What fairly normal things do you not let your DC do?

[Mayflyoff]

I won't let my DC have candles, my 14 yo is not impressed. I also don't let them go on fairground rides, though I'm OK with permanent rides at theme parks. Are there things you don't let your DC do, that their friends seem to do?

I remember my mum doing something like this when I left a note to say I had gone out and would be back in 15 mins

She made me write out the note again when I got back without all the abbreviations.

Never left her a note again.= Never had to write out a note again.

No fizzy drinks but allowed wine is peak middle class. 😂

Raising them up with Islam since birth and teaching them that these are wrong and explaining why they are wrong. Guiding them with islamic principles.

Also being from London all my DC have lived at home and commuted.

Of course I am aware of the massive change that high school brings and no I don't want my recently turned 9 year old walking the streets by herself just yet. When she's 10 and in her last year of primary then that will change obviously! If other parents do that good for them but I don't.

Same here 😂But their father still says Toilet..cringe!

What do you say instead?

Loo / sorry / what

Toilet and pardon were banned words in our house too.

Post war “refined” pretend French words like toilet and pardon were seen as cringe by the genuinely posh (ie Nancy Mitford). My granny refused to say mirror either it was a looking glass.

I miss the old posh way of speaking it’s definitely dying out. Heard a lady of my granny’s age on the radio who was at Oxford at the same time as her and she spoke in exactly the same way.

I have kept the old ways by trying to resist toilet and pardon (which is what thread is about I guess!) It’s hard as flipping teachers and support staff teach children to say pardon! So I have to unteach it.

So bring on the crop tops and fizzy drinks and surreptitious trips to the park but no toilet or pardon in this house!

Sorry - I genuinely don’t understand what’s wrong with saying ‘pardon or toilet’ someone please explain.

That's funny, my gran would have thought that anything other than pardon was the height of bad manners.

They are class signifiers. Upper class people in the UK like to have a set of unspoken rules by which they can judge and look down on people they consider to be lesser and language is a big one (also things like how people butter a bread roll). So an upper class person won't say toilet or pardon because that's for lower class people.

So what do you say instead of pardon if you need something repeated? What? I was always taught saying 'what' is rude (and makes no grammatical sense on its own). I think you must be right @InWalksBarberalla these are just made up for the fun of sniggering at those who don't known the 'rules' ie are not part of the club and never will be.

I think these “rules” are largely faded out now - they are from the post war era! My dislike of those words runs too deep though - read too much Nancy Mitford at an impressionable age. I will never use them but pretty much everyone else does so no longer a class signifier.

Got you - so MN snobbery ;)

@Typin couldn't agree more, parents restricting children from growing by pushing all their own issues onto their kids and pretending they are doing a good job because they spend so much time and energy 'parenting'. I'm reading this gobsmacked by how terrible some of these parents are, I feel really sorry for their kids. I hope some read this and see the light a bit, denying children social opportunities is a one way ticket for personal problems later in life.

Absolutely-it’s all about “club rules” and how to exclude people “not like us.” So actually, rather disgusting and best ignored, I agree. However, I chose to give my children the rules of the club just in case at some time it might be useful to them!
Incidentally, “What?” Is short for “What did you say?” Club rules tend to favour non -French derived words, that is why What is “better” than Pardon. You can say “Sorry?” or “I beg your pardon?” If What feels rude.

It’s not “MN snobbery” that’s too funny! It’s snobbery from the 1930s! Before the internet was even an idea.

I used to get into trouble for saying 'sorry?' instead of 'pardon' as a child so I have no hope in the class stakes.

I really wouldn’t worry I think most people with views on those words are long gone! Runs too deep for me though.

Sadly, they haven’t…..another generation, with a bit of luck.

Quite. I’ve only ever met two people who cared about the whole “U” and “non-U” thing: one was 93 and the other was a total oddball who wore Edwardian-style clothes every day and muttered to herself a lot.

I certainly don’t judge anyone as pardon is
now ubiquitous anyway but I still can’t bring myself to use it! Old habits die hard!

I know what you mean - it took me decades to be able to utter the word “fart” because my mother would act like I’d just dropped the c-bomb if I ever said it as a child!