To ask for your weird family behaviours that you didn't realise weren't normal until you were older?

[Coffeebiscuitsrepeat]

1. We called a toe poking through a sock hole a "potato".

1. Whoever made the most mess at the dinner table "won the prize"... And the prize was to clean up the mess!

PD James

Love the Mum who put salt in her belly button . That’s fucking hilarious!.
My childhood was ruled by “what people might think “ . It’s made me fairly non conventional as an adult- I refuse to care about what randoms think about me- no doubt Dd will be on a thread like this 20years from now complaining about me

My Mum's parents run their house like a military operation. We stayed there when I was 4 and Mum had taken me out for the day. The bus had been late so we were running frantically to be back for 5pm, which is when they serve dinner. Mum explained that if we got there at 5:01pm they wouldn't let us eat dinner. I thought she was joking. Turns out she was deadly serious!

When I was 10 my parents and I travelled to stay with them for their Ruby wedding anniversary. They told us they had booked a restaurant for a family meal. When we got there it turns out the family meal was 'family only' so Dad and I weren't invited! I only realised how strange this was when i mentioned it to DH many years later and he was horrified. In his family people who marry in are considered to be family members.

We grew up without a TV. I got very adept at working out what was going on in various programs from the snippets of other people's conversations. When I went to secondary school my friend refused to believe I didn't have a telly because I knew the plot of Neighbours so well. I finally got to watch it when I moved up to 4th year (now known as Year 10) because we were allowed to stay in at lunchtime and our room was one of the few with a TV. Our lovely form tutor would come out the staff room specifically to get it out of the cupboard for us. And he took afternoon registration with the final 5mins still playing just so we could get to the end of the episode.

We ALWAYS wore slippers in the house other than for bed and showers of course. Not wearing them would’ve been like not wearing any clothes, i.e. totally weird. Blew my mind when I went to my new BF’s house aged 13 and her family went barefoot. I thought they were all crazy hippy exhibitionists!

@roxfox

We're black and one of my parents had white foster parents as well as bio family. Took me donkeys years to realise it was weird that we had a set of white grandparents. And another bunch to wonder why parent had been in and out of care in the first place.

Still don't know why.

Same here - I never questioned why I had a white 'auntie and uncle' or who they were related to and I didn't find out until I was in my teens. But that was just one of many things we didn't talk about or question. I remember hiding my emotions and my parents not picking up on things, especially once I got into my teens. Lots of internalised worry.

We grew up in a very messy house. I don't remember us being taught or encouraged to clean up. The cleaner would come once a week but apart from that we just threw toys all over the floor and didn't put them away. Nothing had a place and I was always losing PE kit etc. We all had different things for dinner, eaten at different times in front of the TV

DH's family don't dunk biscuits in tea, DH was shocked when he saw me dunk a chocolate hob nob in my brew when we were first dating.

They also don't lick the spoon after baking, because of the raw egg. DH and I baked together and I licked the spoon and you would have thought I'd burnt the house down from his reaction. Licking the spoon is the best bit about baking!

My parents have the heating on loads. Both my parents grew up poor, my father in squats at some points due to his family's poverty. My parents experiences of living in cold houses as children meant they didn't want that for me, so our house was always roasting. I struggled at other people's houses and at Uni as I was used to being so warm at home.

My mother's parents are stingy with the heating and hot water. I had to have a lukewarm bath there last time I stayed

• in February - as they only heat water once a week for their weekly baths, and my grandfather wouldn't put the heating on, but agreed the hot water could go on for 10 mins. Washing up and hand washing is done with cold water. I have never stayed there since.

I realised that the way we dressed for summer was rather old-fashioned, in the 1980s. We rarely wore T-shirts without a collar (are they called T-shirts if they have a collar?), indeed my brother mostly wore buttoned short-sleeved shirts in the summer, and knee-length shorts. When I once sent in for a promotional "Shreddies" T-shirt from the cereal packet, I was hugely excited to wear it, because it was a proper T-shirt. My dad almost never wore shorts, being a child of the 50s who had to wear them a lot.

We also rarely wore sandals, even in summer, or on holiday: we'd all be in trainers and ankle socks. (We mostly holidayed in England or France; my parents didn't like hot places.) My brother once asked for sandals: mum bought him some very sensible beige leather ones, which he wore with socks, but we didn't know this was fashion crime. It wouldn't occur to us to wear flip flops - I didn't even know they were called that until I was a teenager. As a teenager I rebelled by wearing trainers without socks in warm weather, but I didn't wear sandals at all until my late twenties, because it simply didn't occur to me.

@ConkerGame Did you always have to wear socks with your slippers? Wearing slippers on bare feet was frowned upon by my parents, but I did so anyway.

Dying here at "big jobs", we had to use that term in our house too and my friends thought it a bit weird.

There was also very little hugging or touching, only if absolutely necessary and then it was a peck on the cheek or a fierce one-arm death grip for a nanosecond. I was uncomfortable with physical affection and nearly had a heart attack when my first proper boyfriend's family all wanted to hug and kiss me.

Luckily they taught me that it was okay to give and receive a hug, although I'm sad to say that 15 years later I was far too afraid of rejection to ever kiss or hug my stepchildren when they were very young. I think they had been trained never to speak to me, no matter how nicely I said hello and greeted them they wouldn't look at or acknowledge me, so I never risked touching them. I'm sure they think I'm cold.

Now they're all in their 20s I've been known to give them a hug, otherwise we fist bump.

Weren't allowed animals. So when I moved out rescued the most gorgeous german shepherd :-) also adults smoke everywhere, while eating dinner or on the loo...

@CreaturefromtheDeep it’s strange you mention the social life thing, because it definitely wasn’t a thing in our family but it was for a lot of my friends. Some were dinner parties, some were pubs, I had one friend who used to go to some social club fairly often which I was so envious of! I went with her once (I was about 10) and it was such fun.

@Bargebill19

4) brown envelopes in the post were known as “no help me someone’s”. I’ve no idea why.
Maybe because it was a bill or a demand from the taxman?

@JammyHands what changed in your teens?

Love the 3am fire drill.

We rarely ate out or had a takeaway. I was shocked to go to a friends house aged 13 and see that her family had takeaway and video rental night every weekend. If we ever went to Macdonald's my mum would order a fish burger and only eat the fish cake.

We always had fruit, then soup, then main. Dessert was quite often tinned fruit.

The no water thing I think has given me a complex. Now if I go out shopping or for a walk I have to buy a drink or I have a fear of being thirsty.
Even at home I have to have a drink with meals.

@letsgomaths socks if you were wearing day clothes, no socks if you were wearing pyjamas!

I've just thought of another one, which was that we always had a particular food item with a particular meal, even though they didn't go together at all (can't say what it was as it's completely outing, but think always having a yorkshire pudding with a curry for example!) It came about as my younger sibling didn't like the main meal but liked this food item so my parents always added it so they would at least eat something, and then it just stuck. I must've been about 18 when my best friend's family (the barefoot ones!) served that meal when I was at their house and I said to my BF, "are the yorkshire puddings coming out too?" and her whole family stared at me like I was a nutter! Went home and had to ask my parents, "are yorkshire puddings not a normal part of a curry??!!" they rolled about laughing as they thought we all knew it was a family quirk but turned out me and my siblings all thought it was an official part of the recipe!

@Peregrina

We used to have a 'starter' before Sunday dinner of a big Yorkshire pudding & gravy, just on it's own.

That is How Yorkshire Pudding is supposed to be served, if you are from Yorkshire. Made in a big tin, and cut into rectangles - none of these little round things on the plate with the meat. Sacrilege! I should know, my DM was from Yorkshire and it was always served like this.

Now DF who was a Lancastrian would eat his cold sometimes, with jam!

For pudding with sugar in our house!!

Potatoes in your socks is an old fashioned expression. You will find it in lots of old books.

If anything was vaguely sweet we had sugar added to it. Yogurt, mashed bananas, strawberries. If it was savoury we had marmite added yo it. We were all fussy eaters and I think it was Mum's desperate way of trying to get us to eat anything.

My Dad always put vinegar on sprouts.

My childhood wasn't the best so a lot of mine I knew to keep hidden at the time and wouldn't suit a light-hearted thread, but one sticks out at me:
We used to have Sunday lunch at 3pm without fail, it was the only meal with any routine and that we sat at the table for. Adults would often question me when they heard this and I would parrot to them what I'd been told; that it was combination of lunch and tea because it was such a big meal. They used to look at me with a mixture of confusion and pity and I used to wonder why no one saw the logic.

Of course when I was older I realised it was because 3pm was to fit in with the Sunday closing, when pubs would shut at 3 and reopen in the evening. And mum's boyfriend was well known for propping up the tap room bar for both sessions.

We didn't have PJs or nightwear as kids, and to save on washing on a school day we wore our school uniform all day, including playing out when we got home. As an adult I have thoroughly enjoyed learning the pleasure of changing out of work clothes and into PJs or casual clothes when home!

Something my Mother would often hand out as a "treat" when she was cooking, was a cup of hot vegetable water, usually from cabbage or sprouts.

We would all sit and sip this, while she said how delicious it was, and so full of vitamins, very beneficial etc etc! I suppose it was like drinking vegetable stock, but I never inflicted it on my own family!

PineappleUpsideDownCake you need a digital food thermometer! I was exactly the same, it changed my life

I thought it was paprika on melon. That's what we used to have.

I had quite an exotic upbringing compared to some. We went out for Indians and spent all our holidays in Spain. Grandparents lived there so cheaper for us than going to Cornwall. We went all over to different towns to go shopping and visiting.

We had a slow cooker so my job when coming in from school was to make sure it was cooking ok and had food that some had never heard of. Chilli con carne, coq au vin, beef borginoun (sp) and spaghetti Bolognese!

My DH on the other hand had the same meal every night and as they didn't have a lot of money would have the cheaper cuts of meat that were like boot leather. Salad was laid out on a plate so you only took a small bit and not served in a huge bowl where you could go back for seconds. He had never travelled around the country for fun and was horrified when I suggested a day trip just because.

The Stars in Their Eyes final- every year we made a chart of various categories and scored the contestants out of 10 in each to figure out who should win.

OMG we did this as well!

We also used to do it for Eurovision, but do it the same way as the scoring system so allocating one song 12 points, one 10 and so forth. I still do that now!😂

My mother gave me pizza and chips for dinner every single night.

She never cooked a dinner, just put frozen pizza and chips on a tray every day.

You are very lucky if you had mothers that cooked dinner for you

We got dressed the minute we got up until we went to bed, I still find it odd when people wear pyjamas around the house! Also my mother was horrified at the thought of televisions upstairs, we had two sitting rooms downstairs and had to watch tv in those.