As someone who binge-watched “Stranger Things” and was a suburban child of the early 1980s, I feel compelled to respond. Simply put, this might have been the most naturalistic part of this supernatural show.

There was a time, before the 1990s, when children played in a largely unstructured and unsupervised setting. My memory of sixth grade is coming home from school, leaving my backpack in my room, walking with my brother to a neighborhood kid’s house that had a bigger lawn than ours, and then playing there. We came home for dinner around sunset. When we played indoors, we were usually in someone’s basement. I have no memory whatsoever of parents checking in on us.