Were you left in the car while parents went to the pub?

[ruru1981]

Sorry didn't know where else to put this.

I've just seen this meme on Facebook and so many people are saying this used to happen to them.

Quite a lot said they would sit in the car for hours. Some said they shared a drink between 4 kids. Some said they didn't get a drink. Most are laughing about what would happen if it happened these days.

Did / does this really happen?

Am I lucky that this never happened to us growing up or is this unusual?

Never. But DH was on holiday.

Well some of you are comparatively lucky

I can recall being left to stand in the street outside the pub from the age of 4 or 5 by myself. My father was an alcoholic and it was impossible for him to go anywhere, even taking me to the dentist, passport office etc without a drink!

Yes frequently for hours it wasn't fun especially when the little ones would cry or someone needed to pee.

We'd play outside the pubs. Does anyone remember the slides with the structure you walked through before you slid down? This was in the 80s/90s.

Six of us (2 families) were regularly left in the park across the road from the pub. Luckily there was a public toilet in the park. As the eldest, I was allowed/instructed to cross the road for "supplies" every hour. We were driven there in the back of the ute, standing up. We thought it was a great adventure the first few times, but it got quite boring.

Yes. Occasionally with my parents, but i would more likely be sat in a corner of a loud smokey pub listening to swearing, sexism and drunkenness.

But with my friends parents I was sat outside a pub for hours every Saturday afternoon. We used to do a club together on Sat mornings and the deal between parents was that Mum would drive me and friend to club at 9 and then friends parents would pick us up at 2pm and then i would go to friends house to play till they dropped me home at 6pm. What would usually happen is we'd be collected in the back of the parents transit van - obviously unrestrained and along with their 3 Alsatians - then taken to a pub, left outside for a few hours while they got pissed, then they would drive me home.

My Mum even jokes about how drunk they were they could barely walk up to the front door and how the Mum sometimes had black eyes. My parents still think this was all perfectly fine and it allowed them all day Saturday 'peace without me around'. So despite them working all week and me not being collected till 6pm, they still wanted a break from me on a Sat . Sat night was spent with Dad at the pub returning drunk for dinner at 10pm and them playing loud music and getting pissed. Sunday morning was their lie in and i wasn't to disturb them and then (because pubs closed at 3pm on a Sunday) up and ready for us all to go to the pub together at noon. Home for lunch at 4pm. Dad slept while mum cleared up. At 7pm i would wake Dad and he would go back out to the pub till closing at 10.30pm.

Ocassionally left in the beer garden. We didn't have a car, but once when the weather was poor (cold rather than chucking it down) and there were other kids there who did have a car we sat with them and read Beanos together.

It would be for hours at a time, but it didn't happen often, maybe twice a year or less. Some friends went at least every week. Bottle of pop and a bag of crisps was definitely standard bribe to keep you in the garden and not bothering them.

Children were not allowed in pubs at all when I was a child (am in my 50s). Not like now when lots of pubs do food and have playareas in gadens. My parents didn't go to the pub really (Italian so me real pub culture) but I definitely had friends who waited in the car or sat on a bench outside the pub if the weather was OK. Not very young children but from about 9 or 10 years old on.

Not left in the car but slept in a custody suite while my parents got rat arsed at the police social club. I love it when that generation of parents criticise out parenting, I was practically dragged up by today's standards and my parents were very 'respectable'!

Yes. For hours. It would be too hot, there would be squabbling and my brother always got a slapping because he would get caught in the front seat "driving". That sinking feeling when you realised that a run out in the car was actually going to the pub. Coke and crisps, always a bottle to share, and my youngest brother always managed to backwash so there would be crisp crumbs floating in the bottle. Then being driven home, unrestrained of course, by a drunk parent. I remember once being left in the car on a hot day and noticing a lemonade bottle with, what looked like lemonade in it, as soon as I opened it I knew it wasn't. It was some kind of cleaning fluid or something. It stank out the car. My dad noticed the smell as soon as he opened the door and I got a slapping that day for being "bloody stupid"...

Very, very occasionally, to be fair.

I do remember as a teenager being pretty pissed off when Mum picked me up from school as it was snowing, then went to pick my Dad up at his workplace. She went in to get him. I sat in the car for over an hour and ended up getting quite upset. Emerged they were having an office party.

But memes like this annoy me. The 70s/80s were not some great pinnacle of a time to be a kid.

Never the car, but the beer garden all the time. My Grandad used to pour a drop of his bitter/Guinness in my lemonade to make a shandy. Best memories.

Yes. Most Sunday lunchtimes. A bottle of coke and cheese and onion crisps.
I used to absolutely hate paper straws as they used to go soggy after one suck!

Beer garden for us and my grandad used to leave me outside the bookies after a visit to Woolies for a book & some pick 'n mix which I would read & eat while he was inside, no issues, and how I miss him now!

Not that I recall, we didn't have a car. But I was left in my buggy / or to stand outside the bookies on many occasions for what felt like hours

Oh yes if forgotten about the drive home, often bashing into kerbs and going straight over mini roundabouts, literally

Occasionally we were left in the car as the alternative was the 'children's room' in the pub which were the most dreadful places imaginable. Dank, dark and dirty and full of cigarette smoke. I think we were better off left in the car! Most pubs back then weren't child friendly.

Haha my dsis and I like to remind our dps about being left in the car with a 'packet of crisps and a bottle of Coke' . They don't like to be reminded, it spoils their perfect gp image! My dsis never minded st the time. Preferred being in the pub garden though.

Oh just read the thread, didn't mean to be flippant. My experience was lovely, but some of these sound pretty sad.

Yep. On day trips or holidays.
Depending on the weather we sat in the car or played on the playground.
We didn't mind and getting a bottle of coke with a straw in was awesome.

Only when we went away somewhere...left in the car park with a coke.

There was one pub we went to that had a garden...it seemed like the height of luxury. Happy times. I never got crisps though. They were for other people

Then being driven home by an over the limit driver who was smoking away with the car windows closed. And no car seat. My DM thinks I'm over protective to not find this acceptable for my DC.

Yes, mum and dad (although not drinkers themselves) would meet their friends in the pub and my sister, myself and the friends two kids would stay in the car with crisps and pop. We would have the time of our lives, taking turns sitting in the drivers seat pretending we were driving off to sunnier climes. When we were a bit older we would go with the same family to the dads' social club and we kids would go in this room upstairs where there was a sofa and tv and would be left to our own devices, we regularly watched films like Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street, scared ourselves shitless!!

Yes, I remember this. Dbro and I would sometimes be left in the car with the obligatory Coke and crisps. We'd generally fight. If there was a beer garden, we'd be left there. If said beer garden had a duck pond we'd be quite happy.

No. It's didn't happen to us. But I know lots of people it did happen to.
And some weren't that keen then, or now look back at it in disgust. But most thought it was ok then and aren't bothered by it now. Most quite liked it. They didn't get coke and crisps at any other time. Because crisps weren't as common to have at home, in those days.

I don't think it's that awful. Things are different. It's not that it was worse then. Or neglectful. Just different. My mil left her babies outside the post office whilst she went inside. They were totally asleep and fine. That's now scorned on too. But it was commonly done then.