to ask the older parents on MN

[VegetariansTasteLikeChicken]

what you did in your day that would have got you sacked from MN today and potentially a visit from ss

I slept on my tummy, mother smoked when pregnant. .. and my nan thinks asprin is the best thing to give a baby for teething. And rice in my bottle from probably day one to get me off to sleep

Seemingly I slept through right from the start. Well, that would be because my room was miles away from where my parents spent there evenings and without a baby monitor they wouldn't hear a thing!

Their not there!

I suppose you really meant parents of older children; I'm definitely an older parent but my DSs are 6 and 1, so I have followed the currentish guidelines (well as much as I wanted to, some of them were bollocks!)

I don't know too much about what my Mum did back in the 1960s/70s because by the time I had DS1, she'd died, so I couldn't ever ask her or compare notes and my Dad has a highly selective memory, sadly.

I know though that Mum tried to feed me but gave up after 3 days because of the pain and bleeding I caused her; then I was put on "Ostermilk". I also know that I was in a cot in my own room from quite early on, as were my siblings, but it was next to my parents' room.

Things I did that I "shouldn't" have:
• co-slept with both boys from day 1
• put them to sleep on their sides for naps; it was their natural preferred position and they slept better that way
• gave DS1 rice milk after 6m; no one had publicised the arsenic levels in rice milk at that point!
• used the tv as a nanny; I worked from home with DS1, and needed an hour to see each client (I'm a therapist), so found children's videos that lasted an hour and left him to it. Then Ds2 just got hooked on tv because DS1 was watching it.
• had the occasional glass of red wine while pregnant with DS1, because of the stress of Mum dying - I discussed it with the obstetrician and we thought the stress would be worse (I do realise that sounds utterly feeble as an excuse but it worked for me at the time)

Oh and I never swaddled either of them as they HATED it.

It was very difficult to get hold of cars big enough for families with more than three children - and there were five of us. The most successful motor was a medium sized van, my parents in the front seats and us all in the back. There was an armchair and a cot mattress in there to sit on. The squabbling to get to be the one in the armchair used to be vicious!

This was the 80's:

Put my babies on their tummy to sleep.

Wean at 4 months.

Sometimes leave them to cry - not for long and not if they got very upset.

Put them in another room at night from 2 weeks old for first child and first day with second.

Just occasionally give them a smack.

Give them cake without worrying that it was some kind of child abuse.

I remember getting very badly sunburnt as a child/ teenager in the 70's. Sun cream existed, but wasn't used routinely the way it is now. I had a lovely time peeling great sheets of skin from my shoulders and back. Happy days.

I had tea in my bottle as a toddler, the bottle didn't go until age of three and I had a dummy (and gorgeous teeth!)

Later at about 6 or 7 I'd have a drop of stout in my lemonade on a Sunday. I went to buy the family cigs (didn't smoke them though.) Out all day out of the sight of adults (avoiding trips to the corner shop for messages no doubt) back for tea.

As a teen I hitchhiked but i would go mental if mine did so!

I swaddled but i think if i showed you a photo that i have of my ds in his cot you would all be as no doubt he was far too warm and all the teddies were a definite suffocation risk. But he slept through 7-7

We were 70's and 80's babies.

Never wore a seat belt, DM held baby in her arms and DF drove (no seat belts for them either). If my mum was on her own and needed to drive I remember Dsis having a car seat that was all plastic, no cushioning or fabric!
Dummy was dipped in honey.
Never wore sun screen and we grew up in a hot country.
DM smoked through all 4 of her pregnancies and managed to grow babies that were all 10lb (smallest was me at 9lb).
We were put the sleep on our stomachs.
My parents both smoked everywhere, in the car, in the house and there is even a photo of my as a newborn on my mums knee and next to her is an ashtray and her fags!

1977 baby here.

• I slept in my own room as soon as I was home from hospital
• I slept on my tummy
• My mum smoked while she was pregnant with me and both parents smoked in the house and car through out my childhood
• I had whiskey rubbed on my gums to sooth teething pains
• Baby rice was put in my bottle at about 6 weeks
• no seat belts in the car and I used to travel behind the back seat of the car in an estate car with a dog guard on my other side to stop the suitcases squashing me when we went on holidays with my grand parents

I used to hitchhike too. I have no idea how my mum thought i was getting into and home from town as we were rural but she never asked!

Just realised your 22 year old was born in the 90s

As a teen I hitchhiked but i would go mental if mine did so!

Oh, dear God, me too. It makes me go cold thinking of the risks that I took.

I don't think it has ever occurred to any of my lot to hitch - it just isn't acceptable anymore. Fortunately.

I was left to scream in my cot and ended up sleeping in sick. To be fair, my mum was so mortified she never did it again.
Loose carrycot on back seat. Have a sweet picture of me stretched on the back seat sound asleep, taken just after we'd parked. I was about 3.

I co-slept with DS - it was either that or never sleep again. It was great, actually. I highly recommend it.

Even in my children's infancy, in the late nineties I used to:

-Leave them in the car or their buggy outside the village shop, with the dogs tied up next to them.

-Leave them for three minutes to drive the babysitter down the lane to her house,if I was alone in the house with no husband to do this.

-Wean at 20 weeks.

-Leave them for short periods alone at a far younger age than anyone here would probably admit to.

I'm not sure I would do differently now.

I was born in the mid 1960's, was bottle fed, no idea if I was put to sleep on my tummy, was never left to cry for ages or put at the bottom of the garden. No seat belts in the back of the car but my parents had seat belts put in the front in the early 70's, very forward thinking. Apparently I was smacked but don't remember it. Was very much loved and cuddled.

I wouldn't change what I did with my DC's at all.

We were smacked - and so were all our friends. "Answering back" was the biggest sin in the book. We were lift in the car outside pubs with a bottle of lemonade and a packet of crisps. We were however gloriously left to our own devices and chucked out after breakfast and expected to play in the local fields and woods, make dens, camps and houses with sheets over the clothes line, returning only for lunch and tea until it was dark. I used to find and bring home lots of stray dogs, which my parents then had to trace back to their owners, except for one that we never could find the correct home for and she stayed with us.

I was born in the 60's and apparently had a tot of whiskey in my bottle to 'help me sleep'. Also had rusk and baby rice in there. Crikey, my bottle was a meal with chasers! Also my parents/grandparents smoked around me in the house/car. Park Drive My mum said she put us outside in the garden in our pram in all weathers and to make us go to sleep she put us in the sun so we'd close our eyes. Also, she gave my brother phenergen 'to help him sleep'.

Social services anyone?

My oldest will be 28 next week (born 1986) and I was encouraged to wean her at 12 weeks. Give her eggs and there was no ban on peanuts/unpasteurised cheese back then. I ate it all. She slept on her back at the top of the cot, with a pillow. No one ever took their prams/pushchairs into shops. You left your children outside by the shop door.

No ill effects for either of us. She's in rude health.

I've been a parent since 1987.
I unwittingly committed most parenting misdemeanours apart from smoking and illegal drugs.
There was a bit of smacking too, although tbh that is a fairly pointless exercise and rarely works. It was completely normal then though.
Used children's videos a lot.
The maddest thing my mates used to do is park their babies in massive coach built prams in the garden for hours, a la Truby King. That was going a bit far, even for me. I'd take DD out for a walk instead.

Oh yes, we had a massive down cot duvet from Germany we used for all the kids, and a pram version too (it's really cold there sometimes). None of this blanket nonsense for us.

Most of the above - plus a drop of whisky rubbed on my gums when I was teething!

My parents brought 7 of us up like that, strangely we survived

there was no ban on peanuts/unpasteurised cheese back then

I bet pregnancy was a helluva lot less depressing if you could scoff some decent cheese and a have a glass of wine with no guilt

Did anyone wear slings back then? It seems like the sort of thing hippy mothers in the 60/70s would do..but not sure if they actually did?

I missed on on all this whisky!

You will find very different attitudes during the same time period, just as you do now.

I was born in 77. I was always put to sleep on my back, I never travelled in a car without a seatbelt, I was never left in the garden/outside 'to air', I was covered in sun cream and kept out of the sun between 11am and 3pm when we were on holiday. I was never kept to a strict feeding routine and my mother never did controlled crying.