Watching the freedom of the kids on ‘Stranger Things,’ and remembering my own youth, made me ask: What are we doing to our children?

also fatter, less active, more socially awkward and plenty stressed out. That’s the blunt truth.

What I am sure of is that the best parts of my childhood were the quietest ones, when I had the space to become, piece by piece, the man I eventually came to be. I can remember a time going up against a bully after being terrorized by him for months.

That act of defiance — and the punch I got for it — it’s like yesterday to me.

Or when I sat in my room, just daydreaming in the slanting sunlight after reading a stack of comic books, and it dawning on me that somebody wrote them … and that I could write such things too. My novels wouldn’t exist without that moment.

I want my kids to have such moments. In those times, without parents to guide you or school to press responsibility into you, you become yourself.

But in order to do that, kids need what they most desperately lack these days: the time and ability to roam, and maybe make mistakes and learn from them. I earnestly wish I could give that to my kids. Yet I can’t, not unless society also eases up on our children — less homework, less supervision, less structure, less intervention.

But let’s say I decided on my own to give my kids what I had in such abundance. Imagine if my wife and I started parenting the way we had been raised and allowed our brood to wander the streets, come home from school on their own, choose their own activities. Somebody somewhere would call 911 on us. Or arrest us, just like Debra Harrell was in 2014 for allowing her 9-year-old daughter to play unescorted at a local park.

I don’t believe the situation is hopeless or that a course correction is impossible. But it would require a considerable effort on the part of politicians, school administrators, teachers, parents and other concerned adults to recognize that a child with idle time isn’t a child in need.

What makes us human is our individual ability to choose. If we take that from our kids, we strip them of the most fundamental part of themselves.

These things, however, may work in cycles. Maybe — if ever they’re given a spare moment to think critically — our overly structured children will see the damage our imperfect guidance and nurturing has caused them. Maybe they’ll give their kids that freedom to roam. Which means we’ll have a lot in common with our grandchildren. And when that happens …Meet you on the corner after school. Mari is the author of “The Beachhead,” a postapocalyptic novel, and the coauthor of “Ocean of Storms,” a sci-fi thriller.