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.

The worst was one night when I was left alone with my sister's, the baby was really being sick, I put her in the buggy along with my other sisters 2 and 4 and walked to my mum's friends house which was a mile, it was around midnight, taxi drivers, bus drivers etc phoned the police (who were utterly horrified) and that's when we were taken into care. I think my mother was relieved if I'm honest.

Letting us walk 20 minutes to school on our own when we were 6.

Both smoking in the car/house.

Sending us to the shop for 1/2 oz of tobacco!

Smacking us all the time for misbehaving.

I was talking with this to DH just a few days ago. My GPs were both disabled and chain smokers. I have chronic asthma. We used to go there every sunday and the air would be blue with smoke. I used to lie on the floor with my mouth next to the crack between door and carpet struggling to breathje- for hours. I would be literally gasping and sometimes when we finally left start to vomit. But they put me through that every week. For years.

I cannot ever imagine doing that to my own Dcs.

Used to get sent to the shop to buy my mum cigarettes. I remember on several occasions being followed by the same car and the man in the car looking distinctly like Jeff Goldblum. Back then, it scared the hell out of me. Now, if a Jeff Goldblum lookalike was following me, I’d be jumping right in his car… preferably if it were actually Jeff Goldblum!

Also, smoking everywhere. In the house and the car.

Disabled which meant the GPs were homebound completely.

Too much nasty shit that was domestic violence then and would be domestic violence (and also illegal to boot) now from my mum's ex-husband (divorced parents). My father was a nasty bastard as well and I haven't had anything to do with him for 30 years or so. Difference being no-one gave a damn then and children were most definitely NOT listened to.

However I always remember baking lunchbox treats for the week on a Sunday with my Mum. She used to make this cookie-sized biscuit topped with a cherry that she called a 'melting moment'. I have never been able to even come close to replicating the recipe and Mum won't tell me! This was back in the day where you could have chocolate spread sandwiches, crisps, chocolate bars and chocolate milkshake in your lunchbox and no-one would care. Definitely no school lunchbox police then.

In the 60s, when I was born, parents used to have what my mum called a 'dinky' (a very tiny baby bottle...almost like a dummy with a small container attached). In this 'dinky' many mums would put alcohol/sugar and water...eg a small drop of brandy or whiskey, a spoonful of sugar and top it up with warm water. They swore by this for getting fractious babies/toddlers off to sleep or to soothe teething. I remember holding the 'dinky' for my baby brothers and sister whilst they drank it, and then having my own 'medicine' as I loved it 🫢🤦‍♀️ I'm not sure what would be made of this practise nowadays 🤣

Yes I used the train at 10/11 as did my own dc

My parents used to tie a sledge to the back of the car when it snowed and pull us round the village.

used to let me drive a car when I was 11yo, only on farm tracks and national trust type places and old airfields but on public roads my dad used to let me steer from the passenger seat.

sometimes when I was 5/6yo we’d drive into town to go shopping and I didn’t want to be dragged round the shops so they’d leave me reading a book in the car parked down a dodgy side street while they went off for a couple of hours.

when I was 13yo they put me on a bus in our northern town to go and stay with friends of friends in the south of France they’d never met to improve my French. I had to change buses more than once on my own!

The same as so many others;

Constant chain smoking indoors with no ventilation.
Learning to make up roll up cigarettes at 3 years old.
Chips for every meal.
Tea and coffee from before I can remember, it even went in my baby bottle apparently.
Sitting outside the pub for hours with one bottle of pop and a bag of crisps.
Being left with a 12 year old babysitter.
Travelling in the boot.
No seat belts.
Walking to school alone, crossing main roads at 9.
Being left alone at 9 for hours if I was too poorly to go to school.
Playing on building sites.
Whiskey on dummy and in baby bottle.
Running around in just pants or sometimes completely naked.
Unsupervised playing out from 4 years old.
Left downstairs at 3 years old every afternoon so my mum could have an afternoon nap.

My dh and his siblings were given sleeping tablets every night and before long car journeys.

Oh and the usual 70s/80s getting beaten up by parents shit. Hit with rulers and belts. Mum used to lose her shit and smash our bedrooms up and throw knives at us as we ran out the kitchen.

Smoking when I was asthmatic.
Being sent out in the morning and not expected to be seen until dinner time.

Grew up in the 90s.

Smoking copious amounts around us obviously a common one. Being smacked as punishment. Having mouths washed out with soap for swearing. Watching proper horror films from a very young age.

Summer time weekends meant a tour of local pub gardens.

Nowadays we plan our weekends around things our kids will enjoy (and we go along with it). My parents let us choose which pub they went to- as in, which one had the best playground 😆

@coffeesackcat sounds like a BeRo recipe. https://www.food.com/recipe/original-be-ro-melting-moments-afternoon-tea-biscuits-or-cookies-290314

Long car journeys with people sat on each other's laps. Not a seatbelt in sight.

Quite a lot of slapping to the bottom and legs, but only when I deserved it.

I walked myself to school from 8 or 9, and from 10 or 11 was often left home alone for hours at a time, but it made me independent.

On weekends from the age of about 9 I would leave the house on my bike at 9am and wouldn't be back until curfew at 6.30pm. It was an unwritten rule that whosever house was closest fed all the kids!

I was allowed to watch incredibly scary horror films. I remember watching the Burning when I was nine and Nightmare on Elm Street when I was ten.

It didn't do me any harm. At least in the long run. My therapist promises!!! 😂

Secretly I am happy I grew up in the '70s and '80s rather than today, though I could do without the grey hair and the belly now.

pulling Milk teeth out using a string and the door handle! I actually asked my dad to do this!!!

Being dropped off at primary school in the 90s at 8.15 to wait in the playground for the bell. I wasn’t the only one either.

breakfast club wasn’t a thing then. Just before I had my eldest I was genuinely surprised to discover that this wasn’t the done thing any more

Yes, I was a seriously asthmatic child with parents and other relatives smoking indoors all my life. My asthma cleared up , infact disappeared completely at about age 18 when I left home. Coincidentally I also stopped horseriding at the same age, so everyone thinks that's the reason but I'm not so sure

My friend’s df was a builder and we used to get rides on the dumper truck.

My df was supposed to get home by 6pm on the nights my dm worked.
He went to the pub and was always late. 3 times the ndn had to take my youngest db to A&E!

Being left on my own aged 10 all day when I had a contagious disease and couldn’t go to school.

Being hit very hard by dm for accidentally shutting my bedroom door on my db when he tried to come into my bedroom. Dm used her fists on my back and I thought I was going to die. I was 11.

The worst was being expected, aged 10, to take my 3 younger siblings to school in the snow. The bus didn’t turn up so I took them back home and made custard with boiling water as we had nothing else to eat. When dm got home she was furious so I told her my 5 year old db was crying with cold which is why we came home. She grabbed db and bashed his head against the wall, his nose bled. Over 50 years later the guilt still haunts me and I can see the event so clearly. My dp’s are still alive and whilst we have a relationship I firmly believe they were never fit to have dc. As parents they failed us in absolutely every way.

In the 70's the Mums worked on a farm in the summer. We were left to roam. On a farm. Near train tracks. We travelled as a pack from ages 6-10 wreaking havoc.

My dad driving home after God knows how many pints after family parties where inevitably very dirty linen was aired in front of the kids.

The seatbelts and boot were completely normal. Extra points if the exhaust fumes were backing into the car because of its great age.

Being sent to the bookies by my dad to accost strange men going inside to put a bet on for my dad!

And the same people would now criticise the McCann parents eh?

Basically being thrown out in the street to play from dawn til dusk, only popping home for meal times. All the kids on my cul-de-sac were the same, it was like our parents didn't want to see or deal with us.

I thought about this the other day and wondered wtf my mum did all day when we were gone 🤔

People often look back and think of these as the halcyon days when kids had the freedom to develop resilience, common sense, and self sufficiency. And there were elements of that, sure. However, 4 girls were groomed and molested over quite a long duration by one of our neighbours. He simply had the freedom and opportunity to take 4, 5, 6 year olds in to his house with no parents there to protect them.

Being threatened with the slipper around the back of the legs, 5 kids being crammed into the back of a car with no seatbelts or the back of our uncles van sat on the floor, being left in the car or outside betting shop waiting for dad to do his bets, roaming the streets and riding our bikes really far with no adult, me and my sisters aged under 10 being trusted to look after much younger friends/family kids or roam the streets with them in their pushchairs, being left asleep in the house aged under 10 when my dad used to drive my mum to work or pick her up.