What was normal to you as a kid that would never happen nowadays? (For good reason!)

[Wintershealing]

Back in the 90s as a child/teen, my best friends (sisters) lived across the road, and their mum was an alcoholic. She'd spend all day in her room, which to us was normal, and walk up the road to spend most evenings in the local con club (conservative club, she wasn't a tory she just went for the cheaper drinks and men), leaving my friends home alone. The younger sister would have been around 9/10, and older sister was around 12. This was completely normal to us! Their mum would have a boyfriend in tow who she'd meet at the con club and he'd be around for a while, then they'd split up.

Meanwhile we'd be roaming the streets (to be fair most kids went out unsupervised back then) but no one ever checked where we were or what what we were up to!

When my friends were around 12/13 and 14/15 their mum would go on a booze/fag run to france with her boyfriend and leave them home alone for the night. We used to have house parties when she was gone! Drinking/smoking etc. Crazy! But this was normal and would never happen nowadays!

What was normal for you that (for good reason) would never happen now?

Travelling in the back of the car without seatbelts or car seats or even in the boot of the hatchback (that was fun)

riding bikes without helmets

food fried in lard and deep fat fryer in the house

adults copiously smoking in the house and car

going into strangers houses when out guising at Halloween

that was late 70s early 80s

Travelling in a parents car to a school netball match with 5 of us squeezed on the back seat.

Latin teacher throwing tennis balls at us if he thought we weren't paying attention

Drinking on school trips with teachers!

70s & early 80's being beaten black and blue by the people who are supposed to love and protect you. No food. No love.No care.

Doors shut and 2 adults smoking in the room.

Everything deep fried.

Washing out a kids mouth with soap, or tobasco as my mother preferred.

14 year old girls getting into pubs.

Being able to buy cider from ships at 13/14 with no ID.

Babysitting other people's kids when I was 11/12.

Wild times, honestly.

When I was 15, I did a week's work experience in a school, and they left me alone to supervise 3 classes, about 40 kids.

Kids were supposed to be watching a film but it was boring, I hadn't a clue how to control them.

Sitting in the boot of an estate car on long journeys, walking a mile to primary school without an adult

I also babysat when I was 12 (hadn't much of a clue).

Playing out on the streets
Buying fags for my dad
Him smoking indoors or in the car (tbf he gave up when I was 14)
No seat belts in the car, it then became legal to have them in the front but not the back
Being hit by teachers
Being hit by parents (though this was rare in our family)
Making our own way to primary school

I was born in 66 so talking about 70s/80s

Also 14/15/16 year old girls being picked up from school by their 20 something year old boyfriend in their car!

Playing out and walking to primary school is still completely normal where I live.

-Laying in the back part of my grandparents station wagon with their multiple dogs. No, not where the seats are, the area behind that where luggage goes and no seatbelt!
-Same grandparents giving me coffee when I was 5! I also had an entire bounty bar then had diarrhoea when I got home. (mum was not impressed!)
-I used to ride my bike and be away ALL day till sunset. No mobiles back then.
-I skiied from a young age and we were members of a ski lodge in a large resort. From about 10/11, I used to ski all day on my own, return for lunch, then head off again!
-Riding to the corner shop when I was 8, with my younger cousins, to buy their parents cigarettes!

At age 14 I babysat 3 kids for a family friend including quite a young baby. As standard they bought in the alcopop of the day for me to have as a treat (as well as paying me of course)

I look back now and was far too young to be responsible for 3 kids and would never now give a child booze, especially when they were in sole charge of my kids! 😂

Swimming in the river with no adult supervision. Would have been about 7, and my cousin 9. We used to knock for other kids on the way, so there would be about six of us aged between five and nine. Used to go home when we were hungry or it started to get dark. Sometimes my Mum and her friend would wander down with a Tupperware of weak squash and a packet of rich tea fingers.

Cycling to primary school two miles away down a major road.

Being able to use a photocopy of your birth certificate to get into clubs and I changed the year on mine so I was 18 when I was 17!
Smoking in workplace offices at your desk
This was mid 90s

I read books for pleasure.

People smoking on the top deck of the bus.

I was born 1973, not in the Uk but English speaking and culture country.

Being tossed out the door and told to go and play with others and not allowed back until dinner. (I used to sit in the garden hiding from my mother and reading books).

Having female teachers taking the girl students aside about once a year and being told to never ever be alone with so and so creepy as fuck pervy male teacher. You could not say anything and the female teachers who protested were often managed out. My year 10 form teacher had had 6 wives, all of whome were ex students. You learned to not be alone with them, and to make sure you could wriggle out of wandering hand situations. Otherwise it was your fault because you knew what they were like.

Parents chain smoking inside and in cars. I have asthma and my parents still smoked inside all the time, often while I was literally gasping.

Being smacked for whatever transgression that day. (My mum was an alcoholic and alot of things were a transgression as the afternoon wore on).

I remember borrowing a friend’s older sister’s driving licence when they were just paper and with no picture. Vividly recall memorising her full name, date of birth and even her star sign in case bouncers at the local night club asked… I’ve NEVER been asked my star sign even when showing ID in all of my 45 years! 😂

As a kid eating what you were given for meals, no telling your mother what you did or didn't want, and no helping yourself between meals.
As a teenage girl, walking home from the next town if I missed the last bus ( no home phone at that time, no mobiles). Ditto hitchhiking. Makes me cringe to think how stupid I was.
Waking up to frost inside the bedroom windows
Some family members still had outside toilets. We had a Tin Bath in front of the kitchen fire, till I was 5 and we moved to a house with a proper bathroom.
No I'm not 100 years old, in my 60s!

Playing outside in the street and my Dad calling me in so I could watch him put out a chip pan fire with the (now discredited) wet tea towel method.
He thought it was a teachble moment.

Lots of smoking. Smoking in the car with children in the fug.

We'd walk across a busy road a mile or so to the playground by ourselves. My older sister would keep an eye on us at 10.

Being out all day and coming back for dinner.

Sitting in a car in pub carpark with a bottle of lemonade.

Being hit by teachers.

Family/ anyone smoking all over us, nan chain smoking in her living room as we tried not choke. Being subjected to smoke on long car journeys sat in the back of the car trying not to cough or be ' difficult ' 🤦😆.

Ashtrays in birthday party photos, maybe a ciggie burning away in the ashtray next to my god damn birthday cake!

Pervy teachers, pervy shopkeepers, local perv down the park was just to be laughed about and no point even complaining to anyone.

Running around feral all evening with other kids until the street lights came on.

Oh and having the kids count up all the cards from the cigarette packets every year and choosing something like a new toaster from the catalogue 🤣

So much of this rings true! It was a different planet. In my 70s childhood…

Being hit by teachers, often with rulers
Hit by parents, it left big red marks on your legs
No seatbelts
Tortoises in all the gardens. Everyone seemed to have one ambling around.
Everyone smoking, everywhere
Going out on my bike alone for hours when I was about seven
Solo bus trips at eight
Being left alone in the school holidays when my mother went to work (I was eight)
School holidays meant being out from 9am-10pm in summer, you made your own entertainment, biking/down the canal/dens
Everything was about toughening you up, no pandering to ‘unique’ whims
Constant shouting from tradesmen when you left the house (as a teenage girl), it was constant 😡
Dogs didn’t regularly get walked. That wasn’t really a thing. They sort of padded around in people’s gardens or roamed the streets. You were always seeing stray dogs.
It was very uncommon to travel abroad.
Post deliveries twice a day and on time!
Beauty pageants on the tele, my family would circle the ‘prettiest’ girls in the paper and we’d all critically watch 😵
Offal was common at dinner time, I drew the line at stuffed pigs hearts though
Three tv channels only, that was it
’Flashers’ were a menace but you were streetwise and knew who to avoid
Telephones located in freezing hallways to stop you talking too long.
Not everyone had central heating, you wore a lot of cardis and heated one room.

On our street, almost all the adults were nurses working shifts in the local "mental hospitals" (to use the terminology of the time ... there were several Victorian ones, in close proximity), and used to look after each others' kids without a thought ... my dad had a big old estate car with bench seats front and back, and a big old boot at the back ... one summer's day, he took 12 kids (incl me) to a wooded beauty spot about 15 miles away, where we spent a brilliant afternoon playing among the trees while my dad sat and read the paper 😃