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?

age 7 I used to take myself of to the swimming baths - thats what they called them. hey were a short walk down the road and round the corner. Then come home again alone afterwards - this would be on a Sunday morning. I guess as there were lifeguards there I was safer than many other places.

I walk allowed to go to the park alone, and by 9/10 was out on my bike riding round the town where we lived.

It was different then as it was much quieter, if I went out the front door there'd be 10/12 cars parked in the street. The same street now has about 45/50 cars parked nose in as the had to make bays to fit them in

When I started my periods, age 13, if I was in pain in the middle of the night, me and Mum would go downstairs and both have a cup of tea and a fag.

Yes, we wore shoes inside also.

At 16, shortly before O levels as they were then, spend 6 days in London - 100 miles from home - with a schoolfriend, while we attended a German language course at London University. We stayed at the YWCA. This was in the mid 60s and I was by no means a quiet, goody-goody type!

Yet we let children invite anybody they want into their bedrooms unmonitored and alone. Children need boundaries and actually a lack of any can make them feel very insecure. In many ways children today have far more and too much freedom. Screens are what is causing anxiety in our kids.

Go swimming alone and I meant totally alone. No lifeguard, no other people around, alone. I was not a very confident swimmer, the lake water was not clear and I have no idea how deep it was.

Sunbath for hours without sunscreen

Go to Glastonbury at 15!
Go to numerous CND/Labour/Anti Apartheid protests from about 13/14

My parents used to let me sit on the top of the front car seat and stick my head out of the sunroof while my dad drove fast along the road. All of us kids used to be take it in turn to be the one with our heads sticking out of the sunroof. Actually it was a lot of fun but when I think of it now...!!

As with others, I was just left alone from the age of about 11 onwards. I was out all day with friends, no money, we just hung around. I used to take a bus into central London on my own and mooch around the museums and galleries. No curfew. This was way before mobile phones.

Clubbing, pubs from age 14/15. Smoking and drinking aged 14/15 too. Sex with my boyfriend from age 15.

1960's/70s. Never really knew where I was. From a very young age went out to play in surrounding streets. Went home when hungry. I had a great freedom filled childhood.

Screens probably are a factor. They will not be the only factor. We are a social mammal species and children are evolved to developed socially, behaviourally and cognitively through interacting independently of adults in mixed age groups of children in their communities. This can't be removed without big impacts on children. I have child psychologist friends who say the teenagers they see now are years behind developmentally where teenagers would have been 20 years ago. The rise in anxiety is likely to be multi-factoral and be a rise in negative factors (excessive screen use and social media pressure) and a decline in positive or protective factors ( such as independent free play in their neighbourhoods).

It is ironic that there is a terrible fear of letting children play outside with peers due to stranger danger, yet paedophiles nowadays are grooming online, and we let kids spend time on screens as we are scared of paedophiles on the streets!

Where I live, the police knocked on a neighbours door to tell them her five year old had been groomed online by a paedophile who was getting her to perform sex acts on herself in her bedroom whilst he watched online. Nice upper middle class area with parents who not dream of letting her outside alone as it was not safe.

We used to play out with all the other kids from the village from sun up to sun down, never a plan for what we would be doing or where we'd be going, just off out all day. From about the age of 7 I think, we'd go scrumping during the summer and sell the fruit by knocking on neighbour doors or setting up a stall, we'd raid sofas for pennies and club together for penny sweets at the corner shop or 10p packs of caps for our cap guns or snaps to throw on the floor.

We also worked as soon as we could, me and my brothers had a weekly paper round where we'd get 400 papers delivered at the beginning of the week, we'd have to stuff the free samples and leaflets into them then deliver them all before Thursday, I would have been about 13 and my brothers 12 and 8, we worked at a fruit farm in the summer holidays, 30p for every punnet of strawberries we picked and we had weekend jobs in shops when we turned 15.

I worked in a call centre from 16yo in the evenings 5pm- 9pm 3 days a week during GCSEs, by the time I was 2nd year A-levels I was working 25 hrs a week and earning about £800 a month.

My parents were very into us being independent, self sufficient and understanding the value and hard work that goes into earning a wage.

Just to add, letting children play outside with peers is not a life without boundaries. This was normal in my childhood and was not experienced as me or my mates as an absence of care. There were things my parents did which I think could fit into that category, but the playing out all day with my mates was certainly not this.

Let me go out wandering the streets in the evenings at the age of 13 on Friday, Saturday and Sundays. I usually spent Friday and Saturday nights inebriated and Sunday the few of us who were allowed out mopped up our hangovers.

My mum was quite prim and proper and uptight so I can only assume she had no idea quite what we were getting up to!

My mum let me go and stay for 2 weeks with a 20 year old I’d met at a party when I was 15.

Like we met, I gave him my number, we chatted on the phone for about a month. He was going home to visit his family for Easter for 2 weeks. He was 20 with a significant criminal record, being investigated related to an attempted murder at the time, and I was bloody 15! My mum literally met him halfway and tipped me out into his car in a supermarket car park and away I went for 2 weeks.

It was ‘fine’, nothing bad happened, we ended up dating for another 2 years after that. But looking back now, I’m like what an absolutely shite parent you were! This was before mobile phones. I don’t even think she would have had his family’s home number.

At the time, all this seemed completely normal and fine. 😂 It was only a few years ago when I was in therapy dealing with the other aspects of my mum’s shite parenting that it occurred to me how totally bonkers this was. Like literally never in a million years would this happen with my own dd. My mum and I are NC now for reasons related to her complete inability to make any sort of sensible adult decisions re: safeguarding my own children. But it truly took me another 25 years after this incident to be like WTAF?!?

I was allowed coffee in my Tommy tippee sippy cup

My parents took me and my siblings for a walk across the top of the Pont du Gard. Google it - no railings, no barriers, and there were gaps in the top you had to jump over. To this day I have no idea why they thought this was a good idea! You can’t get near it now, it is a scheduled ancient monument, but this was nearly 40 years ago.

Im feeling quite jealous reading this. My folks were very strict and had to know where I was at all times. They would ring the landlines to check on me if i called to a friend. Even phoned the cinema to make sure i was there and to check the finishing time, and i had exactly 17 minutes or whatever to walk from cinema home. I remember the stress if there was a queue for the toilet. Even when i started going to pubs and clubs I had to ring from the payphone at a certain time to check in. The deal was if they didn't hear from me they'd drive around to find me and I'd be grounded for forever. I'd 47 now and still resent it a little sometimes. I moved out young as soon as I could and never went back.

I'm male. My dad used to take me dog racing on midweek school nights to watch his dogs running. To get there, I had to lay with his dogs in the back of his works van (an Austin), while his racing partner rode shotgun. They served Caffery's Irish Ale at the bar. I'd have four pints, watch the races, have some bets, and then we'd go home. I was 14 when it started... WTF was he thinking?

I know!!!! Parents seem to be oblivious to streaming sites. My dd went on a sleepover once and the entertainment was chatting to groups of paedo men and winding them up as they w**d. Apparantly it’s quite common.😳Very m/c all girls grammar school. She told us but struggled to as didn’t want to be ostracised and get anybody into trouble. God only knows what some kids are keeping from their parents .Yet the uproar on MN when a poster collected phones in on a sleepover. It’s the benign neglect of the 70s but actually happening in kids bedrooms with them given free rein to the whole world. I suspect in a few years the mental toll of what a lot of kids are witnessing online will really start to bite. So many kids must be wrestling with some really unpleasant experiences parents are completely unaware of.

My mum took my 13 year old brother and I to Spain, I was 15. I met a 19 year old boy on the first day, she let me go off with him while she sunbathed and my brother swam in the Hotel pool. She let me go to a Spanish nightclub with him, and also let me go to his hotel room with him! Luckily he was a very naive 19 year old and I was an innocent 15 year old. We snogged a bit and that was it. 😳😂. It could have ended very differently!

Eat coco pops and drink milkshakes. And I hated both.

Go out clubbing from 13, go out on a Thursday and not come home until Tuesday and wouldn't ask where I'd been. Allowed me to go without food. If I was hungry I had to go to nans.

From 2; or so I did whatever i wanted basically, nightclubs, gigs etc including drinking

2 seems a little young for nightclubs 😂 and I thought my parents were lax.