What was a HUGE deal in your house growing up that is normal for you now?

[Bakingmamma]

Various things in my house.

A big one was baking. Although we
usually had the things in the house, wanting to bake was such a big deal and we could only do it on special occasions. Possibly did it once or twice a year.

I’m not talking about big extravagant bakes either! I’m talking about 12 bog standard cupcakes with some basic icing on!

It was only when I reached adulthood that I realized I could cook some basic cupcakes in 20 minutes and it wasn’t a big deal at all.

It takes longer to do a load of washing!

What was a huge deal in your house that you’ve now normalized for your own children? I can’t be the only one 🙈

bit of an odd one and I promise my parents are 99 per cent rational most of the time.

But thunderstorms, parents terrified of them especially my dad. We had a cupboard under the stairs we would all sometimes go in, and I think dad read somewhere it was safer in the car. We’d usually get bundled in to go for a drive.

It doesn’t really make any sense to me now and I think they have a normal response to them now. It was only when we were small and now I’m older I can look back and recognise it to be a time of high anxiety for my dad.

I find it a bit difficult now to keep calm in thunder storms just because I’ve been taught to be scared I guess 😂

Butter.
Using the oven.
Eating out.

It was kali/sherbet and a liquorice stick!

@blacktreacles , when there was a thunderstorm, my Dad would insist on turning off the tv , even if we were in the middle of watching something.

Oh this has just unlocked a core memory of my mum opening the front and back doors during thunderstorms, im not sure if she thought lightening would travel through the open doors or what mind!

Shabbat Dinner. My DM and DMiL make a massive production -- every week. If ever my parents move to Isreal, my children will notice a difference. To my shame, I have not polished my candle sticks in years, and I am not sure where the Challa cloth is. (In fairness, though, my parents love to host and we live close enough to go there)

Mass - myself and my two brothers were forced to go every Sunday until we left home. None of us have set foot in a church since. My mother thought forcing us to go would make us good Catholics...it really backfired

Days out - fucking hell, what a nightmare! I can only remember two days out after I turned 10. The first one, my mother sulked all day because my paternal grandmother invited herself along. The second, my mother sulked all day because we wanted to go to the beach. Took us about 3 hours to drive there (this is in Australia), she was hassling us to leave when we'd been there 20 minutes! Got the grand total of an hour before we headed home.

Baking - forget it, not happening

Visitors - forget it, not happening

Parties - forget it, not happening

Extra-curricular activities - forget it, not happening

My parents did the bare minimum, and that was it. They took no interest in our schooling, friends, lives. Neither of them had wanted to be parents in the first place and made their disappointment in parenthood, and us, all too clear. Neither myself or my two brothers, now all in our 50s, have had children of our own.

Both my parents worked. Not sure what gave you the impression they didn't.

I also can't imagine my childhood without pizza or colour TV. This thread is a real eye opener

Having a fresh bath that no one else has been in (we all had to share a bath when I was a teen. My step dad's curly hairs would stick to me, made me want to vomit).

You'll destroy your hair & scalp doing it every day, genuinely. I'd try working towards every other day if you can

@YouJustDoYou Yes, I forgot to mention shared bath water-perhaps if blocked it out of my mind!

I didn’t have my own fresh bath water until I left home!

Overseas holidays i.e. those you go to on an 'aeroplane'. The family went on a cruise to a neighbouring country when I was about 10. It was a big deal.

Say what now!?!?

Sunday lunch was a big deal but also stressful.

Periods and any conversation that included necessity to mention body parts or body functions with the exception of vomit. So I suppose any 'downstairs body part or function'.

That was the same at home and I used to be surprised at my friends’ houses when such things were mentioned.
Dh says his parents were very open and encouraged the children to discuss anything they wanted and it made him cringe. He said he’d have preferred a bit more ‘discretion’ on certain subjects when he was growing up.

The dreaded "long distance" telephone call. I gather they were relatively more expensive in those days
Even so, my mum never really got out of the habit of saying or thinking to herself "what's the emergency?" in later years when I phoned her, after I moved to the opposite side of the world.

This was pretty widespread in those days, wasn’t it? My parents were quite well off but it wouldn’t have occurred to either of them to telephone abroad except in the case of a death in the family or a real emergency.

Not allowed to have friends round, freezing house, no hot water, all restricted by an abusive , narcissistic father . Negativity and oppression every day. Pure misery.

@AnxiousPixie I came on to say pancakes! They were treated as a high delicacy which was effort beyond imagining 😂 I make them all the time now, I find them super easy and quick.

No fruit/salad or veg, only boil-in-the-bag food and dessicated potato you made by pouring boiling water on it. No foreign holidays and never had family parties/get togethers.

Now I have real food. I'm still working on the holidays & parties bit.

Pancakes were only ever pancake day and only lemon and sugar and only DMum was allowed to cook them - which I don't think she enjoyed.

In my 20s I realised they were cheap and easy - my own teens now regularly make them at weekends with zero input form me or DH.

Chinese and Indian food, we all love it now, never had it as a child.

Baking had to be done on Sunday that was the only day that the oven was on.
It was too wasteful to have it on any other day.

A bath that wasn't a) on a Sunday afternoon and b) water that my brother had used. A big performance was made about putting the immersion on earlier, and then brother, me, dad, mum would have sequential baths with mum getting the deepest bath as it was topped up with hot water.
Showers
Eating or drinking out.
Lie ins. My parents considered 7am scandalously late to be in bed - and all the lights and sockets were off by 10pm at the very latest but usually 9

Similar to lots of others

Going out for dinner - hardly ever. We take ours out to eat all the time, but it just wasn’t the done thing.

Beer and Wine - its part of the weekly shop for us 😂but I remember my parents hardly ever buying it (Christmas and special occasions).

Days out - very happy memories of them but they were a rare treat. Weekends were for supermarket shopping, gardening and walks (which we still love). Our kids really dont know how lucky they are with the days out they have today - soft play, farm parks etc are so normal to go to these days.

Yes!

Christ me too. Even after my mum died, I was 11 and if my dad was on an early shift, he would phone me at 7:30am to make sure I was getting up and dressed, even on weekends and school holidays.

I was doing nothing, going nowhere but the sofa to watch TV, but I had to be up and dressed. It used to drive me mad.

🤣🤣🤣