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?

Main one for me was just going out in the morning to friends and coming back when I felt like it from around 10 years old. And a school trip when I was 13 to Switzerland where we all smuggled vodka on the overnight bus trip and were totally off our heads. No way did the teachers not know. I also mind a ski trip to France when I was at uni (mid 90s), again on an overnight bus, and a couple of girls forgot their passports. We just hid them under the seats and it was fine!

I don't know if you're a micky flannagan fan but your dogs memory reminds me off his jokes about "stray dogs just roaming around next to you in the 70s" 😂😂

I remember primary school girls knocking on neighbours doors and asking to "take the baby out". The baby would be in one of those huge wheeled metal carriages and get wheeled up and down the street.
Roaming where ever for hours at a time.
Sitting on beltless laps in cars.

Free milk.

Drinking alcohol on our venture scout holidays (under 18).

Visiting potential universities without parents.

No seatbelts in cars

Factor 4 suncream really thick and unnecessary - we wanted to tan!

The dog poo from the aforementioned stray dogs was white. No one picked up dog poo.

Playing out all day from around age 7/8 and not being contactable.

Going to friends houses and their parents disciplining you if they needed to.

Teachers were a world apart from now. In the 70's one of mine smoked a pipe in class, another (male) always took a couple of kids home at lunchtime to do his cleaning. Another put a child in hospital and nothing came of it.

Smoking absolutely everywhere. I remember being a kid and watching a family member changing a baby’s nappy with a cigarette in his mouth. Just abhorrent.

Perverts everywhere. Some were known to the community and when they were seen to overstep they gut a pasting from the local geezers and then they went quiet again for a bit.

I realised a few years ago that as a girl I didn’t know a single woman in my family with a career. They all just had what were described as ‘little jobs.’

Mental illness was you were ‘doolally’ or in the ‘funny farm’ or ‘nut house.’ My parents bought The Sun and I still remember the headline of ‘Bonkers Bruno’ relating to Frank Bruno when he had breakdown. I also remember Katie Price’s first boob job being down to a Sun readers’ phone vote.
Fwiw I don’t have the scummy rag anywhere near owt.

Playing outside since about 6 by myself, climbing fences to building sites and people's gardens.
My dad beating me with a belt for getting bad marks at school.
Being locked in a toilet for a for hours on a Sunday morning for being too noisy while parents slept.

Oh yes, kids smoking behind the corner of a school building - in every school

Odd memory but I remember being in primary and our teacher stripping off naked with us in the changing room, just standing there start naked complete with big thick bush! I can't imagine teachers/tas being comfortable doing that nowadays!

OMG Why???

Mum used to work during the school hols. Leaving us at home at 5,6 and 8.
She worked 9 til 3 and popped home at lunch so that was fine, apparently!
When my dsis was 8, and I was 9, she broke her arm playing on a building site. I had to walk her home, phone my mum at work and tell her. I tried to tell her it was serious. She came home and made me go to the hospital with her, as it was clearly my fault.

She was getting changed, but was just very comfortable being naked in the changing rooms I think!

"I love you, but I don't like you very much." At least, I'd hope not. As if an adult would think it's ok to say that to a child.

I took myself to school on a short bus journey aged 7. I was the eldest of 4 kids and my poor DM was run ragged. All the local kids went swimming together, not an adult in sight, didn't matter if you could swim or not! Same with the cinema on a Saturday morning.
Some people might see it as neglect but kids had loads more independence and responsibility then.

I was going to say the soap one. My mum washed my mouth out with carbolic soap when I said "bloody".

Teacher threw a board rubber at me once when I was daydreaming. It was one of those wooden ones and it hit me on the head! That certainly woke me up.

In the infants, aged 5/6 doing PE in our vests and knickers. c1965/6.

Seat belts just weren't a thing, smoking was.

Meat and two veg.

Cigarette vending machines

The Barnardos boy collection box with a boy in a calliper.

Swimming in the sea from about age 10 - on our own.

Penny for the Guy (bonfire night was huge).

Catching the train to school aged 7 and being left at the station on my own. There were lots of secondary age children.

Being put on the train aged 7 (70 miles) and my grandmother collecting me at Victoria, coming onto the platform with a platform ticket.

My brother and I would rent age 18 horror movies from the local video shop when I was about 10.

Ice cream van used to park up outside our school and sell cigarettes to the pupils at lunchtime.

Hanging outside a shop asking random people to buy you cider...usually didn't have to wait long.

Wedding scrambles...when. someone on your street was getting married the bride would come out her house and throw a load of loose change in the garden and the kids would all scramble for it.

I remember DBro & I throwing ourselves around in the back of the car, deliberately falling against the door when DF drove round a bend!

Rising our ponies without a hard hat.

Out on bikes all day from 9 ish during the holidays or weekends. I had lights on my bike as I was often biking to the shop in the dark.
Caught the bus to town on our own or with friends from 10ish.
Packs of dogs roaming around the estate. One came on the school field while we were doing p.e., we all were making a fuss of him, a gorgeous black and white collie, until a teacher chased him off. My first dog as an adult was a black and white collie. 😁
No seatbelts until they were compulsory. All piled in for school matches.
TV programmes marked in the paper to watch, BBC1,2 and ITV.

Rising our ponies without WEARING a hard hat!

I'm so sorry 😔

Sunny smiles. You got a 3x3 inch booklet with black and white photos of kids in it one to a page, and you had to “sell” ppl their favourite child for charity!!!!! Might have been to raise funds for Barnardo’s. Very weird looking back.