Crazy stuff your parents did that would have social services out now

[usernamechanged1]

Dipping the dummy in sugar, fizzy juice for toddlers…did your parents do anything that would be considered shocking now?

For me, I looked after my younger siblings when I was 11 (they were 8 and 5) overnight a few times a week due to clashes of my mum & dad’s nightshift work. No adults in the house, just the three of us. It didn’t cross my mind that it was crazy at the time but when I think back, it was insane.

Coke in a baby bottle. The type with a teat.

There is a big difference between what loving parents did as normal in the 70s , ie cars with no seat belts, smoking inside, letting children play out unsupervised many years younger than would be acceptable now and these horrific tales of physical and emotional abuse and neglect. My parents didn't smoke ( my dad was a doctor) but it would have been considered very rude not to provide ash trays or ask smokers to smoke outside at parties etc. They were amazing parents though.

Me too! Brother was 7, I was 6 and youngest bro was 4. We were allowed to collect him from school nursery then walk home together!

8 years old carrying the paraffin tank to the shop to self serve paraffin. No adult supervision at any point. Also pouring it into the heater at home. Thank goodness it all went fine.

Beat us with a slipper

This. Smoking indoors. Being sent to the takeaway with no money to ask for food on tick (because they'd be more likely to feel sorry for us). Being left alone from the age of 8/9 all evening and for weeks at a time from 12ish. Sat outside pubs / bookies bored to death.

My father smoking 100 a day even though my older brother was a severe asthmatic - the idea that he should stop, or at least smoke outside never occurred to him.

No seat belts in the car. Riding in the back of my uncle's Ute (Australian) even right up to 30 years ago when I was 25.

Getting regularly smacked.

Being expected during weekends/school holidays to disappear in the morning and not 'bother' our mother until early evening... even though she was a stay at home mother who spent 90% of the time sat on her arse reading.

Showing zero interest in anything to do with us, including anything to do with our schooling. All school admin totally ignored.

Once I was 9 my mother became a trailing spouse when my father got posted abroad (diplomat) as she couldn't trust him to keep his penis in his pants if he was left alone for more than 5 minutes. Myself and my two brothers then spent the next 6 years being dragged around various third world shitholes. The damage done to all of us is still being felt to this day...I'm now 55.

I would have believed you and acted on it.

sending much love ❤️

I found some slides of my mum dangling me as a baby out of a window, Michael Jackson style.

We didn't have a lot of money as dad was a poor vicar so our fun came from driving five times round a roundabout with our heads out the window. Mum also did a nice line in 'dancing' the car to the Blue Danube waltz on a clear stretch of road. Happy times....

Drinking baby sham in family parties. Everyone smoked and drove over the limit. No one had a taxi just took the car. Walked to school on own from the age of 5.

My parents were happy to let me pour a huge amount of sugar on my breakfast cereal. when the milk dissolved it, I could pour more in. I'm amazed I have teeth now I think about it.

Left my 10 year old stepsister to babysit me 4 and my newborn brother. Overnights, weekends, days etc etc

Putting us in the boot when the car was full, sitting on someone’s lap in the car, sending me down to the shop with a note to get fags for my dad, at 8 I was allowed out by myself, all day..
several pictures of me drinking beer when I was about 2… to get me to sleep they said. I don’t see it as abandonment though, because I actually have great memories stemming from them.

Hit me. Often. With wooden spoons or a wooden rolling pin (my mum) or Dads backhanders that knocked me off my feet.

ignored me because I wasn’t born with a penis and was shy and timid

@Beachbreak2411
oh my sweetheart, that’s just horrible, absolutely hideous. I hope you’re in a great place now, and doing well despite everything they did to you.
My dad’s backhanders were… I can’t even put it into words.
you have my empathy and support ♥️

My mother would wait until I'd been in bed, asleep for a while, then she'd wake me up, drag me out of bed and shut me in a cupboard or lock me outside the front door in my nightie for at least an hour if she decided I'd done something she didn't like.
Many a time she would give me a good hiding with the wooden handle of her dish mop first.
I had a younger sibling who got away with absolutely everything but I'd be subjected to the above for the simplest infraction, like calling my sibling a 'pig'!

I got treated like this because my parents had favourites (I was my father's favourite, my sibling was mother's) but they divorced not long after I started school and us kids stayed with 'her'.
She also told me on a daily basis (from the age of 5 until I escaped her clutches at 18) that she hated me because i reminded her of my father.
A stepfather came along after about a decade and he was even worse than her.
It's all no surprise that my head is so messed up, even how, decades later.

Not my parents.. they were pretty perfect really. It wasn’t the law to have seatbelts in cars back then, however my parents had them fitted anyway and bough childrens car seats.
My mum never left us unattended and walked us all to school until we were probably 11….
Her childhood however was very different and her parents used to drive to relatives most weekends where they’d drink and party, then drive home drunk Sunday night (this was before the drink drive laws). Once the law changed they’d all hitch rides with tanker drivers that my grandad worked with!
My mum was also beaten and belted by her parents, left unattended for hours while both worked. Left in her cot while her mum popped to a friends (same block of flats)…. But still left long enough that she woke up and smeared poo everywhere!!
Prams left with babies outside shops and outside front doors! My Aunt used to walk to the local pub at age 3 to buy cigarettes for my Nan!!! Crazy!! (Yet apparently they were the ‘good old days”) My nan says she used to time her…. (10 minutes walk apparently!)…. And one day she was gone half an hour so my nan walked up to find her sat on a bar stool drinking lemonade 😂😂
My mum doesn’t have any happy memories of her childhood. How sad! I guess that is why she made it her mission to make us all feel loved and treasured … and we all did.

Ha ha, Elly ! We had a load of houses demolished and new ones built, the builders used to take us for rides in the dumper truck.

One of them, a young guy, used to flex his muscles and we'd hang off his arms. They'd give us money and send us for tabs and chips and tell us to get some for ourselves.

I'm in my late 20s now so this was only in the late 90s/early 2000s so not that long ago, but I remember riding around freely in the back of my dad's work van. No seats! I used to love sliding around when he went around corners!

Also, my parents would literally strap my brother to his bed at night 😅 He has ADHD so never slept well and would constantly get up, so they strapped him down.

Good morning. If this was a general quite then as you were. If it was a personal statement please seek help If not already done .. x

When my dad did tip runs I used to go with him and then ride back home in the trailer - I doubt we'd get 100 yards now without the police being called and about 50 dash cam clips being uploaded to Facebook!

Dear me, drink driving. Mother would regularly socialise & drive home somewhat inebriated. Physical punishment, getting whacked with a wooden spoon or "the stick". Getting locked outside so the parents could have "adult time". Chain smoking in the car, with the kids, with the windows up. I mean it was a completely different era....

A level of corporal punishment that was 100% abusive. My father would thrash us for the slightest of things, in fact I think he used any minor irritation/imagined misbehaviour as an excuse to vent his rage on us.

Smoking in the house & car.

Half a dozen kids in the back of the car, including the boot.

Sleeping on the parcel shelf and across the footwells in the car on long journeys.

LOLs

Our neighbour had a car crash and died, leaving behind a young widow and two toddlers. He hadn't been wearing a seatbelt. Even after that the mum still didn't wear a seatbelt and didn't make the kids strap in either. This would be early to mid 1980s.