Was anyone else here not allowed to do hobbies?

[Eeeka]

Just reading a dance lessons thread and finding it very heartwarming.

First of all, I know I could have had a much worse childhood- but I’m really gutted that I was never able to have any hobbies.

Wasn’t wholly a money thing- but a time thing, but my parents just simply cba. They worked full time and didn’t want to get up on a Saturday morning and take me to drama lessons. I was desperate for this for years and so grateful when I could select it as a GCSE option.

Sometimes, if something worked out they’d relent and let me try it- but then the moment it wasn’t convenient, I’d have to stop. I didn’t do anything more than twice. This is why it wasn’t ‘wholly’ a money thing, as of course- them putting food on the table was more important than my trampoline lesson.

Just before I went to uni- we watched a friend’s daughter as the lead role in musical at a proper theatre and I was so insanely jealous. We were the same age. My mum kept banging on about how amazing it was and how she had been doing it since she was three, as if she had walked there herself.

I’d spoke to my mum about it over the years and she denies it, saying ‘no! You did football regularly! Don’t lie!’ when she means the half term summer camps that was used as childcare.

I really struggled not having anything I was good at or to practice. Now as an adult who has hobbies I understand how powerful they would have been when I was hanging out with the wrong crowd or having sex far too young.

Despite my lack of extracurriculars I ended up at a brilliant uni but felt like an absolute doughnut as it seemed everyone had a thing- an instrument, a sport. From 16 I was always saving up for uni or working around uni in my free time so never was able to throw myself into societies (minimum maintenance loan kid so worked an irregular shift pattern over 4 days, inc. the sports fixture day).

I love reading the threads on here about the mums who are so IN to their child’s hobbies and want them to thrive outside of school. I wish I had a little thing I was good at to keep me focussed.

Did anyone else feel like this? I know we could have had it so much worse and things could have been much more shit rather than ‘waaaah I had no drama club’

(oh and my school didn’t run any clubs either for the 8 years I was there!)

I didn’t do any!
Mum was a single parent for most of my childhood and not only broke but worked 2 jobs and didn’t drive. I went to a school in a different town so had to get 2 buses to school.
no way was she hanging around for after school clubs, she had another job to get to so had to get me home pronto and back to work. Also, she’s not a morning person and there wasn’t a chance she’d have been getting up to take me anywhere in a Saturday!
Just one of those things, hasn’t done me any damage, she was doing her absolute best for my and my brother.
I was a SAHM when my kids were born and for quite a long time, I think somewhere inside me I wanted to give my kids opportunities that I didn’t have, they went to classes and clubs although it has eased off now they are older! Youngest is 11 and does football and guitar and he comes to the gym with me.

I didn't do anything apart from lunchtime clubs and school productions once I got to secondary. My mum didn't drive and my dad often had to work in the evenings so it wasn't feasible. It didn't bother me at the time.

It's nice in some ways that my daughter is getting to try a variety of clubs but I think a lot of children end up over scheduled now.

My parents were really good about this and got us involved in sorts of things. This was the seventies and we all had jobs from a very young age too so could self fund at least to a degree.

Not sure how they managed it, but it was great for us kids. I particularly respected the fact that they actually had hobbies and interests themselves.

I did do some 'hobby' stuff but generally what was convenient childcare. I think that was (and is) pretty typical, but I still think what makes a difference is whether your parents are interested in you as a person.

At primary school, at some point, we were told we could sign up for violin lessons, which I did; they asked for a parent to volunteer to help supervise the first lesson and my mum did. After that I had totally pointless 'lessons' (15 minutes with several pupils; you don't learn from that) unless they fizzled out. My younger brother also signed up for cello lessons, and rapidly my parents decided to pay for hour-long private lessons each Saturday. Much later on I asked my mum why the difference. 'Oh, you showed off terribly when I sat in on your lesson' she said. That was it. I would have been all of 8. That was fairly typical as an attitude.

As an adult I've learnt hobbies are really soothing and enriching, and I also realised my parents have very few of them, which may explain why they were pretty half-hearted about it when we were children.

I didn't do anything either. Mum and dad didn't have the money for much. I did ballet for a couple of years in junior school but that was taught free by one of our teachers. As soon as I was earning I paid for lessons myself - I did tap and also belly dancing. I do crafts including card making, and four years ago I picked up ballet again and do a weekly adult ballet class which I love.

is there anything you'd like to do OK that you could pick up now?

Cross post, but I think your last sentence is so important. As an adult I really notice a positive correlation between people whose parents had interests, and people who continue to get on with their parents as adults.

Shoot me down here but since having DD I've noticed a definite class division with regards to DC hobbies. The middle/upper middle parents have kids booked in to at least 2 (frequently up to 4) hobbies per week whereas the WC parents are a lot more laid back and only pursue hobbies if the DC show a genuine enthusiasm/passion for 1 specific hobby. Now this might just be unrepresentative of the wider population I don't know but it is definitely the case at DD's school.

I think this is it- my parents both played a social sport but it was more centred on the meeting up and drinking in the pub afterwards. Kids would be outside eating crisps on the sports pitches. We had no books in the house either. I just remember the tv blaring a lot. I think it was a normal 90s working class childhood.

We are very different people now!

I have them now- but I needed them as a 13 year old girl.

My parents couldn't afford it but I really wish I could of doing swimming more and learnt to play the piano. However I dont begrudge them at all they had hard choices to make. Luckily as an adult I can take lessons for both so I can do those things now its just easier though as a child to pick these things up.

I never did any hobbies. My parents just didn't really 'believe' that they were useful, coming from an asian background. It was just school on weekdays, home/family on weekends. Rarely met friends or socialised outside of school. I managed to persuade them to let me play netball for a couple of years at primary school (there were matches after school, shock horror!)

I used to be quite sad about it as a kid, but I don't think it's affected me much as an adult, I now have lots of hobbies :)

Same here. My 'd'f wouldn't have dreamed of wasting money on his daughters.

So no clubs, sports, music or dance lessons, no friends allowed in the house.

As a result, I can draw and paint, and garden, and name every English bird. I'm not very good at social stuff though. Isolation will do that to you. 😀

My ds does two classes every weekend, he's going on the school ski trip, all the GCSE field trips, etc. 😊

My free time around 13-16 was doing chores, helping fix cars, cutting wood, doing diy activities ect

I was never allowed hobbies. My db did football, karate and some other clubs.
I asked to do Brownies and was met with a flat no. I asked to go holiday club, again no. I asked to do a paper round and again the answer was a no.
Was glad when I left school and got my first part time job. I had money to do things.
I’m resentful about that.

Do you have kids of your own op?

This was back in the early '60s. I wanted to take tap dance lessons so bad I could taste it. But my mum wouldn't let me because she believed that dancing was a 'sin'. So was smoking, drinking, and playing cards. She lightened up by the time I was a preteen so I went to school dances and played cards with my friends and by the time I was an adult she enjoyed the occasional glass of wine or cocktail and loved to play canasta.

She was raised in a strict Brethren church. As a girl she wasn't even allowed to listen to secular music on the radio or go to the movies. She didn't see her first movie until she was 19.

Sort of the same as you

they initially thought it wasn't important to have hobbies

in fact, my late father probably still thought that till the end

mum now claims we didn't show enough interest in anything for it to seem "worth it". But we knew no meant no, so we didn't badger.

I'm learning keyboard at 46 and of course now mum seems to have no recollection of any of it. I get that they were exhausted but there's no reason we couldn't have done something once we started getting the bus to places.

They never said money was an issue. It was when we were little - but when we were at secondary, dad won an award and got a big career and salary boost.

also in our teens, both parents began using free time to do charity stuff. I don't begrudge them that, just baffled at how unimportant they find hobbies. Dad was lost after retirement, mum less so but she has a lot more friends.

I grew up in the seventies on a poor working class estate. There were not a great deal of choices for hobbies. Football, netball, uniformed groups, ballroom dancing, ballet, gymnastics, amateur dramatics - that was it really. I did ballet and uniformed groups like most of the girls.

I luckily had multiple opportunities through my school. my parents didn’t exactly go out of their way to facilitate my participation and often actively stood in my way, but I did my best despite them. Their behavior was odd given the middle/upper middle class parent persona they maintained externally, but was perfectly normal for a household headed by an abusive alcoholic who had other priorities.

I had no hobbies. To be fair my mum tried but I wasn’t interested. I went to Brownies twice and piano lessons lasted for 1 lesson. I refused to go to anything she signed me up for. Swimming lessons lasted until I could swim a width without armbands. I didn’t mind Sunday school but I refused to partake in the Rosebud.
I don’t think she ever really understood why. She had grown up during the war as an only child with very little family money and her dad away for most of her childhood but despite this her mum had managed to send her off to ballet, tap, ballroom, piano, singing, acting - even elocution lessons. She really wanted me to experience all this but I just didn’t want to know.
She gave up in the end and concentrated on my brother who was more than happy to be enrolled at the golf club and have a one woman fan base cheering him on from the touch line at football, cricket and whatever other activity he was in to.
I really didn’t mind, I much preferred to stay at home and play with my dolls or read a book.

Reading some posts I do feel sad for anyone who wanted to do stuff and their parents wouldn’t allow it.
My own kids just had swimming lessons. One went to drama for a while and they all had extra tuition in maths but no other activities .

I am going to ask them if they feel they missed out.

I used to lie to my mum that a friend's mum was giving me a lift to and from brownies because I knew she couldn't be arsed to do pick up/drop off.
In fact I was walking there and back alone in the dark.
It was that or I didn't get to go.

Yes- and her life will be completely different to mine. We are financially very comfortable and me and DH both have hobbies/interests and think it’s very important for her to find her passion

a poster said upthread about her parents not being interested in her hobbies as she never showed that she was good enough at something to warrant time/money effort

i think this was a similar story to what happened with me. My parents made it very clear that I wasn’t sporty or a good dancer or graceful. My singing in the house was a nuisance too.

it seems like I had to be exceptional at something to warrant the investment whereas some other kids would have been given the opportunities to BECOME exceptional

my DD will be able to try her hand at whatever she wants and will have to opportunity to achieve aptitude or skill in something.

I was fortunate that I started ballet and tap at around three, but I was also good at athletics and selected for teams via school and then via the competitions.

However, I never had a musical instrument. My mother said I used to leave letters (from school) in my bag or fail to notify her, but that's not true. I don't understand it. I play an instrument now as an adult. I also still do ballet which has been a life long love.

But I've met many adults who took up something like ballet as a complete beginner. I am sorry for them as the most common story was that their parents couldn't afford the lessons. I agree with you that a non academic pursuit was so helpful, for variety of reasons, growing up, and I wouldn't have liked to have missed out on that.

My ballet and tap lessons may have assisted in my being good at athletics, to add. I did two or three ballet lessons a week.

My parents were brilliant about hobbies and clubs etc. I was also brought up in the 70s. The social aspect of it was really important to them. We were not allowed to stay in!

I must point out that my parents never actually took us anywhere or picked us up or waited around. My mother didn’t drive and my father worked till late 6 days a week.

Looking back we must have had lots of stuff going on locally and my siblings and I got there and back under our own steam.

I did ballet, ballroom, piano, drama, girls brigade, brownies, youth club, Red Cross. That’s just off the top of my head.