What things were you not allowed as a kid that you can now do to your heart's content?

[BubblesInTheTub]

I know this has been done before but I love these threads.

I'll start:

• We never ever used to have Paracetamol in the house unless someone was actually ill with a cold or the like. I used to have horrendous period pains but pain relief was never available. Now I pick up Paracetamol whenever I'm in a shop (I think I've got about 20 boxes at the moment) and I take it whenever I need to.

• When I was a kid drinks were like food, you got a drink, you drank it and it was finished until the next drink. I've always needed to drink quite a lot and remember always being a bit thirsty as a kid. Nowadays I have a drink constantly on the go - a water/coke/squash just on the table for whenever I need a sip.

• When I was about 12, it suddenly became very uncool to wear a backpack. I used to walk two miles to school loaded up with really heavy shit sitting on one shoulder. Now I'm an adult and don't give a fuck what I look like, I'm happy hiking around town with all my heavy shit loaded up on my back

C'mon tell me yours!

@BarbaraStressland yes, it's the dismissal of specific needs/wants/opinions, especially where they differ from parental ones that is so awful.

I am cold blooded and slightly envious of people like you who can skip about in frosty weather with nice, thin, tailored jackets on looking like they could swish from the officer (where they broker globally important deals all day) and then head straight to a glamourous bar. But only slightly. And no-one can tell anyway, as I am buried in the depths of my new coat shouting at Manchester City

Not clean the kitchen up after dinner and leave it until the morning

Fruit.

My DM was very concerned about how others perceived her and our fruit bowl was always full and pretty to look at but we weren't allowed to eat it. She threw away and replaced it as it started to degrade.

@JoeElliotsMullet

Yeeeeah, I'm definitely not one of those women. I'm more your permanently red-faced, constantly glistening with sweat, and surreptitiously feeling my armpits to make sure they're not wringing kind of women.

Adult. I can adult. I don't want to...

Staying in bed when I'm not well, my mum says you die in bed. I was never allowed to stay in bed if I wasn't well, got kicked out of bed at my usual getting up time, even if I was really ill. I went to the doctor with what I thought was just a bad cold, was diagnosed with pneumonia, got told to go home & stay in bed until I had finished the antibiotics she prescribed me, went home to bed, my mum came home from work & within half an hour kicked me out of bed. I wasn't even allowed to stay in bed after having an operation, when my mum had the same op 25 years previously she was kept in for 10 days, I'd had the op as a day case, had the op at teatime & was sent home late the same night, my mum made me get up the next morning & get dressed, no lying around in my pjs.

I can stay up late

Also, if we are going for a day out, I no longer have to carry my own 'picnic' lunch and suffer fish paste sandwiches, squashed madeira cake, an apple and warm squash. I can buy something when we're there.

Have riding lessons.

So I did, at 26 for two years. Came back to it properly age 50. It is FANTASTIC 😎

Baldrickscoffee, my DC really love the very picnic that you describe . They have a packup box each and like fish paste. I so remember the picnics of the 80's and one occasion (only one!) where we ate at a service station. It felt like the most decadent thing in the world. Does anyone else remember getting a box of biscuits for Christmas and having to finish the top layer before being allowed to attack the bottom layer? And because they were rationed to one or two per day it took ages after your favourites were gone 

Going to theme parks- I love them and take my kids a lot!

So many things!
All things food related, too many to list!
Wearing PJ's all day (I hated having to be dressed before breakfast on non school days!)
Toys! By that I mean lego sets, I love the creator expert ones. Adult colouring books and lovely pens (as kids all we got was a value jotter and a pack of pens had to last all year!). I love arts and crafts and my childhood was very deprived for various reasons so I never had any real toys as a kid. Now if I want something I just buy it.
Proper juice! Not a glass of water with a teaspoon of squash in it!
Peace in my room! I always had to share with my younger sister and she used to drive me mad!
Just being able to do what I want when I want.

Like a PP who had to eat the nasty old fruit first, we had to finish up the old milk, so were always choking down milk that was slightly on the turn while the new milk sat in the fridge getting older. Even now, 50 years later, when I'm pouring the last inch of three-day-old milk down the sink, I feel thrilled that my dad's not forcing me to drink it.

And going to a cafe! Even just for a pot of tea. I love it. My dad thought it was a wicked waste of money. You can get a perfectly good cup of coffee in your own home apparently.

I remember very occasionally, after my mum had walked into town with my sister in the push-chair and me by the hand, and we'd trailed round all the individual shops, standing in queues to buy bread, meat, fruit etc, we would visit a tea-room and she would order a coffee and savour every mouthful while my sister and I ate the sugar-cubes from the bowl. "This can just be a wee secret from Daddy" I remember her saying.

I’m now so worried I’m damaging my kids as some of these I definitely do 😬

Poor dh. He has to put up with a lot because of my childhood. The main things are watching tv anytime, (We had one of those wooden tv's you had to put 50p pieces in.) the cupboards stocked, having clean clothes at all times and putting the heating on because it's cold and not waiting until November and even then only 30 mins in the morning and maybe 15 in the evening. I'm not having a go at my mum. She was a singlehandedly raising the 3 of us while my dad was terminally ill and in hospital. She used to work 3 jobs too. At this time of her life she was in her mid 20s and just lost my grandma. She had no one but kept going. Its weird. My sister is about to turn 30 and lives in Canada with her dp. She cant do a bloody thing for herself though and I'm always looking stuff up for her or giving advice. I don't mind honestly as she is kind and generous but I do wonder what my mum makes of it all.

I have a dog.

She sleeps in my bed
I love her more than anything in the world
I kiss her
I sing to her
Her groom costs more than my own haircut
She has a wardrobe of clothes (which she refuses to wear)
I constantly chat to her when we're out walking
When I adopted her, I took a full month off work to settle her in

My mum's horrified as dogs shouldn't be kept as pets, only as guard dogs

Having 'nice' cereal, basically sugary crap.. we did get it but with 3 kids it was gone in one day.

Now I have a serious cereal addiction and often buy the little mini multipacks where you get coco-pops and some boring ones aka rice crispies!

God yes cereal, I currently have 4 boxes open and will have something different each day instead of finishing a box at a time. My Dad would fume!

I think I am just a lot less highly strung about things, I cant get worked up about national trust cafe prices or stopping twice on a journey, or not arriving at an attraction 20 mins before it opens. I know part of that is having a bit more money but a treat is not a treat if you go on about it so much everyone gets fed up mum

Long showers. My DM was so anal about how long we were allowed in the shower. I've vowed to let my DD spend as long as she wants in the shower or bath!

Cut my hair short
Not finish food if I don't want to
Eat cereal for all 3 meals if I want
Leave books on the couch arm/dining table
Shove shoes under my desk rather than away neatly in wardrobe/cupboard

Buy food from a service station.

Stay out late.

Sleep in (except I can't any more)

Have control of the remote.

Eat out, just because.

Leave my bed unmade.

Keep ketchup in the cupboard instead of the fridge.

Not have supper (why I needed a couple of slices of toast and maybe a biscuit before bed I have no idea).

Eat the last biscuit.

Not finish a meal if I'm full or don't like it.

Swear!

Oh, talk for hours on the phone. DM used to get really cross if I was having a long chinwag with a mate on the phone even if she didn't need to use the phone (and we didn't have the internet in those days, so it wasn't even a dial up broadband issue)

long hair. if, at 13, i had had the hair i have now, my life would have been very different. i always had horrible middle-aged lady haircuts forced upon me by my mother. i was told i had ‘terrible hair’ which needed to be kept short. it was frizzy and awful and i was bullied.

but! it turns out that actually, i have beautiful curly long hair. and it is pink. fuck you, mother. fuck. you.

also, whoever said thirsty...as a child i was always thirsty as drinks were with meals and Not Allowed at any other time. i was always thirsty. now, i open cans of delicious drinks whenever i fancy. sometimes i don’t even finish them.

not booze though - the alcoholics who ‘raised’ me never went without their drinks. it left a legacy that i finally managed to break about four and a half years ago. now it’s just lovely soft drinks..

(serious note: when my mental health takes a dive, i tend to self-punish by not having anything to drink in a day)

oh. also cheese. i have trustworthy cheese. not crusty, left-out- uncovered manky old cheddar.

Another one - eat whilst walking in the street. It was a massive 'no-no' at our school. My best friend Nicki and I once bought some chips on the way home from
School. By the time we got to her home (which was a pub so she and her family were well known) about 3 people had told her Mum that they'd seen us eating in the street and we got an absolutely roasting. I remember how ridiculous it all felt to this day!

Crisps. My ma would never buy crisps. There are always crisps in my house.
I buy shop sandwiches sometimes. My parents refused to ever buy sandwiches. My ma would make coleslaw sandwiches which I hated. There is never any coleslaw in the fridge. EVER.
I wasn't allowed any barbies or 'fad plastic tat'
Dd has a box full of Disney dolls and barbies.

I had terrible hair as a teenager, it turned out to be from having to wash it every day with horrible cheap shampoo and no conditioner. after I started uni my hair became lovely.