To ask what the weirdest thing you experienced or saw at someone else's house when you were a child?

@kristen80

Oh my! If Kristen isn’t your actual name, I wonder if you might be the person I slept over with?

Were your parents nice in company and come across as caring to people who visited?

Either way, I’m so sorry for your trauma.

Some of these are hilarious,
Some are weird,
Some are very sad.

It’s a slice of social history, as others have said.

I’m so glad that safeguarding is now at the forefront of people’s minds.

And can I just say, to those who witnessed or experienced sexual abuse, please consider reporting it to the police if there’s a chance that the perpetrators are still alive, as they may still be doing it to other kids (even if they are in their 80s or 90s).

The police and CPS will take it seriously even if they didn’t then.

This doesn’t seem like classic material to me

So many represent profoundly painful and distressing childhood

Our house, with 6 children on a working farm, was chaotic, messy but clean. Sometimes after school, if my mum was working (she also had a part time job to make ends meet) I would go from primary school around to her friend's house. Her friend had 2 children, a girl a year of so older than me, a boy a couple of years older than that - around 10 or 11 at the time.
Their house was always immaculate - not just tidy, but not a speck of dust to be seen. One day the boy asked if we wanted to play with his lego - we said yes, and he led us up into his bedroom. He opened his wardrobe door and pulled the box out, and there, sitting proudly in the middle, was a huge turd! He was very animated in his description of laying his brick in with the lego bricks, his sister didn't seem to think there was anything unusual in this, and he was obviously immensely pleased with himself. Apparently he had several others in storage too.
I never really enjoyed Lego after that.

I grew up on a council estate and I remember most people didn't have carpet, they had the obligatory cardboard covering the floors tho!
I remember when I went to secondary school and I made friend with a girl from the village nearby and was invited over, It was the first time I'd seen laminate flooring and I thought she was so posh!

There was a druggie mum who lived a couple doors down with 2 boys both about the same age as me, I must have been about 11 at the time and we were out playing kerby in the street, we could hear her son begging and pleading for her to stop. It went on for about an hour. We saw him the next day covered in bruises. No one ever did anything. This was the late 90's so not all that long ago.
I sometimes see the mum now as she works in a local shop, I can't bring myself to look at her, both her boys have had drug problems and been in and out of prison.

Not exactly a childhood memory as I was 19, but an funny thing which happened at somebody else's house. There was a naice family I used to visit, whose youngest daughter was the feistiest 8-year-old ever, who teased me good-naturedly whenever she could, telling me that she wanted us to go on the TV show Get Your Own Back (where children competed to get adults dunked in gunge). I laughed it off, as you do; perhaps this girl knew from my body language that throughout my childhood I was a magnet for teasing, which I didn't like then.

When the adults sat down to dinner, this girl told me she was going to tie me up. And she was true to her word: while I sat eating, talking to the adults and completely ignoring her, she worked at me with a skipping rope, before running from the room laughing. And she knew what she was doing: I couldn't stand without taking the chair with me. Even though my hands were free, she had put the knots where I couldn't easily reach them, so somebody had to rescue me! I thought nothing of it at the time, but I wonder if such a thing would raise eyebrows now?

Our house was always under construction, with various DIY projects so tended to be messy and potentially dangerous with floorboards missing, wet plaster on the walls, loose electrical wiring etc. We weren't poor but the house was a state. I know friends who came round were often shocked at various states of disrepair but it wasn't a bad way to live.

I’ve nothing dramatic to add to the thread but I was always amazed (and a bit intimidated) by the levels of clean, neat and tidy that other households had.

Our kitchen and bathrooms were always clean but most of downstairs had a faint dog hair covering and dog smell. Our bedroom were up to us to clean and tidy so I just chose not to and my parents didn’t mind! All our furniture was handed down and my parents had no concerns with us jumping all over it and making forts. Food was always dropped down for our hoover (big hungry lab) and shoes were never taken off at the door.
Friends loved coming round because there were very few rules.

I remember going to one friends house in particular who’s carpet was a white and fluffy and their toy dog. I felt so nervous and I think spilt something which created a massive commotion of cleaning it up before her mum got home. I was mortified!

I agree Freddiemercuarysmoustache

And despite this, most seem to have grown into functioning adults who are able to cope with life, on the whole (although we none of us know what demons they are battling in the early hours of the morning).

Human resilience is amazing.

However, MNers are a very small %age of the population - maybe 98% are struggling with MH issues and not on this forum. Who knows?

This thread has been an eyeopener to just how much povert, neglect and creepy people kids have been exposed to. Some of these have had me close to tears no child should go those this stuff to all x

@Footiefan2019

I'm from a little town that begins with a P that isn't too far from the East Lancs, we had soup over chips too, usually oxtail or tomato

@kristen80 so sorry for you. Your mum was a horrible person

@FunkyPidgeonPie @FannyDingo
I was the weird house. Parents super strict. Mom used to buy all my clothes and each day lay out on my bed what I was to wear when I got home from school. I was never allowed to ask to wear anything different to what she selected. That was questioning parents authority. I never invited anyone to my house and was never accepted invitations to anyone else's house. I had few friends at school and used to carefully keep school and home separate. I lived under the threat of being home schooled. At night required to wear a nappy with plastic pants and not allowed out of my bedroom or I would receive the 'rod of correction'. Fearsomely painful. So basically had no option but to wet myself. One time when I was 13 another mom invited me to a sleepover at her place this was done mom to mom. I was mortified when my mom spoke to the other mom and described me as a 'wetter with no self control' and said she would send my 'protection'.

Our house was definitely the slightly weird one.
I grew up in Belgium in a semi-rural area, in a fairly big detached house in a middle of a big garden. I lived there with my parents, grandmother and great aunt. I was very fond of my great aunt as we shared the same birthday and she absolutely doted on me. She was in her 80s then and enjoyed a glass of liqueur or bubbly wine a couple of times a week. She would always allow me to dip a biscuit in it and have it as a treat. Her bedroom was full of dark furniture and she had a bottle of orange liqueur in her bedside cabinet to help her sleep. She also had a big mahogany wardrobe with a small door at the bottom and when you opened it you found yourself face to face with a stuffed pheasant. When she passed away I was about 7 and the body was kept in her bedroom for a couple of days for people to come and pay their respects (Catholic family).
A few years later, my parents had a big argument and my dad violently attacked my mother while she was asleep. She stayed in hospital for weeks and I stayed with relatives while my dad was undergoing psychiatric tests. My parents decided to stay together but from this point on they kept separate rooms. I had to go through my mom's room to get to my room and my mom used to lock her bedroom door every night. They also bought a gun and took shooting lessons and got their shooting licenses. My mom always told me it was to shoot rats in the garden but she kept the gun and ammo in her bedside table. Of course, as a kid and a teenager, I used to show it to the few friends who visited.
But I also had a great childhood with a massive garden to play in and unrestricted access to thousands of books (some of them very inappropriate).

With hindsight, I saw a few mildly odd things in my younger childhood (during the 80s) and one thing that sticks in the memory is a time when my brother and I visited the house of a friend of our parents and him taking us upstairs to his and his wife’s bedroom to show us what he had in his wardrobe. Basically, he had a suitcase full of knives and bladed weapons. I think there was also a handgun. My brother and I were fascinated. He told us not to tell anyone and we didn’t until years later. I believe he was in the army at the time.

On the subject of bog rolls running out, my friends brother used his socks and stuck them in the bin. I’d buried that memory until now. So grim.

The BFs family who used cardboard tubes to wipe their arses were definitely not poor by any stretch, so please don't assume that is the case. I would not be poking fun at those who can't afford toilet roll...these people could afford it but just didn't see anything wrong with clogging the plumbing up with chunks of cardboard to save a trip to the shops.

And Camp Coffee. I thought them the height of sophistication!

You'll be impressed with me, then - I still drink the stuff!

Some absolutely fascinating and some very tragic stories here. I don't have anything particularly exciting to share, but I grew up on a council estate in the 1970s. Everyone knew everyone else. 40 years later I still remember who lived in which house. We never ever went inside anyone else's house as kids though. We would play out all hours and wander all over til dusk. But inside never. If it was raining we just stayed home. I DID go in next door once or twice. They had cream plush carpet, a home bar, and stable type swinging door downstairs. And Camp Coffee. I thought them the height of sophistication!

Well, that was an emotional rollercoaster of a read

Excellent thread.

We also used to have mash in tomato soup .
Once while eating it my cousin kicked off (she did it quite a lot) so my auntie smooshed her face in it .
Funny at the time but I suppose not so much now .

A truly fascinating thread. Some posts beyond heartbreaking, and others wildly amusing. All those in between have been captivating too. My reflections are bland in comparison.

A lovely girl I knew from primary school lived in a small three bed semi with several brothers and sisters. I can’t recall the children having any toys. The house was untidy, quite dirty in fact. The mother always talked to the children in an extremely loud voice. She seemed to spend all of her time sitting on the couch shouting demands. The dad would return home from work to cook the evening meals.

One time the girl invited me for a Sunday roast. I was already aware that the family only ate from plastic bowls whilst sitting on the couch. We were served just roast potatoes in gravy. I couldn’t get over how salty they tasted.

A wealthy family. The house was filthy. Clutter everywhere. The integral fridge stopped working so they replaced it. The new fridge went elsewhere and the other was just left. I opened it and it was full of rotting food.

We didn’t eat soup with pie. Instead we had mashed potato with grated cheese, onion, tomatoes grilled. It was plated in a ring and filled with tomato soup. I introduced my husband to this dish. He loves it and it is now something all my children enjoy.

A family who ate baked beans with custard.

Another family with a creepy dad who kept trying to get me to undress to my knickers and "play with him in the paddling pool". I was about 12 and definitely post puberty... I kept making excuses, but he went on and on. Luckily, he gave up after a while.

Another family had an entire shelf, in their sitting room, full of sex manuals.

@HollowTalk yep, and even without poverty some people don’t use those things. We rarely have kitchen roll (my partner occasionally buys it but we usually use cloths), only have reusable baby wipes, and I don’t think I’ve ever bought face wipes in my life. I guess in an emergency I’d use a cloth wipe and wash it how we washed our cloth nappies when the baby was small, but that of course relies on me having a decent functioning washing machine which not everyone can afford.

Exactly what I was thinking @HollowTalk