Surprising things your parents actually let you do?

[ThePinkDreamer]

Reserve of the other thread
Looking back what are you surprised your parents let you do?

Didn't ask questions of my whereabouts! Shudder now I have a daughter of my own.

Let me go to gigs on a school night.

Let me ride in the gap behind the seats of a two seater car so also obviously completely unrestrained from being a small.vhild u til I no longer physically fit.

Let me ride in the back of my uncles work van with the cement mixer and various tools in danger of squashing me round every corner.

Let me ride a motorbike with no helmet around my GPS farm from around 12 (not a child's bike a very powerful full-size motorbike)

Didn't actually care about my whereabouts from around 13 onwards. I was regularly clubbing from 14/15

Let us drink at New Year, we were only 12 when we were allowed a 6 packs of Snowball each to take to a relatives house. Also allowed to drink on holiday in moderation…

Never really caring where we went as long as were gone for dinner and/or bedtime.

As I said on that thread, play "table" tennis against my bedroom wall. I wouldn't let mu son do it now, the noise of it would drive me mad!

My mum wasn't bothered about me wearing shoes in the house so I was surprised when I went to friends' houses and had to take my shoes off before going in. Also I didn't have to ask to leave the table although that was probably because I finished last so again I was surprised when I went to friends' houses and we had to ask permission to get down once we'd finished.

When we were pre-pubescent me and my (female) friends were 'befriended' by some local teenage boys. They would come to the garden and sit us on their laps. I remember my Dad not looking happy at them coming but he did not tell them to piss off. Which he should have done. They progressed to touching me sexually.

Looking back, I really cannot believe my Dad didn't step in. I was only a kid and, despite feeling uncomfortable even before they progressed to touching me, I did not know how to handle the situation myself to get them to stop coming around.

This! Age 14/15. And come home on the last tube. No phone. Just a folded note and a debit card in a pocket.

I had a very sheltered childhood generally but somehow managed to convince my parents this was ok. Which it was.

Bought me cigs and bottles of strongbow at around 14 years old (although you only had to be 16 to smoke then), let me go to a festival with a 16 year old when I was 15, just the two of us. Never asked my whereabouts, let me go out drinking on school nights and miss school with a hangover around my gsce and a-level years. Had a bottle of WKD on nye at 10 years old.

A lot of stuff I would NEVER let my child do now. Absolutely bonkers.

I lived abroad and at 8 was allowed to go to the nearby desert with friends. We'd also ride our bikes all over the town we lived in and be gone all day.

From 11, I could ski back to the chalet from my lessons on my own. It required going up and down 2 different chair lifts to get there and crossing an off piste, tree lined section

Not my parents, but my grandparents let me lie in the back of the station wagon with the dogs! They also let me drink real coffee from age 4!

I was allowed to go to the one decent local club with my older sister aged about 15 and our dad would come and pick us up from round the corner at 2am.

Travel long distances in the back of my dad’s work van, completely unrestrained with sharp heavy tools flying about. There was even an orphaned calf on one trip in the back with me (it was restrained and no tools to dodge)

Travel in a horsebox to calm my pony, at about 12

Given oranges in brandy and sugar from about 8

Zero supervision both getting ready for and to and from school from about 9

Zero supervision after school, let roam free around the neighbourhood and neighbouring bushland

Let drink Malibu and lemonade at about 14

I was and still am a total square, perhaps because they were SO liberal (and law-breaking), there weren’t any boundaries to push…

Went to my first Reading festival aged 14 and shared a tent with a boy for the weekend.
Went to Magaluf aged 17.
Had house parties.

Gigs from 14 - would get trains into London or lifts from older brothers to Birmingham etc. We travelled all over and had a great time!

I was allowed to drink and go clubbing on holiday aged 14. I met a 19 year old there and hung around with her for two weeks.

I was mortal drunk every night.

Clubbing underage in a different town with seriously unreliable trains home on school nights! And even once we got the train (anytime between 2 and 4), the train station was the opposite side of my town so still had a half hour walk ahead of us!

There was a fair bit more as they were very lenient about a lot of things for which I am grateful (and loved at the time!!) but that one still makes my mind boggle..!

Move away from home to live with my boyfriend in a student house, when I was 16.

Let me bunk off school to come and be her teachers assistant in her English class at an FE college when I was 14.

Smoke weed and fags in the house from 14 onwards. She'd invite my weed dealers in for cups of tea etc.
She still lets people smoke in her house! 🙃

Smoke in the house (after the age of 16)
Go on trains/buses on my own from the age of about 13 to big cities to meet friends (mobile phones hadn’t been invented)
Go to gigs on school nights from age 13
Live as a lodger in someone else’s house during the school week from age 12
Have a Saturday job from age 13
Go to pubs on a Friday and Saturday night from age 15

Go into the nearest city ( 10 miles) on a bus with my younger sister when I was 11.
Drive tractors around the farm aged 10. Travel on the back of a 20ft flatbed trailer down the road,and come home sitting on the top of the stacked hay bales on said trailer.
Cycle to my grans,a 16 mile round trip aged 11.
Go to Sunday school,despite mum being an atheist.
Ride my pony and fall off frequently,with no one else around.
Range all over the countryside with my cousins and as long as we were back before dark,no one worried.
I had a great childhood.

To put the hatch back down and make the back of the car into a bed with duvets and no seatbelts during long journeys.

Put sugar on everything( yogurt always had a thick crust of it on top)

Go on day long bike rides when 6 with my 4 year old sister balanced on the handle bars

Had literally no idea where I really was or what I was doing from the age of about 14 onwards, no mobile phones just a time to be home.

Stuff I was up to included lots of underage drinking & buying of alcohol, using fake ID to get into clubs, in 6th form smoking loads of weed provided by my hippy boyfriend who lived with mates & sold weed.

Going to an illegal rave in a warehouse in a city about an hour away, loads of house parties etc.

No idea where I was
Never asked what was going on in my life as a teen but apparently this is normal.

A lot of these are about children having more freedom. This isn't necessarily a bad thing.

There is quite a lot of hypothesis in the world of experts in child development that one of the reasons for the marked increase in anxiety amongst children and young people is due to the loss of independence in childhood. Children build up a lot of skills through that, form firmer friendships based on negotiating together what challenges come up when they are out, and helping each other with any difficulties, as well as forming a belief in their own capability and confidence. Without a chance to develop that, anxiety will creep in.

Work in a pub from 13 and walk home on my own at closing time

Drink wine from very young

When I was 14 they encouraged me to go out with a “nice” 18 year old “boy”

😳

Clubbing from about age 16, this was before mobile phones, i could have been going anywhere! I had a 35 year old bf when I was 18 and they didn't have a problem with this and didn't want to meet him. As a parent i can't understand this attitude at all.

As a teen, go away with a group of people, many much older and only one other female in group.