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!

I think it was definitely a hang over from rationing, 😭Tobee. And just a sign of the times. I was a kid in the 70s and early 80s and there just wasn’t the disposable income there is now. Nor the number of food and drink outlets.

Didn’t mean to put that emoji in, sorry.

Another one, tea; we used to be looked after by an aunt in the holidays who would never let me have a warm ribena, Horlicks or hot chocolate as according to her 'minors don't drink warm drinks'. She'd say it whilst clutching a coffee/tea.

Now I have about 3 large mugs of tea a day and have special tea mugs only for tea. And I enjoy them, yes I do!
I offer the DC warm squash or cooled down fruit tea. If it's cold outside, why am I torturing them?

Gosh, it’s actually quite good to read this and realise that I wasn’t alone in having a weird childhood.

Mine would be:

Eating what you want including spicy food
Going on holiday especially that abroad (unnecessary)
Watching BBC2 (subversive although that would have been too long a word - better ‘not very nice’)
Talking to anyone I want to without worrying that they might be after something/ common/ stuck up
Reading without having to explain choices
Fancying someone without the world ending (even if they are actually one’s DH!)
Not making a mahoosive fuss about visiting that London

Listen to Radio 4 and read broadsheet newspapers.

My family had no concept of radio stations broadcasting anything other than pop music or of newspapers other than the Sun. The first time I brought home a copy of the Guardian, I was asked ‘who the fuck do you think you are?’

Not having to eat leftover soggy breakfast at lunch or woe betide dinner time if we'd put to much out for ourselves. Didn't get lunch until we'd eaten it.
My own daughter does not have to eat hers, however actually likes soggy breakfast so often does half hour later after she started it!!
Don't have to eat everything on my plate before I could get down I think that's why once I was cooking for myself I always leave a little bit of every meal, I will not have those last few mouthfuls if I feel full.

I do wonder why so many of these is tied up in food?

I was the youngest of 4 by quite some years and was incredibly bored. I'd ask to do something eg join the Sea Cadets or a sports club and would be told if I could make my own way there and back they would pay for it, but they werent giving up their evenings chasing around after me. This was an impossible ask considering where we lived and how late it meant getting back after walking through a dangerous town centre. So now I take my kids wherever they ask if I possibly could, Ive driven all over the country to take them to auditions, football matches and training etc, we dont have a lot of money but Id spend my last penny to make sure they were doing what they enjoyed

Putting the heating on whenever I feel the need.

Buying coffees/sandwiches/other convenience food which would have been regarded as a terrrible waste.

I do sympathise though. Not many people had money for frivolities in the 70’s so I get it.

Buying magazines.

Taxis (I don’t think my parents ever got one until they were in their (50’s)

This is a fascinating thread. How well I remember 1 towel for 4 of us, ugh. Have a pile of snowy white towels and also decent bedding. Down quilts, Egyptian cotton sheets and light fluffy blankets if needed as opposed to the thin beige affairs that passed as blankets post war, supplemented in winter by coats on the bed. Most of the parsimony was due to living through 7 years of war, waste was criminal and everyone should make do. Very hard to change such an ingrained mindset even when circumstances changed. I still automatically keep elastic bands and other odds and ends. Dont want them, throw them out every so often but find it hard to throw stuff away, have to remind myself to do so.

So anyone agree that it's a particularly British trait, this austere way of living? Sort of feeling like it was your duty to deny stuff? Be a bit cold/hungry/thirsty?

Maybe the kind of Christianity that this country specialises in?

A lie in and a shower. As a child/teen if I slept in, by the time I got up all of the hot water would have been used and the tank would not be hot again until tea time.

I can be noisy, crack jokes and laugh until I weap if I want without being shut down for being ‘too much’.

• I get to have pets.
• I actually get to have nice snacks instead of being left with whatever my brother won't eat.
• I never have to eat dry brown bread sandwiches ever again (I hated brown bread esp as my mum never used enough butter and my brother only ate brown bread without "bits" in so we always ended up with the bread I hated because he wouldn't eat anything else.)
• I can stay in bed when I'm ill instead of being forced to get dressed and sit in the living room (or PJ's and duvet on the sofa).
• I don't have every single thing I do, or don't do, criticized and analysed because I'm not up to their ridiculous standards (and I don't want to be).

Not having to go to church, even on holiday in a language I didn't understand. I haven't been to a church service on a Sunday since I left home. Bliss.

Not having to eat when I'm not hungry. At around 12, I hit a rough patch (maybe because my grandmother died when I was 11?) and the anticipation of any meal made me often feel sick. Not helped by my bloody mother insisting I couldn't be not hungry.

Not having to play an instrument. My mother was a solfege teacher and thought music was really important. So I was hauled to music academy every Wednesday and Saturday from the age of 8 and at 9 I picked piano for my instrument. When I became a teenager I lost interest and started preferring calligraphy and drawing (especially cartoons). Was never allowed to do anything with that except some amateurish stuff at home, though.

Eating sprouts. 😁 my father didn't like them so we never had them whole (in mash very sporadically). Yet DM and DF liked broad beans and I had to have 3 every time they had some. When I queried why my father didn't need to have 3 sprouts, I just got smiled at. So we now serve them at every Christmas dinner. He eats them too. 😁

So anyone agree that it's a particularly British trait, this austere way of living? Sort of feeling like it was your duty to deny stuff? Be a bit cold/hungry/thirsty?
Maybe the kind of Christianity that this country specialises in?

Not just British, I think. I didn't grow up in the UK, and neither did my parents, obviously. But our country did have harsh post-war rationing, which ended when my DP were still very young. The mentality remained. My grandparents' generation was definitely caught up in the "waste not, want not" mentality for good. A fairly grim Protestant religion all around, too (one must work and suffer and not complain and definitely not be seen to be proud or wasteful). I was born in the 80s, so by then things were quite different, and my own family wasn't hard on money. My DP seemed to be frustrated with their own parents' frugality and stoicism, and things such never going out for meals, even when they had the money. I never lacked such experiences. I'm much less well off than my DP were at my age, but firmly in the camp that just having money doesn't make for a happy home.

I do wonder why so many of these is tied up in food?

I wonder that too. I know for my mother (who again, wasnt short of money) it was down to waste. If she really has to spend money on anything then it has to be used to the nth degree, which of course means never throwing a scrap of food in the bin.

Cold mince and potatoes served up for breakfast as I couldnt finish it without gagging the night before was a common theme. She now admits she would be horrified if I did that to my kids.

One thing I can do is "get above myself" or "show myself up". That is, not give a shiny shite if people judge me. She would used to have a go at me for not knowing my place, but now she will say "Oh you just dont care do you?!" in a shocked but admiring way that leads me to think it was fear that kept her doing all the things she did. She really did live a "What will the neighbours say?!" kind of life and I am sure admires me and my sister because we dont.

I should say that I know her issues with "What will the neighbours say" comes from her own upbringing. Her dad was a staunch socialist who was proud of being working class, very much "know your place", "its not for the likes of us" and was the biggest inverted snob I have ever met. I adored him and share most of his socialist views, but I have never believed that anything isnt for the likes of me!

Celebrate Halloween!! My parents are avid church goers and Halloween was evil. My mum even thinks wuyabaloo is evil because yoga is apparently satanic. Got a right telling off for letting my son watch cbeebies. I still have never carved a pumpkin but I do dress myself and the kids up at Halloween now and take them trick or treating. I never got to go as a kid. I also took great delight in watching all the 90s and 00s movies as an adult that all my friends were allowed to watch when they were teenagers and I wasn't. When I was say 15, I was still on pg only.

I stay up late (aka past 10am)

I lie in (aka past 8am - well, if the DC let me)

I eat pudding before my main course (and let the DC do the same)

I do not cut up chocolate bars to share amongst the family. What was it with that? Was a Mars bar so terribly expensive that it was only affordable if cut into slivers of disputably equal sizes?

Olennas I think it was that a whole Mars bar was considered extremely rich and extravagant for a child to eat. Much like a Magnum when they came out (Grandma used to buy me them )

Having a (nice big) dog as a pet! 🐾

Watching any channel I like on TV - including ITV (which my otherwise sane and lovely DM thought was “common”)

Having the house really nice and warm (this wasn’t really my DPs being stingy - they just had a really cold poorly insulated house).

Having sofa cushions that match the living room curtains.

Being able to decide when I want to go to bed and being able - subject to the DCs - to sleep then (in my case I want to go to bed much much earlier than my DPs do - DH and I are early people, and our house is lovely and quiet after about 9.30/10, my DPs were/are night owls and are often still happily wandering/crashing round the house at 1 or 2am).

Using as many tampons and pads as I need

My mother used to tell me I was “going through them like sweets” and was to cut down

Of course I soaked through them then got a belting for messing my clothes

Today I have boxes and drawers full of them and almost have a fear of running out

That’s awful Blue.

Ordering drinks whenever we were out somewhere. Now when I go out I get whatever I want.

My mum always made us open presents along the wrapping line so she could re use the wrapping paper. We were never allowed to rip stuff open. I take great joy in ripping open my birthday and Christmas presents now.

no @tobee, my german side , the females of the species have perfected meanness to another level, but especially with food and heating:

all things to be chopped up into smaller than communion sizes for the DC

no new clothes for the DC ever

don't buy them toys, we had rocks to play with etc and we survived.

it's not just a british thing, it's a meanness of spirit. some people have a mean spirit and it emanates their lives and those around them sadly.

Lots of similar things here:
Not finishing everything on my plate if I'm not hungry or have had enough, or heaven forbid, don't like it!
Drinks when I want, not just with a meal. Given I only really drink water, tea or coffee I can't see the problem.
Watching - or not watching what I want to on the telly. Never, ever watch soaps now.
Having glasses - she decided I wanted them because a friend of mine had got them and I spent the whole of secondary school struggling.
Using as many sanitary towels as I need, I was allowed one packet of the cheapest ones per month and had to make them last. I used to be terrified I smelled and as soon as I had a Saturday job bought extra for me and my sister.
Decent shampoo and conditioner. It turns out I have lovely wavy hair when it's treated nicely and not cut in a pageboy.
Food - especially a hot drink or an ice cream when out and about. I used to be so envious of people who didn't have to wait to get home.

Yes, money was tight, but not so tight that some of these weren't doable - especially given the amount she smiled and drank.