I remember playing with jacks or marbles and ‘tag you’re in’. All good, innocent fun.

Cops and robbers we played as a class game in primary school, as long as the kids get to be both I don’t really see an issue

It didn’t do us any harm growing up!

Sometimes I’ve found you need to change the terminology – like “eeny meeny miny moe, catch a $$#%$# by the toe..” but most of the games were fairly harmless. I’ve introduced my kids to elastics, red rover, what’s the time mr  etc and they love them.

yeah it is literally fun and games. whatever as long as they are happy

It is ok , games can be learning experiences , we used to play that as well as hide and seek , etc all the time . As long as they know what is right and wrong etc .. it should be fine .

role playing games are completely normal for children – as long as children know the difference between right or wrong

Kids tend to play different games – each generation has their own games. Kids have gone though all sorts of games including space games.

I have heard it explained as a positive on the grounds that the kids are learning a caring role through this kind of role play. See Maggiedent.com then go through the tabs free resources, common concerns, raising boys, and then look for the article – “why boys need a boyhood to become good men”. I suppose it depends on how it is played though.

If that’s what the kids want to play, let them. I think they tend to play games they have experience with, eg what they’re watching or reading. As you’ve pointed out, we played them as kids, didn’t hurt us