Things you remember from your childhood that would not be ok today!

Being the youngest (well one of 2 youngest) so being allowed to sleep in a makeshift bed with a duvet and pillows in the boot of the Volvo on the way home from the theatre.

Being hit with a slipper or cane at school for any major misdemeanours (1980s).

Cycling down through France to our villa (near Biarritz) with no fancy bikes, gear, or helmets, just my father and uncle carrying a haversack each (note haversack not rucksack or backpack!) with a tent and supplies. We would just cycle til our legs almost fell off each day and then camp at the aires, children and adults in together, and eventually turn up at the villa to meet the mummies (who had sensibly driven the inevitable fleet of Volvo estates down there). There seemed to be no planning, just a general consensus of who wanted to cycle and who was too young (poor cousin Hugo was always too small in my memory and had to go like a baby with the mothers, but I’m sure he did come along with the jumble of cousins at some point 😂). Those trips were very fun, but I can’t imagine many children being allowed to do that now, and if they did they’d have all the specialist gear.

Also, we were allowed to drive my fathers small boat around by ourselves on holiday - the only rule being that someone in the boat had to be in double figures, which often meant my 10 year old brother was the ‘responsible person’ in the boat!

Being allowed to ride my pony out on the road alone from the age of 8, and I went off for miles by myself, riding through villages and remote bridleways. This was deemed perfectly reasonable as long as I had my chinstrap on my hat done up! Heads were obviously only allowed to be unprotected on bicycles but not on ponies 😂

Oh definitely. And the plastic "cigarettes" that you blew into to produce 'smoke'. Used to wander the streets with my cousins blowing into them age around 12 thinking we were really cool. My mum saw me from our house once & went mad when I got home. She asked to smell my breath!

There was this one time my mum had to work but couldn’t get any childcare, so I had to go to work with her and sit in the car all day. 😂

Yes they shouldn't have left the kids,but they where just outside

I've popped outside (no further than my garden) to bring in washing or to put the bins out while the kids have been in bed

They made a massive mistake-and paid the price

My parents went much further and it's by the sheer grace of god,this woman didn't try to snatch one of us

In fact they where bloody useless parents and I'm amazed none of us siblings ended up dead-heath and safety just didn't enter their heads

That fact really is the grace of god-we came close many times

Playing on bomb sites in London. In the 60s there were still lots of bomb damaged buildings around before any redevelopment took place. They made marvellous play spaces with half standing walls, many to first floor level and underground cellars. We had huge fun and there was no regard for health and safety.

I was thinking about the McCanns and how much stick they got for doing much less than these posts. People saying that nothing happened. But it could have - just luckier

Going swimming at 9 with a friend even though I couldn't swim!

Knitting class at school, I was about 8 and we were all knitting gollys

We were on holiday at Butlins in Ayre about 1965, I was about 8years old. In the theatre on an evening they used to announce “ baby crying in chalet xxx” and the parent would get up and leave the theatre to go to the baby.

A couple just from primary school. Brand new state of the art school (1973). Two concrete sewage drains set in the tarmac of the infants play ground...called the tunnels...just the right night for an average 5 year old to run into and cut their head, so protected by a heavy rubber strip, held on by steel bolts.

I teacher used to walk around the class with a wooden dowel about 18 inches long and an inch wide. He would sing Ian dury's hit me with your rhythm stick as he smashed it down on your knuckles if he thought you were misbehaving.

Oh and the Liberal smacking that all parents did.
Both my mum and dad smacked us frequently, as did all my friends parents.
I smacked one of my children once and felt terrible.
They have grown up to be responsible citizens.

Riding around with my friends in the back of my DDs Mini pickup. Collecting rent from lodgers on behalf of my DD from his boarding houses 😂 I was nine! Being lifted up and down in the bucket of a JCB on a building site …yep DD again. My DM worked evenings and she only ever knew what we got up to when she processed the films from his camera.

Being smacked whilst trying to run up the stairs.. I didn’t cry so got smacked harder.

being left alone whilst my mum and step dad went to pub.

letting myself and my younger sister in the house as a very young child - small enough to climb through the cat flap.

Love the quote from the book
' better drowned than duffers - of not duffers, won't drown'

The bunking off thing I find hilarious in retrospect.
I hated PE with a special loathing. My best mate (still mates 40 years later) literally never went. She said (and was right) that if you never went, no-one missed you. She spent large chunks of time in the nearby countryside reading Smash Hits.
On her report for PE she got the one word classic "satisfactory". As some one who actually went I got "barely satisfactory"
If ever there was a life lesson learnt early it was that one.

Lots of my friends mums had estate cars. The boot was the best place to travel, especially if you had the dog in there with you

I remember, along with a classmate, being told to look after Form K (ie 4/5 year olds) during lunch hour whilst the nun/teacher had a break.
The inevitable happened. The class ran riot, completely ignoring us, and a little boy fell over and had to be taken to hospital . The other girl and I were 11 years old at the time and this was a private school!

Well I'm 68 so I don't think there's much that happened in my youth that would be acceptable/ recognisable today. From being force feed school dinners, sleeping on the back seat of cars all the way to Cornwall, obviously without seat belts, walking to school on my own at primary school along a main London bus route, left alone in the house all evening or during the day in school holidays. Out all day with my cousin in London going to the Natural History Museum etc on our own at about 10. All seemed perfectly normal at the time.

Watching Alf Garnett on TV.

not a bloody chance that would be on these days!!!

Walking to the shops (primary school age). Sat in the Internet cafe in the "char rooms" I can't even remember what we used to talk about 😂.

My husband was dinner money
monitor in year6 primary school. He and another kid had to take the dinner money down to the high street bank every Monday - this would have been 1966

Aged 14-15, went on a youth trip. The whole group Ended up in the instructors caravan drinking Blue Nun.

Sweets for children which looked like cigarettes. Anyone else remember those?

Being made to strip down to your underwear and get changed and back again how many times until the teacher told you to stop if you forgot your PE kit....and stand in the doorway of the classroom each time which was just off the main hall, regardless of who was in there. Horrendous to think this was a rule and this was only around the late 80s early 90s.

Yep mine did. And I was also allowed to change the gears although was a bit older then.