Was this normal in the 90's

[sparklybin]

I'm trying to sort in my head some of the things my parents did when me and siblings were growing up to see what was normal and was was not.

When my parents used to go into town ie the high street, if they had their shopping to do or something like a bank appointment they would drop us at the toy store and leave us there playing with the toys until they'd finished and then they'd come back. Probably used to leave us for about an hour but I'm not sure if it was longer. We were about 4/5 when they started doing this
I can't imagine doing this. It was early 90's though so I don't know if it was normal or not.

Yes, it was normal. I also remember my Dad propping me up on a chair in the corner of the bookies on a Saturday with some juice and crisps and he'd do his thing.

No to leaving kids on their own like that. No to letting them scoff the sweets. Not normal in the 90s , 80s or 70s.

I was that age in the mid 80s and parents never left us alone in a toy shop or the library etc. My mother would take us to the library regularly but I remember her staying with us. We had a nanny though so I suppose they didn't need the free childcare. I can't imagine leaving my own children alone in a toy shop even now at 10 &

....posted before finishing! Was going to say I can't imagine leaving my children alone in a toy shop now and they are 10 & 8! They do have a lot of freedom to roam though but all in a rural setting so would be clueless in a town / city by themselves!

My mum and dad were the polar opposite, I wasn’t left anywhere at all in my own, not even for five minutes, I would have loved some freedom!

Our local shop was down the hill, and could be seen from our front door. I was so desperate to do something on my own, I begged to go to the shop for my mum. She relented, wrote a note for the shopkeeper for her fags, and gave me 10p for penny sweets. She then stood outside our front door and watched me the entire time! The shopkeeper would put the fags in a brown paper bag to bring home. I was 10!

I didn’t actually get to go anywhere on my own, even on the local estate until I was 12, my mum still walked me to school every day until I started at secondary school, even though the school was 10 minutes away with no roads to cross!

My dad was much the same, although I did get to go into our local betting shop each weekend with him, and I would pick a horse for him to put a bet in!

Consequently, due to the complete and utter claustrophobic parenting style, I spent nearly every day from the age of 3 reading or drawing, and this continued until I went to secondary school. It was only then I found out that my parents, and my mum in particular were excessively over protective.

Years later, after both my parents had died and I had started to suffer a lot of strange health problems, I found out that they were like that because social services had been involved from when I was very young because strange injuries kept happening to me, I kept being taken to A&E with various dislocated joints and seizures, and the doctors were suspicious as to how these random injuries kept occurring. It has only recently transpired that I have a genetic condition known as Ehlers Danlos Syndrome type HT, one of which the many and varied symptoms is easily dislocated joints, random bruising even with little pressure and on top of that, temporal lobe epilepsy. My parents were so scared of social services, they prevented me from doing anything at all on my own.

I would have loved to have had the freedom lots of kids had, even if that was sitting outside the pub whilst my parents were inside. I should mention this was the 70s and 80s.

Don’t worry
In the 1950’s it was quite normal to leave us on the pub doorstep with a bag of crisps 😂

We used to be left in the shopping centre while my parents shopped. We'd play on the wooden animals that had a slide in them and go up and down the lift. That was in the 80s. I've no idea what they would have done if my brother and I weren't there when they came back. It felt like they'd been gone for hours.

3 locked in car in 1960s for about two hours while parents went round town. Youngest about 4.

No, we were left in the car

In the late 1980s the early learning centre always had a big Brio train table set up near the front - I was left to play whilst my parents bought my Christmas presents in the same shop and glanced over, or they hovered, but it was always swarming with unattended children left there for ages and over the years the “seriously this is not a daycare, our staff don’t supervise this area and have no responsibility for the children” signs got bigger and bigger.

It did happen, but was frowned upon and if you were known to regularly leave yr child unattended you were likely to be reported.
Although children of earlier generations did often roam the streets, or fields in little gangs. However it was also very acceptable then for a ‘stranger’ to send a child packing with a flea in their ear or a clip around it if they were really misbehaving, and also to keep a general eye out for any in trouble. People were not afraid of asserting their boundaries and parents accepted it as they were ultimately the ones responsible for exposing their children to the influence and good or bad tempers of other adults.

My husband was left on building sites watching the diggers. His Mum would ask the workmen to send him home after an hour or so. He was 4. It was the 70s!

No chance that would happen with us, that's just bonkers

I grew up in a small market town in the 90s (born in the 80s) and my parents didn’t do this. We were left in the car at the supermarket (obviously at the nearest bigger town) sometimes while my mum shopped but I was probably about 9 by that time. I think the first time my mum let me into a shop unsupervised I was about 10 and she took me and a friend to the next town over which was much bigger and said ok you two can go shopping and meet me back at X at Y o’clock. But leaving me and my siblings in a toy store at 4/5 to go do things? No. They absolutely didn’t.

My mum was leave us in the car 😂

!@knitting addict I Was told by a Health visitor at clinic that I had to leave one of my twins babies outside !(1991) She rapidly changed her opinion, I was outraged!

Not a toy shop but my mum would leave me in the play area of the shopping centre near the food court. It was definitely normal and people were more trusting to just leave their kids with other kids. Like in a playground or whatever for a bit. I can't imagine doing that these days 😱

I remember an abrupt change when I was 8. Before that I was free-to-roam and used to go with my friend to the market square and all over the place really. The only rule was that we mustn't go inside "the derelict house" in case the upstairs floors collapsed and trapped us inside. The derelict house was in a woodland though, and the wood, was definitely okay, as was squeezing through the fence to get in there. This was the case when I was 5 to 8 years old.

Then at 8 everything suddenly changed and the new rule was "don't go out of sight of the house", which took rather a lot of the fun out of things.

The thing I don't fully understand is that in the first three years I was living 5km from the centre of a capital city, and could easily have been pinched. My parents didn't even speak the language so we'd have been up a gum tree. The second location post-age-8 was as safe as houses. It was the single most isolated place on earth practically, with a long cul-de-sac that took 20 minutes to get out of by car. I was never quite sure why the rules changed.

In the 70s, I do also remember babies being left outside shops in prams. I also, I'm sorry to say, remember babies and children being routinely slapped and thumped and screamed at in the street. (Not in my family fortunately.) This was usually with the phrase "Stop crying" being shouted loudly over the sounds of child's sobbing.

These days books seem to think that we should lock children in their rooms and put them alone on the stairs, and I don't really like that either. I've never really been convinced that anyone has a good answer to those moments, when parents just need a break from their own children.

I suppose leaving their kids abandoned in a toy shop was quite a kind way to get a break really.

I should say that the abrupt change I mention was mid-80s.

Didn't happen to us in the 70s.

Born in the 80s not normal for us. We did walk home from school and play out by ourselves from about 7/8. Babies were left outside shops in prams too.

My mum did this when I was little shed leave us in the toy department at myers they had a massive mat on the floor that was a piano or wed play Lego ☺ free babysitting I suppose their was always other kids to play with

From about 5 or 6 I was often sent to the corner shop for cigarettes, matches and bread.
I was never left in a toy shop, that would have been amazing (to a 5 year old!) I'm a 70s kid.
I remember taking myself to the library at 7 or 8.
We were all out all of the time really. I walked miles to parks with friends. Always home for dinner (or there would have been serious trouble from my father).....

We went everywhere with our mother. She would never have left us by ourselves in a shop.

In 1979 i was left looking after my nephews who were 4, 2 and a baby overnight whilst my sister and BIL went house hunting, I was 10 miles from any family if anything went wrong.