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

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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.

Knocking on the neighbours door to borrow money so parents could go and get fags from the shop. Smoking everywhere, being hit and smacked as punishment, nothing for packed lunches and no money (often went to school with an apple and just pretended I wasn't hungry as I was embarrassed), completely ignoring school admin (missed many school trips and my sister missed out on the 11+ because the forms just got shoved down the side of the microwave).

In my DMs eyes, we had an 'ideal' childhood and she did the best she could .

Wow 😯

Oh, and once I was choking on something (think it was bacon) and got told to get out of the way of the TV.

The rest I can't type out.

FangedFrisbee Turn the heat off underneath the pan. Soak a tea towel under the cold tap then wring it out to remove the excess water. Place the wet teatowel over the pan to starve the fire of air.

EdithGradham Apparently so. I think it creates a larger blaze if you get it wrong. I only found this put by sharing the story on another forum. I don't know what you're supposed to do now.

Sitting on an adult’s lap in the front seat of the car, no seatbelts.
Squeezing 6 children into the back seat.
Being hit, caned, punished for things my devious, deceitful sister had done.
Walking a mile to and from school across the fields from 6 years old, a longer walk crossing busy roads from 8. Walked home for lunch so 4 miles/day, all weathers.
Cycling round the lanes at 6, it was 4 miles each way with my younger sisters to a neighbouring village. We’d take a drink and a picnic, no mobile phones just told to be home by 5. Gone for hours!
Left in the car while my parents went shopping, often for several hours.
Shut in my bedroom, no food, books etc or anything to do. Often all day as a punishment- that often happened, I rarely knew what I’d done. Sheer boredom.

Some of these are horrendous!

Squeezing 4 or 5 kids onto the back seat of the car. One sits forward, one sits back alternately. Always hoping you got to sit back.

Sole charge of my own massive gas cannister heater & matches in my room with no thought to ventilation or the melty plasticky carpets. Not sure how old I was but definitely no older than 10. This was in the 1980s, well after central heating had been invented.

No wonder my parents think we coddle our children!

Cycling round the lanes at 6, it was 4 miles each way with my younger sisters to a neighbouring village. We’d take a drink and a picnic, no mobile phones just told to be home by 5. Gone for hours!

We lived in N Devon and me and mates used to cycle three miles to the coast. Down the lanes on our bikes, coming back in the dark with lights that a glowworm would sneer at. Luckily very few cars then. Our mothers had no idea where we were or what we got up to (arcades, mostly).

In the seventies when I was nine, letting me have a glass of Port and lemonade at a family party as I felt left out, which got me drunk. It never did me any harm apart from make me feel very grown up!

Packed cars, no seatbelts
smoking in the house and car
endless amounts of coke a cola (and yes my teeth are littered with fillings now!)
6 year old in charge of family pet, if it didn’t get fed no one cared, it was up to the youngest 6 year old.
General hygiene checks.

god I hated my childhood

My mum had a Fiat 126 and 3 kids, it was like a clown car when we had friends come round after school.

We used to go out to play after breakfast and only come in for lunch and dinner, this was from about age 6, mum knew we were somewhere in the general vicinity but could have been in any friends house and anywhere in the village within about a 2 mile radius.

Dad got fed up of me and my brothers arguing one day, so drove us to an abandoned warehouse and told us he was dropping us at the orphanage, he actually drove off leaving us crying and came back 5 mins later by which point we were convinced we had been abandoned.

Being driven around in the back of a transit van with no seats, let alone seatbelts; being put to bed before our parents went out socialising in other houses along the street; being dropped off at the swimming pool with friends and no supervising adult from about 8 years old.

My parents used to drive overnight from Derbyshire to Devon for holidays; luggage on the roof rack, back seats down and us three kids laid out in sleeping bags in the back. I used to love it! Watching
the street lights through ugh the back windscreen as I dozed off.

A less happy memory was being left on the side of the A1 in the middle of nowhere because we’d been fighting in the car. We must have been about 8, 6 and 4. I think my mum must have driven at least a mile or 2 down the road before my dad persuaded her to come back and get us, by which point we were all terrified and sobbing. We were extremely well behaved for the rest of the journey though…

Visiting friends for the day and I'd be alone in front of the telly all day.
Adults getting drunk in the conservatory.

Then getting in the car home with my mum poking, prodding and shouting at my dad to keep him awake while driving home. All while they were chain smoking.

We never had any childcare at home whilst my parents worked, so during school holidays if we didn't get taken to stay with grandparents, then my older sister and I were locked in the house all day watching tv by ourselves for weeks on end. She was 8 and I was 4/5 when this started and it continued until we were teenagers! We also had chain smoking parents who would drive with windows wide open day or night, winter or summer, while we shivered in the back in a fog of smoke on long journeys. Also experienced the lack of seat belts, car seats and sitting in the boot waving to drivers on the motorway with friends! For context I'm not 40 yet, so really it's amazing how much has changed since then. I wouldn't dream of doing any of these things with my children!

Gosh yes. I bet your instructions were you to not answer the phone/door to anyone and go and get Auntie June across the road in an emergency...oh and of course, don't touch the matches

We were eventually removed from our mother, but these are some of the more wtf the ones, like a lot of south asian families we used to deep fry things outdoors to reduce on the oil smell and so we could do really big batches. We stored the used oil in a metal container, I guess a bit like one of those big milk things. When we had done frying we would use normal drinking mugs to scoop out the still boiling oil and put it in the container, you only burnt yourself once. I still do this, but I don’t let my son empty it until its cool enough. I still terrify my husband as I use my bare hands a lot when cooking.

We were locked in our bedroom at night, we did not get on as siblings, so we’d get a nightly beating before bed, we were going to misbehave anyway, so my parents punished us before it happened to get it out the way.

Literally not knowing where we were, I’d go off and play as a very young child, like 5/6 and there would be zero concern that no one had seen me for hours.

My mum used to dip my sisters dummy in her wine to keep her quiet. Mind this would have been about 2001 so she didn’t even have the 60s parenting excuse!

My brother and I used to travel in the back of our uncles transit van sometimes, literally walking around in the back.

Also in the back of a different uncles car, 5 children between about 6 and 12 years old squished in.

Being locked out of house, because mum, who didn't work couldn't be bothered to be there after school to let us in.

Remembered another one, my dad used to make plastic display units and he'd bring the parts home then we kids would help assemble them, great big brown bottles of chloroform were used to melt the bits of plastic to each other. We'd be in the garage with the garage door open for ventilation.

I'm another one who rode around in the boot. We went to Scotland on holiday one year and Dad drove through the night. DB and me bedded down on sleeping bags in the back of the Volvo estate.

The DPs often used to go to dinner parties and friends with similar aged children as us. We'd go upstairs and play games and muck about while the parents got pissed downstairs. Then they'd put us back in the car and drive home.

Being given red wine and water with Sunday lunch to get us used to the flavour.

Smoking, everywhere. Dad had a 70 a day habit so there were fags permanently lit in practically every room. He did give up when I was about 7 though.

Going out to play in the summer holidays and returning home when it was dark/you were hungry. You'd tell your mum you made a den in a derelict factory, Billy Baker set a hay bale alight and you followed some weird man up the woods who offered you a fag so you ran off and cut yourself on brambles when your fell...
Mums reply "Don't go dragging mud through the house"

I was allowed to get drunk from a very young age. I was around 5 or 6 and my dad was making me drink Stella. I remember me sat on a patio chair in the garden with him making fun of me, ‘you look like your fucking mother with her eyes in the back of her head after half a can’. Domestic violence. I stopped my dad strangling my mum to death once. Physical abuse including being whipped by leather belts and horse whips. All the usual car and smoking ones. Not being allowed out of my room apart from going to school for months on end when I was older. The psychological abuse and mental torture was the worst out of the lot though. My parents encouraged my siblings to bully me. They never called me by my name. They called me ‘rimmer’ after the character in red dwarf who is hated by the other characters.

Some of these are awful and would have definitely resulted in action from social services even in the 50s and 60s if they had been reported. 😪

I’m pretty certain you can’t leave small children outside the bookies anymore with a packet of crisps!