If you met your child when you were a child would you think they were posh?

[GreenCaterpillarOnALeaf]

I definitely would, but I thought anyone who didn’t have to share a room with a sibling was posh. If you lived in a detached house you were basically part of the royal family as far as I was concerned. DH said he would think they were a bit posh because they get to do after school clubs and extra curriculars and he never got that.

Second question: at their age, would you have been pals with them. DD6 asked me this morning if we would have played together at school, and I said yes of course we would have. But really our paths would never have crossed and if they did I would have thought she was a square because I was really naughty at her age. From 6-9 I was just a terror for no good reason. She definitely would have told the teacher on me (as she should). Also I can’t lie, I would discourage DD from playing with a kid who behaved how I did.

DS5 I probably would have played with because he likes cars and messy play and at that age I loved going in the water tray ect. DD2 is 11 months so not really at that stage yet.

No, I'd have thought they were like me.
However, I shall never forget my mother ticking me off because dd didn't have a pony and I wasn't providing as much for her as was provided for me! Livery in zone 2 London tends to be tricky!

No pony?! I’m calling the NSPCC on you 😭

No, they would think I was posh. Similar income levels but I grew up in the countryside (ponies etc) and we now live in a London terrace, like half of MN apparently!

I’ve had to NC just in case 😂😂

No, but I grew up in a posh area of Sussex and my dc are east end Glaswegian 😂 my Dd used to sound quite like me when she was small but now she’s full blown Glaswegian 😂

Edited to add that my dc do have more than I did though and we have more money than my family did, do more days out etc.

Yes, but I grew up dirt poor sharing a bed with two siblings and with an outdoor loo, so virtually everyone was.

Of course!

Alcoholic parent, led to me making bad choices to get away.
Wasted my uni years on completely the wrong course. No support from home. I left at 18 and never went back.
Met an older man who talked a lovely story but was grooming me, and he ended up trafficking me, and when I got away from him it was ten years later and I was a homeless addict.

It took me the better part of another ten years to get myself clean and sober and into a job. Had my daughter with someone I thought loved me (I'm bad at picking men) and now I'm a single parent, minimum wage, council estate.

Could be worse. All things considered I think I've tried my best.

Yes

My children go to private school, everyone in the house has their own bathroom.
They live in very large house, with a 4X4 and go on numerous holidays every year. They have their own cruise loyalty having spent so many nights on cruise ships!
My DDs favourite breakfast is an egg on top of (home made) sour dough toast and smashed avocado!!!

Very different to me at their ages..... I hadnt even been on a plane (or a cruise) when I was the age my children are now! (teens), and loved a bowl of crunchy nut corn flakes for breakfast!

Thinking about it, I didn't really "get" class until I went to University. I mean I knew I knew there were people with more money than us who had more material things and went on expensive holidays etc but I certainly didn't consider myself a "have not". I rather naively thought thar most people, unless they were the royal family, filmstars etc had a broadly similar life to me. But when I actually got to know well off people and realised the magnitude of the difference for the first time it did come as a bit of a shock.

My DH is kind of the opposite. He grew up believing he was a bit underprivileged and I sometimes have to remind him that being one of the less well off people in your private school doesn't actually make you poor!
I think what you perceive as posh, or rich very much depends on how you compare to the people around you.

No. He was an absolute pleb.

I grew up in a council flat on an estate. I had a very different life to most kids around me. My mum was second generation Med so our food, was very different, we went on holidays abroad and my Mum only ever bought quality clothes, furniture etc. My children had a great life living abroad and had everything they needed.
Not sure i would have been best friends with my daughter as she is so nice and sensible, i was into punk and had an attitude.

I don't think I'd think they were posh if I met them at school/at a club, but if I visited our house I'd have thought we were 'posh' because we have a piano, which was the distinction between my posh and not-posh friends in the 1980s.

Also my child drinks water, whereas only my poshest and least posh friends did that when I was little - most people with similar houses to me drank squash.

My kids are 8 and 10 and when I was their age I didn't know what posh was. We lived on a council estate and everyone I ever met and ever had met was like us. The only difference was some people had been on a plane, others hadn't. The ones who had were like the celebrities.

So I wouldn't have identified my kids as posh.

But me as a kid would have gawped at adult my lifestyle. All provided for by adult her own hard work. I'd like to go back and thank her for paying attention in school :-)

No but that’s more because posh/not posh wasn’t really on my radar. I would have thought they were beautiful because they are and I am not, but also not understood why they weren’t more naughty. They are all very like me in most ways so I expect we would have been very good friends. I often used to tell them when they were little that I’d have loved a friend like them. They thought it was boring mum esteem building schmaltz but it was true.

Oh absolutely. He is way more privileged than I was.

No, I was fortunate and grew up with ponies, skiing, my own room. Husband would say yes though. My parents aren’t posh, just had one decent income which seemed to go a long way back then. Kids at my school thought I was, I tried to hide it a bit. I went to a very ordinary state school. I knew kids from proper posh backgrounds via the ponies. I see posh as old money. Husband and I are comfortable but we can’t afford ponies or private school. I heard a voice recording of my DD recently and I didn’t realise how grown up and rather eloquent she sounds. So some may think that of her, not sure!

In truth, I had no concept of what was posh and what was not when I was younger. Looking back at the friends I had at the time, I can now tell who was middle class and who wasn’t but back then it didn’t seem to matter who had money and who didn’t as everything seemed to be a big pot whether that was sharing our bikes/scooters or pooling our spends in the shop to get sweets/treats and making sure everybody had some. I genuinely had no awareness of wealth until I was older. For my own personal circumstances, my family were by no means wealthy at all during my childhood but when I was living it, I didn’t know. For example, juices and soft drinks were only for special occasions and I was told it was because it was healthy habits yet i now know it was because we couldn’t afford them regularly. Similarly, biscuits/treats were limited to one day a week. It never occurred to me that these things were in place because we were relatively poor- I just assumed my parents were strict. My mum would purchase my clothes from charity shops or eBay but I never knew as it would be ‘new to me’. As for posh - I was always called posh because of the way I spoke and the manners instilled in me. I’m no longer posh as I’ve picked up the accent of those around me but financially I’d say we are very comfortable.

That’s interesting, I wonder why you think of Edinburgh accents as “default posh Scottish” is that because that was the first naice Scottish accent you encountered? Or have friends with that accent?

I know exactly what your DH means by the Glasgow Uni accent, but yes, it is quite a subtle distinction.

Yes! My children sound posh compared to me. We have a larger house than I grew up in. They do expensive extracurriculars - my parents couldn't in a million years have afforded horse riding and music tuition.

I sadly don’t have children; but when I was a young child in the 80s I was friends with children from a wide variety of backgrounds and the only thing I judged them on was how nice & friendly they were to me. I was ND so maybe that influenced my outlook?
As I got into my teens in the 90s (& learned to mask better) I did notice differences but had friends from various backgrounds at my comprehensive.
I had a small friendship group & what we had in common was not background but that we were female, quite quiet, studious, maybe a bit young for our age, had similar tastes in music & didn’t get involved in any dramas or bullying.
It was very noticeable in sixth form that the majority of kids that had stayed on were from more well off backgrounds & they stuck together & were a bit snobby unfortunately. They lived in large houses, had private tutoring, expensive cars & label clothes.
They always went on the ski trips. I never went abroad until I was 24.
Although one of my friends in my group was fairly well off and heading to uni; us other 3 were from poorer backgrounds & got looked down on basically.
There had been a lot of Romany & traveller kids from the council estates at our school before GCSE but the majority left by 16 and many got married quickly (and are actually still happily married now, some have been to uni as mature students).

The ex classmates on my Facebook are generally some of the ones who left at 16.. they were and still are just nicer, and friendlier than the rich kids.
Im still good friends with 2 of my old best friend group- 34 years later!

Oh no, sorry op. I hate the fake sounding Glasgow uni voice. My d great nephews speak like this too 😂

I don't think I'd think my two were posh as I've always sounded posher than I am and my DS has the same accent. I would have thought my DS was privileged though. He's had a private education, multiple holidays a year, lots of extra curricular, access to a car and a parent to take him places and lots of meals out. I didn't have any of these things.

I think if our paths had crossed we would have been friends as we are very alike.

With my DSD I wouldn't have thought she was posh. I think we would have been friends. She's so confident but she loves all people and I think she would have liked the clever, stylist bookworm!

That’s reminds me when DS was 5 he asked what child-line was for. I explained that if a child needs help and their parents won’t or can’t help then they phone the helpline.

He phoned them and told them the graphics card in his laptop was inadequate and DM was taking too long to upgrade it.

Out of interest I asked my mum and dad.
Mum - Wouldn’t have thought I was posh but she had better clothes than me so looked much more put together (because my nan used to alter/make their clothes). No she wouldn’t have played with me as a child because I was too naughty an she used to cry when people broke the rules, but said she would have thought I was a cool teenager and we would have maybe been friends then.
Dad - Probably would have thought I was a bit posh because I was clever and to him as a kid reading a book = posh. He said we would definitely have been best pals and we would have probably terrorised the estate and caused havoc which I can absolutely see.

God yes.dd2 favourite word is gosh and she gets teased at school for her posh accent.

I find it really hard to tell, to be honest.

My parents did an enormous amount of telling us how lucky we were (I realise in retrospect) looking down on other people who were not as intellectual and cultured and educated as they liked to think they were. They didn't make us think we had a ton of money - in fact they quite often implied money was very tight compared with wider family members - but they were very big on this idea that most other children weren't getting the wonderful cultural opportunities we were getting.

It was the shock of my life when I went to university and realised lots of my peers had had much, much more 'cultured' upbringings!

As a child I would probably have thought DD was posh because she lives in a clean house with a big bedroom; she has clothes that fit and aren't hand-me-downs, and we have stuff I would have thought was very smart, like shower gel rather than fairy liquid on the side of the bath, or non-threadbare towels. When I was little my best friend's mum used to buy her body shop wash stuff; each member of the family had their own towel that was always clean, and I thought that was terribly posh! In retrospect, my parents just have absolutely no interest in keeping a house clean or tidy; it's nothing to do with money or being 'posh,' they're just like that.

OTOH DD would have thought I was posh as a child because we went on holidays abroad; my parents had more than one car, and my mum didn't work.