Growing up in the 1980s, we didn’t have play dates or iPads or constant parental supervision/entertainment (at least not the helicopter kind that are so common today). Instead, we roamed: the prairie hillside where we lived in South Dakota, and the city neighborhood where we lived during a stint in Indiana.

The other day I saw some kids roaming in the rural neighborhood I currently call home. Three preteen boys on bikes that were too big for them kept riding back and forth in front of the house...