To wonder what my mum was playing at to give me Ribena as a baby?

[Hotmad]

Mum asked me if I gave my 3 month old any Ribena in a comforter type dummy??? She used to do that for me!! Apparently there was baby Ribena about 30 years ago!
What other ideas from the past so you know of that would never be done now?

Child of the early 90s - when I was in primary one, I spent 90% of the year on my teacher's knee. When we went on a school trip, I sat on her knee on the bus plucking her jumper, before promptly falling asleep.

When the same teacher's son was unwell with D&V, aged around 12, he came to school with her and played with us.

My headteacher in P7 (2002) used to take me out of class frequently for a cup of juice/biscuit and would discuss her paperwork with me - because of that, I had an active say in determining decisions regarding the building of a new school, for example. I was also given personal copies of all the building plans!

When mum had the GP, the receptionist took me (3) and my sister (18 months) into the office, and taught me how to draw pictures.

When I was ill, I was given a variety of disprol, calpol, andrews salts, lucozade and once, aspirin (never again, after I slept for hours and hours!) .. Also took the same antihistamine medicine for 7 years every single day until it was discontinued (dimotane, was yummy and would pay to have it again).

My Brownie leader gave me a lift home for four years with no permission slips or anything, just did it - laterally, I called her Auntie J.

Childminders - one stood at the door and chain smoked; another would drive us ten miles away to her friends, who was also a childminder; anther took us to her own house to play with her kids; another used to give us a carrier bag of sweets and videos and then lock us in the sitting room for hours..

My friend's grandmother had a house that was condemned due to rot or something. She - at the age of 10 - had a set of keys, and we were allowed to play in it unsupervised. It was a very old mid 19th c house with a fabulous attic and double garage and full of toys and working landline friend was a spoilt brat .. we had great fun in there with no-one watching.

When DM fell ill in town once, a woman who claimed to be a social work student picked Dsis and I up (aged 2 and 4) and took us to her flat, a few miles away. She let me draw with her highlighters and then showed me her phonebook, and asked me to tell her the names of people I knew (so she could search for their number!). If she did that now she'd probably be thrown off her course.

It was a simpler time however in some scenarios potential for abuse was huge I suppose.

Ahhh the horrors of brown corduroy! I'd like to say that none of the above mentioned ever did me any harm but I smoked from teens until late 20's, I've always been on the tubby side shall we say and I got the worst fashion sense ever!!

should your HT sounds well dodgy!

My mum was quite ahead of her time when it came to healthy eating (late 70s/early 80s) - she was a whole foods devotee so it was brown bread and no sugar for us (I was allowed one Cadbury's Fudge once a week on Sundays which was considered positively draconian at the time). She was very scornful of the rosehip syrup they sold (actually sold as good for babies and to put on dummies!) in the health visitor clinic. I was the only BF baby they had seen and the nurses threatened to report her for child neglect because they thought my weight was too low (it wasn't - it just didn't fit with the expected weight gain for the charts, drawn up in the 50s for formula-fed babies). My mum was a child protection social worker at the time and soon put them right!

She might have been a bit strict about diet (nothing but water or milk - she blames my nan for her bad teeth because my nan used to do all the jam and rosehip syrup on the dummy / in the bottle, wean at 8 weeks onto crushed rusks stuff in the 50s). I felt deeply aggrieved and deprived at the time with my wholemeal bread hummus sandwiches and water when all the other kids had jam sandwiches on white bread and cartons of Um Bongo. But I never developed a taste for fizzy or sugary drinks or a sweet tooth, and have never had a filling (and my dentist told me this was down to my diet between birth and ten - so I suppose I should thank my mum really!)

ha hot I too smoked as a teen but gave up as I couldn't inhale without choking. sad.

smocks and hot pants too!! lovely.

Rose hip syrup was the thing in the 70s.

Meant to say, strict about diet and particularly drinks - she didn't make us live only on water & milk!

train opposite mothers and have a full gob full of fillings. rose-hip syrup was our staple drink.

I do believe gripe water contained alcohol back then.

My mum mentions a dinky dummy?? She put medicine in it when we were ill.

I think it was considered very healthful for a period (40s-70s?) but sadly it was basically just sugar syrup Much beloved of grandmas though. My other nan used to try to give us spoonfuls of malt and sulphur to "liven us up in the spring", to my mum's horror, and would go on about how breastfeeding was disgusting and my mum should put my sisters on "National Dried" (which was basically powdered condensed milk sold instead of formula during the war )

sad She was lovely, but utterly useless in every way. Had taught since 1960 and had never moved with the times. I did enjoy going to see her, but it was a bit weird. She used to ask if anything was bothering me especially - and gave me advice on spot cream and all sorts.. I had plans at one point for our new school, and photographs/plans of a school twenty miles away.

My mum was taken for an educational trip round the local cigarette factory.

I used to borrow cigarettes off my teachers. And go to the pub with them after school. Many a dodgy bastard among that lot.

The process of weaning us onto solids apparently started with baby rice in the bottle at about 8 weeks (babies of the late 70's). DF once suggested that I give DS a rolled up piece of butter dipped in sugar, I can't remember the reason for that little gem, he may have been teething.

My mum's neighbour was telling me about when her youngest was a baby. She said that she was at the end of her tether, baby would not stop crying and it went on for days. She called the doctor who said it was probably a tummy upset and to give her half a teaspoon of sugar, a teaspoon of water and a teaspoon of rum .

She said it worked!

Mum used a pulled out drawer instead of a moses basket for me when she brought me back to the UK for a visit (born abroad).

My mam looks at me like this

And says, 'it was bloody expensive that Ribena, that's all you would drink!'

I'm 32 and was 6 month - 4yo

I remember having chicken pox and spending days slathered in calamine lotion whilst tucked up on the sofa with socks on my hands and sellotaped on at the wrists. The spots were all over my scalp and when I was well enough Mum took me to the hairdressers and had my long hair cut very, very short.

The day before she had bought me some brown corduroy dungarees and a forerunner of Timberland boots and a brown polo neck jumper.

I remember my Dad coming in from work and I was sitting on the sofa with my brother watching TV. He greeted my brother with a pat on the head and tousled his hair and looked at me and said "Alright there matey?".

When I said "Hi Dad" he did the wildest double take you have ever seen and crouched down to inspect me. He thought I was my brother's friend come to tea!

He left his little girl that morning with long hair, white socks and a pretty dress and came back to Frankie from Prisoner Cell Block H!

Look, when my DS was a baby, he was fed on Carnation Evaporated milk (the amount of Carnation to water was printed on the label) as that was recommended by my midwife and HV. He's 40 this year and I still look back and gawp at how things have changed...

Calpol was around - don't get me started on this, as I recently looked after DGD and was asked to give her a dose of Calpol -- I couldn't understand why there was nothing coming into the syringe - until I realised that the thick pink goo that I remembered was now colourless..!!

Oh, and when I had my two DC (1970s) we were told to ensure that we had a bottle of stout (Guinness or Mackie) every day 'to help the milk'... My friend's Dad was a pub landlord, and when she was in the local maternity home, he took a crate of stout in every evening for her to share with the other new Mums......

Similar to Trainin here (avocado soup followed by aduki bean 'loaf' anyone?), but I have a shockingly sweet tooth that has been fully indulged since leaving home.

My mum was actually told by health visitor to give me weetabix from when I was about 2 months old, you'd be in trouble for it now but back then it was what they were told to do. Probably told ribena had vitamin c and all that. I laugh when people say everyone ate healthy in the 80s, it was all crispy pancakes and oven chips ffs, and babies with juice in bottles and fed mush from birth practically, and watered condensed milk instead of formula if they ran out (have seen this in a baby book)!

There's a photograph of me as a tiny baby, no more than a few weeks old I'd guess, I'm lying on my mum's lap having a feed - and there's a fag hanging out her mouth She insists she didn't realise there was any harm in that.

I remember reading years ago that it was dentists that campaigned to have the word 'health' removed from the Ribena label.

My Gran (92) was given Guinness in hospital to help her milk come in. She and my grandad were both teachers and were considered revolutionary for not hitting their pupils, although I still occasionally run into older people who were taught by him and remember his accurate aim in bouncing the chalk off your head if you weren't paying attention! My gran qualified in 1942 as a single woman living away from home, and went back to work after all 3 children - her MIL nearly disowned her and refused to look after the children if they were ill didn't stop her ignoring my mum needing help with me occasionally! so they had a housekeeper who pretty much brought my dad up.

Children with SEN were kept at home as ineducable; after my aunt her youngest child was born Gran worked as a home tutor, visiting them to teach basic reading and arithmetic. The stories she tells are horrific - girls pregnant at 11/12 not knowing if they father was their own father or one of their brothers, children with Down's Syndrome etc left to roam feral and fend for themselves There was no such thing as a Social Worker, and Gran was the only outside contact some of these families had.

Footle

I know a guy who worked on the very early mobile phones in the 1970's. He refuses to use one even now.