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.

I looked after my sisters from the age of 7, we were regularly left alone by my mum who went out on the tear most nights (and days.)

Absolutely smoking in the house/car as well as sending me to the off licence for Guinness age 10

I can also remember being out all day in the summer. One day I came back at 10pm when it had gone dark and it was only then my mum had got a bit worried. Hadn’t seen me for 14 hours 🤣

Another one who had chain smoking parents - there's a photo of my mum feeding my younger sister with me sat next to them, cigarette in one of her hands the other holding the bottle.

Also the riding in the car boot, which we loved.

I'm always amazed when I hear about colleagues with dogs who arrange dog walkers, doggy day care, can't leave the dog for more than a couple of hours as in my experience of growing up in the 80s most people did not have this level of care for their children, let alone their pets.

Forced me to be a child carer for my (darling) grandad from being aged 3/4 (no regrets at all-we adored each other but I had to do it as she couldn't be bothered)

Cramed 9 kids into the car by 4 in the back,3 in the boot and one in her footwell and one in the back (no seatbelts)

Forced to work and pay for everything from san-pro to food to school trips aged from 11 (I babysat a lot)
She never spent a penny on me from my 11th birthday-she only didn't try to charge me rent as her friends would have found it wrong

Never touched a fag in her life but allowed others who smoked like chimneys to smoke round us

Used to bin our stuff (all the better if we liked the item) and more than once,piled all my clothes in a pile and burnt them
I'd paid for every stitch

Left me aged 8/9 to look after my 3 brothers (aged 6/7 and 2/3-twins) at the beach-one nearly drowned and I got the slap

Smacked (beaten) at least 3 times a week for fuck all

Made us buy the cheap sweets she got as my father worked at the local sweet factory-and charged us what the shop charged

Left sex toys lying around

Let us watch 18's from about 10+

Made me babysit for my brothers if she wanted to go out-aged about 12 (she even left me babysitting on my 14th birthday)
Unpaid-i need to work to eat

Allowed me to have a boyfriend (aged 14)
He was 21-she encouraged it

Aged 13+ she never had any idea where I was at any one time-i wouldn't come home for a week-she wouldn't care

She once threw my (I paid for it) tv at me for 'backchatting'
All I said was 'fine'
My tone was 'off'

Chucked me out the second I hit 18-i ended up homeless-she found that funny

Believe it or not,people often ask for her advice on child rearing!

(She will deny all of the above)

So many things. (I am 50)

• dipping dummy in whiskey when teething
• giving me a orange juice while they were in the pub for hours and I sat alone in the car
• going away for the weekend and locking me in the house so i was 'safe'
• watching porn and leaving playboys and vibrators around
• dumping me at the local stables at 8 am saturday morning if i were expected or not and not picking me up for 12 hours

they were a teacher and a GP for context.

Apart from many of those already mentioned....travelling around long distance on public transport alone from 11/12.

Being left in the car outside the pub while dad was in with his mates. On a good night,bottle of coke and crisps would be sent out

We used walk to friends’s houses on our own as cars and traffic wasn’t too bad. One time we crossed fields with bogs and my sister lost her shoe in one.
In the summer we played outside well after it got dark.
our primary school was next door. Our attendance was shocking and no-one cared. One time, after r school we discovered an open window so we went in and ran around the building then left.
Basically we were feral children. Now my mother reckons we had the best childhood.

Yes I discussed the McCann's with my parents when it occurred and they didn't see the issue with what they or the McCann's had done. Apparently all their friends did it too.

Not taking a single photo of me until I was over three months old as they didn't think about it or see the point.

Your parents would probably have film cameras rather than the instant gratification of digital pictures, I would often forget to take or send a reel to be developed. My pictures from babyhood, late 40s/early 50s were usually studio photos, there are just a few curled up, square black and white snaps, usually on the beach.

I'm reading these with horror , and I'm with @pigsDOfly this is just bad parenting, nothing to do with the times. My oldest DC is 42 and I cannot recall doing any of the things mentioned previously, and the only things on that list that I can remember my late parents doing was shoving us all in the back of the car, but in those days no cars were even fitted with seat belts!

I had an amazing childhood and have such fond memories of being a small child.

We were allowed to get into our parents friends van that had a deckchair drilled into it and 4 of us would be rolling around the back whilst one got to sit in the chair 😂

4 of us squeezed into the back of a car

Being allowed unsupervised near a little stream that had a big vent thing where all the water flowed into

Walking around 15 minutes on our own to school somtimes

Being allowed to play out constantly. We were in the woods, in the graveyard, up the hill, on the bridge, near the stream,

So much fun

I find it odd that today's 11/12 year olds can't use public transport, maybe your children in 30 years time will look back and think that their parents' anxiety contributed to them being very uptight and nervous.

Being left to look after 3 little ones aged 10months, 2 and 4 when i was 11, i was left overnight whilst they went to the next town to look for a new house. I looked after them a lot. I took the baby for his jabs, registered him at nursery etc and nobody batted an eye. I was allowed to travel on the overnight train to London, cross London then go on to kent on my own many times when i was 11-14, at 14 my parents went abroad for 2 weeks and left me on my own. It was all just normal to me and i was never bothered.

Letting us watch 18 rated horror movies from about age 8 or 9!

My friends mum used to go to France for a couple of days with her latest boyfriend to do a cheap booze and fags run! Leaving my friend who was 13 and her sister 11 alone. I remember the electric ran out that was on a key meter and them going round the shop to top up the key on the emergency credit, not before they were wandering the house with candles first! No one batted an eyelid!

I know parents introduce their kids to partners now etc but back then kids certainly weren't a factor in single parents new boyfriend/girlfriend, nore did blended families really exist. Most kids lived with mum and if the new partner had kids you'd just play together if visiting dad or didn't really see them if it was a mums new partner as they lived with their mum. Certainly no casual play date leading to blending a family.

There weren’t enough seats in the car for all of us, so for short journeys my sister or myself would sometimes sit in the boot!

Smoking it used to sting my eyes the woman who dragged me up would laugh about it if on the bus I’d turn my head to escape the smoke. Always money for fags and drinks cheapest food no choice in what we ate. I now refuse to eat cornflakes or weetabix because that’s all she’d buy me. Clothes little choice if you didn’t like something you were ungrateful.

Epic amounts of smoking in enclosed spaces
Being driven around to random weird peoples houses by my alcoholic mentally ill father ( some disturbing memories )
Being driven when Dad was drunk and having accidents/ police turning up
Parents having affairs and having to meet the affair partners
All the adults prioritising themselves all the time
Being hungry

Ive gone on to build a very good life for myself but this stuff affects me every day

I love how many other people have mentioned the boot

The smoking was the worst - being screamed at for cracking the back window in the car because it meant Dad has a light breeze on his neck, god forbid. Never mind your kids gasping for air. Both terminal with smoking related illness now but still smoking and saying it never did us any harm.

@JudgeJ

long distance eg, portsmouth to london, not the bus to school or to the next city.

My ones are definitely signs of the times and not abusive or neglectful, sorry to those who have experienced that.

Loose in the back of a 4x4 farm vehicle with no seats. This was a daily arrangement, probably from the age of around 2. My sisters and I used to shout “I’m in the front!” then “I’m in the middle!” ie kneeling in the back with arms around both front seats so you could look out the middle, and then the slowest just had to sit loose on the floor in the back. I dread to think what would have happened in an accident, the person in the middle would have needed very little provocation before flying straight through the windscreen.

”Caping beasts” ie herding cattle, ones which were not used to it at all so were jumpy and flighty. I guess this might still go on, but I can’t imagine handing my 6yo a piece of blue pipe and telling them to shout and wave but not to run as cattle thunder towards them.

It was a wet, not dripping wet, towel, no water to drop. A tea towel would usually be to hand, who would have time to go searching for the 'correct' solution? I had a situation with a grill pan setting on fire, I slammed the wooden chopping board on it.

Triggering as fuck, sorry. Did like riding in the boot with dog though, the rest of my childhood not so much.