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. My mum used to work on Saturdays and in the summer my dad would sometimes take me to the chicken pub or the bear pub - one had chickens and one actually had a bear in a cage.

He'd leave me in the beer garden for as long as it took for him to buy a pint, a lemonade and two packets of crisps and then sit outside with me. My mum was okay with this because it was a public place, full of families and I wouldn't have gone off with a stranger.

That was the extent of their 70s child neglect.

I once told them that my friend's parents had left us in the car on a day out for about an hour. My parents didn't break up our friendship but there was no question of ever letting her parents take me out again.

My parents were also older than average - they were in their 40s when I was born. No one should take that to mean they were neurotic PFB types. I have an older brother and sister. I was a late addition and my parents had more bloody sense than my friend's.

No my parents where not drinkers.
But I was left in the car whilst df went to the bookies. I choked on a lucozade sweet I found in the glove compartment, luckily I managed to dislodge it.

Never by my parents. They didn't go to pubs and still don't.

But when I was around 5 and my brother around 3 we were sat outside a pub on a busy street at the top of a steep staircase by my grandmother, while she went in drinking. There were lots of men who would come and pat us on the head. Lots of noise. We were given pop and pickled onion crisps which I remember very vividly because they were so sour and I would guess it was our first time tasting them. I didn't like it. It was too noisy and I remember being quite stressed about the possibility of my brother falling down the stairs and the strange men talking to us.

She more than likely drove us home unrestrained in the back of a van, drunk.

But she was crazy. She used to let us sit on the boot of her car while she drove down the laneway. And my brother always stood up between the two front seats when we went everywhere.

I also remember one time being really ill and vomiting and my mum left me in the car while she went in to the shop. It was a really sunny day and she was gone ages and I honestly thought I was going to pass out from the heat.

That all was early 90s. I think by late 90s the tide was already turning.

Yes, I sat in the car outside pubs for hours, and I'm an only child, so was on my own.

I was born in 80 so it happened in the 80's. The outside pub smell was amazing and I couldn't describe it. My Dad said it was a combination of polish and stale beer, I've never smelt anything like it since!

Bit different but when if I was sick and off school when I was little, several times my mother had to leave me tucked up in the car with a book for an hour (? or possibly a bit longer) while she was teaching in a nearby school. As soon as I was old enough to leave tucked up in bed she would have done so I think. I was sick quite a lot and this was probably when my dad was out of work and my mother started to get whatever she could. Later she was able to teach from home.

No, because we didn't have a car and my parents never (and I mean never) went to the pub!

I think there is a happy medium Dame. What i recall from the 70/80s is horrible. In no way is my experience or those of my peers growing up better than today's attitudes.

I think there is a happy medium Dame. What i recall from the 70/80s is horrible. In no way is my experience or those of my peers growing up better than today's attitudes.

A large portion of my childhood was spent in the pub, thanks to my Dad.

I used to spend every other weekend with him (parents divorced) and we would mostly spend it in the pub, surrounded by fucking drunk idiots.

I was so bored and lonely and I also felt really vulnerable in that environment, more so because I was an only child so was left to it whilst my Dad spent hours drinking.

He was a fucking lazy, selfish parent and I've never quite forgiven him for forcing me to spend so much time in the pub as a kid.

We often went somewhere where children were allowed into pubs ( not England). However given the smoking that went on, I used to plead to be allowed to sit in the car...

Sometimes they'd let me.
Diagnosed with asthma as an adult.

My parents both did agricultural work, apple picking, lettuce cutting that sort of thing. During the school holidays my parents took us with them and left us in the car, we'd see them on their lunch break. We'd occasionally be allowed out and we'd play with other children, usually traveler children, who had also been brought along. I don't hold it against them, we were very poor and I don't know what they would have done otherwise. They needed to both work. When we got to about 10 we just stayed home alone.

I have remembered a particular occasion from my youth. It would have been the mid 80's. I was on a large group holiday with some other families and lots of single adults. It was on a small (no cars) island on lochlomond. We went to the pub all of us until around 10 at night. Then all the kids (I was one of the eldest at 10 - about 7 kids) were sent back to where we were camped on the beach to go to bed. In the dark. Just our torches. Around 3 in the morning we were woken by torchlight and shouting. It was my drunken father thinking it was funny to check we were all asleep.
He was so drunk he slipped and fell down the steps cut into the hillside down to the beach (very steep and uneven about 30- 50 steps). Anyway. 7 kids run out to see if this drunken idiot is still alive as there were large rocks at the bottom. More than one of us got a slap for not being in bed. My parents still laugh at this story. Like that was all ok.

Oh well, if it's not neglectful, try it now and post on here that you do it, and see how great everything thinks your parenting is.

Just because it was a long time ago and things were "different" doesn't make it right. A lot of things went on then that people are going to prison for now, thank god.

Some of these posts really resonate. I'm an only child and my parents were divorced. My DM got a new partner when I was about 7. I used to have to spend hours and hours in the pub garden while they socialised. There were no other kids there and I was bloody lonely and bored. Then at about 9 or maybe 10 I was deemed old enough to stay at home (probably because I moaned so much). She started going most nights for a couple of hours just to see this fella, and on weekends. I was so bloody bored and devoid of attention. She left the pub phone number 'in case of an emergency' and after months of this i started phoning to ask when she'd come home. That didn't go down well, but I must have been so unhappy to be doing it; well, I know I was, it was horrible. Then she'd come rolling back with the fella and play loud music and keep me awake too. I'm a bit paranoid about late night noise now, I suspect this is probably why. From about that age I was also told to take care of my own supper - I was given 90p and I used to walk to the spar shop and buy a rotation of findus 89p boil in the bag dinners because I was only allowed to used the hob not the oven. It was spaghetti bolognese, or sliced beef in gravy or sliced chicken in gravy. Every single bloody night for about 4 years.

Wasn't a happy time.

My DM is a professional, intelligent working career woman. If I treated my kids like that now she would be horrified. As am I when I think back on it

My mum would often leave me in the library while she went to the shops. She knew the librarians, they were happy to keep an eye on me and the only way out was by passing their desk. Not that I'd have left alone or with a stranger anyway.

She wouldn't do that now. But only because the library has been turned into an estate agents.

Lots of Sunday lunchtimes, but outside the pub on its forecourt which was on a triangle between two very busy roads, not in the car. My father used to buy a drink and crisps for whichever sibling I was with while my mother cooked the lunch at home, or did whatever it was she was doing. No ill effects whatsoever, other than a few parents laughing when my essay about what I did on Sundays was pinned up on a wall at parents' evening (Y1). I even illustrated it fully so everyone knew exactly which pub. Fond memories of the smell of beer etc although I now live next to a pub so still get a bit of a beery small wafting in and like the burble on summer evenings. Those were the days.

Not whilst my parents were at the pub but we were left in the car whilst my mum went round town shopping? It was probably only 30 mins max but felt like hours.
I used to be scared about someone taking us so used to make my sister hide down behind the drivers seat with a coat over her!

Some sad tales on here. I think there is a world of difference between it being an occasional occurrence and remembered with fondness. And outright neglect.

Def Pub Garden, same for DH who was London born and bred. But pubs in those days were disgusting and stunk of fags and old beer - far more pleasant today. We used to get a drink each and shared crisps. It happened infrequently for me as my parents pretty much tee total so it was like once or twice a year when rellies visiting etc. But for DH it was weekly - his father def had a drink problem although in those days it wasn't considered so

Worries me that they were left in car whilst parents boozing and then they were driven home I presume!!

No, because we walked to the pub. I'd stay in the beer garden. One pub I liked because it had a conservatory I was allowed to sit in if it was raining. I would get warm fizzy pop with a straw and pork scratchings.

I would usually be the only child there. I would talk to the adults that came out to see me. They would often do pub games like coin tricks or match puzzles. Sometimes they let me have the dominos to stack.

Every Friday night.

In the pub car park yes with pop and crisps. Absolutlry loved it playing with loads of other kids and still have fond memories of warm summer evenings with huge games involving kids of all ages.

Can you imagine that now with all the helicoptered children who can't amuse themselves for 10 seconds and the health and safety nutcases.

Happy happy carefree childhood.

I mean he bought a drink and crisps for me and the sibling - if he'd only bought them for the sibling my memories would be decidedly less rosy: I'd have been fuming!