old kids, but they didn’t know that) were sneaking through their yard at night. Many prank calls. Petty theft. Fraud. Etc Almost all before about age 10, about the time I stopped being friends with the last of my most chaotic friends. I had little or no reason nor desire to participate in such things, but the kids with over-controlling parents sure did.