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?

We'd squeeze into car footwells, if there was a few too many kids trying to fit someone's car on a day out. Oh and the boot was the back up!!

My mother used to go rose selling in the late 90s (she in her late 40s) as well as my sister who was 18. Leave at 4pm, get back at 3/4am... travel to Kent or London which was 2 hours away... leaving me alone at 14! Crazy times! My mother used to.then go to her cleaning job for 9am!

I can remember going to the hospital with my dad to pick up my mum and sister, who'd just been born. 1992.

My mum walked out of hospital, carrying the baby wrapped in a blanket, and sat on the backseat holding her all the way home.

And my dad enjoyed a cigarette during the journey. But of course he kept the window cracked open, which was considered enough to be responsible.

The PE teacher making sure we showered afterwards and noting in her register if you said you needed to be excused because of your period.

It was mortifying. And the interrogation you got if you had periods over a week.

However, she got her comeuppance one day when a pupil in my class noticed she’d left her office keys on the outside of her door and locked her in. No-one grassed on the brave and fearless girl. And the PE office was set away from main body of the school, the nearest being the Music block. I believe was furious when she got out eventually that day but we all practiced our butter wouldn’t melt looks….😁

Another one who would go buy cigarettes for my parents in my early teens, and sitting in the hatchback of a car. Or five kids squeezed in the back seat without seatbelts.

Being around to run around in the sun all day with no sun cream getting burnt.

Banysitting young babies in my early teens.

Rusks in a baby’s milk bottle around 4 months.

Getting the belt in school.

Completely unsupervised swimming in the sea or lakes. (I know some young people will go off and do this in secret, but parents would k ow and have no problem with it).

And so easy to buy alcohol under age at the off licence or ask an adult to buy it for you.

Playing on building sites. We lived on the first street of the housing estate where I grew up to be completed so there was building work going on for several years. We did things like climbing inside the drains, putting ladders in to get access to first floor rooms where the stairs hadn't been installed, and opening bags of cement and mixing it with water.

Oh God yes, and the big diggers, where kids would climb into. I was always fearful after hearing the "teeth" of the digger sometimes shut with movement leaving the child trapped inside!

I remember finding on several occasions thr good old porno mag page in a bush on my adventures as a kid! I remember I was maybe 5 or 6 seeing the full frontal of a woman with a very shaved landing strip on the page of such magazine! At the time we had been locked in the graveyard as the cemetery had shut (it wasn't dark) so we went through the bushes to climb the wall!

In the early 90's, in year 12 and 13, going to the pub on a Friday lunchtime and being amongst the teachers at the bar.

I’d say the worse thing as a child was travelling without seatbelts or sat on my mums knee. As I got older, I’d say about 15, me and some friends went to these older men’s flat (they were early 20’s). This makes me feel sick now thinking what could have happened. Also when I was about 12 our male teacher used to watch us go through the showers after pe. No word of a lie he’s since served time in prison for you can guess what but there we go.
DH was a 70’s child, mil and fil the most lovely people you could wish to meet and they used to leave DH and his sister outside the working men’s club on a Saturday night with a panda pop and a pack of scampi fries. Can’t imagine doing that with our children now 😂

Being clipped round the ear by a stranger or a police officer and then, them threatening to also tell your dad because they know him lol

Having things launched at you by the school teacher when you're caught talking

Leaving the house at 9am and not coming home until the street lights came on at 5pm and your parents not knowing where you are all day and no way to contact you

Going down to the corner shop with a couple of quid to buy 10 Embassy for your mum, when you're 12

Being in a room full of adults smoking, that there's layers and layers of smoke hanging in the air that you're walking through as a child.

Finding woodland porn

The PE teacher watching us all in the shower naked to make sure we had a shower.

Just really weird and extremely embarrassing as a young teen having a teacher see you naked. Just awful.

Unfortunately child abuse, even if just watching naked kids and no touching was very common back then.

same,unfenced-no nightstaff\security...we climbed scaffold (proffessionally- used the "bars"as gymnastic practice-also for beam work" jamp from the top window of near finished house into the huge sand \soil founds heap.... i remember actual going back-even tho make me be late home...(?)to turn the radio off so the workies didni get in truble for leave it on all night! ha...also saying "pee my name"at the boys cos...i didnt have the means..

Lightening hair with sun in and lemon juice, trying to get a tan using sunflower oil, getting into pubs and drinking at 14, clubbing at 15, hitchhiking home from said club. Flashers outside the school seemed to be a lot more around back then and seemed to be an anouncement in assembly about them once a month. Doing PE in your vest and pants in primary school. Smoking on a plane.. I remember my nan sitting at the back of a british airways flight having a perfectly normal cigarette in the early 80s and there being armrest ashtrays in the seat arms.

I had this, I actually got suspended for refusing to shower and calling the pe teacher a pervert.

Yup we did this too. I used to galavant across the wooden beams pretending to be a gymnast and fell off once and knocked out a baby tooth.

Another one up I've remembered is using the folded down chassis of the big silver cross prams as a go-kart. We used to find the steepest street in our estate and fly down it sitting a top this chassis. God knows how none of us died!

I just want to give that girl a medal, she did that for all of us terrorised by our weird perverted pe teachers 😆

Sun protection if you went abroad (1960s) was olive oil mixed with lemon juice. Sun protection at home wasn't a thing.

Would get food or cereal tipped on our heads if we didn't eat it

I'm sure I had my mouth washed out with soap at a young age

Hit with a wooden spooner or slipper

Ah, what fond memories.

playing tennis every summer outside your house with every kid(and occasional adult)from up til bedtime...n nobody cmplainin

I got asked my star sign once incase I was making my dob up. But all I did was change the year from 1984 to 1983 and I was fine.

God I'm old now.

OMG - Kerby.

Can you image two 10yr olds stood either side of a 30mph main road throwing a football to one another nowadays 😂

My brother and I were born in 1946 and 1948. My Nan lived with us intil she died when I was 8. My mum worked full time including Saturdays. We fended for ourselves.cooked including carrying a heavy chip pan, using the oven and kitchen knives.We were responsible for lighting the fires and doing housework. We went shopping on our own and would disappear for hours,with nobody aware of where we were.