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!

My dad was from Jamaica which made me feel different enough anyway. He would visit Jamaica often and bring back all these exotic fruits and veg which you couldn’t easily get here such as plantain, yam, green bananas, sugar cane. Pear (giant sweet advocado) and Caribbean sweet potato. It felt like Christmas when he arrived back. It’s strange how easily you can get them now

We never were allowed to answer back to our parents. Even things like calling our parents to us were gravely rude ‘I.e. saying “Muuum, daaad” and evening worse “come here, please” - to date I don’t think I’ve ever called my parents to come to me. If I want to say something to them, I go to them.

When I was round a friends house, and she called her mum from another room, and her mum came - my eyes nearly fell out from my face. I was so confused.

I could write an essay on this as I’m only just realising how abnormal and toxic my childhood was, and how I’m only just now in my 30s able to make independent thought that isn’t completely influenced by my parents will and indoctrination.

Another thing since we were indoctrinated heavily into extreme charismatic Christianity as Christians was always being scared of demons possessing us, and always being scared that Christ would come back imminently (the rapture) and my family would all be taken away while I would be left behind to suffer the apocalypse and eternal damnation. And being fearful for my friends who weren’t christians that they would all die in hell. Which I now realise that fear was a ploy because it made me always invite them to church in the hope they would be “saved”. To make sure we stayed fearful we regularly had to watch a play called ‘heavens gates and hells flames’ where normal people would go about doing normal things and then die suddenly - and some would be dragged to hell screaming (literally with fire and demons around them) - and it was because they hadn’t paid for their parking ticket, or they tried drugs at a party, or they were good people but just weren’t Christian. So this kept me a good obedient child because I was worried that if I died right after I told a white lie, I would be dragged by red demons to burn in hell. It’s only as an adult meeting Christians in milder sects of Christianity (I.e anglicans) that I realised that they were allowed to read Harry Potter books as kids (we were told it was demonic) and generally had a more relaxed and less fearful childhood.

Strangely, from reading this thread, I'm beginning to see that my family wasn't so weird after all. It seems a number of us were brought up in a very old-fashioned house, where the father-figure ruled the roost (controlling the television), affection was rare, relationships not close, and children were seen and not heard. I bet none of us are like that with our children.

@Leobynature Did you sing the song Jamaican Alphabet? We used to sing it at primary school. "D is for dumpling, an' duckanoo" , "P is for plantain", etc.

We had au pairs, who we liked, but this was a bit of a novelty in the mid 80s: most other children at school were collected by their mums. My mum was always writing instructions for them, displayed on the noticeboard under the heading "Evening routine", with items such as:
"Collect from school. If time, go to the park."
"On return from school, give DS2 one lot of dried fruit."
"No TV except Blue Peter."

ITV was discouraged but no banned. We loved Swap Shop but I think it ended before Tiswas and we used to turn over for the end. I thought it was wild!

Eggys. Thats v true. My childhood was pretty neglectful but it could be an extreme version of what was normal.

Its hard to know how to relate to my parents now. It was awful!

@sashh well yes in a way ....

THIS EXPLAINS IT

It was learned behaviour to get to the cream on top but as less full fat milk was delivered the blue tits stopped doing it .

There were quite large generation gaps in my family: my parents were both aged thirty when I was born, and all my grandparents were aged seventy or over. As a result, I think I was probably exposed to more old-fashioned values than many of my peers. I was astounded by the idea of grandparents being in their forties or early fifties, and not being white-haired.

My grandmother was extremely conservative about making things last; she would be horrified by today's values of disposability, and constantly buying new things. Her house was full of old-fashioned gadgets, many of which had lasted decades, including:

• A twin tub washing machine.
• An assortment of electric sockets: two-pin, round three-pin, and others. She promptly fitted old plugs to (rarely bought) new devices.
• Electric bells in the rooms.
• Central heating only on the ground floor: electric fires in the rest of the house.
• The most modern sound system in her house was a record player.
• Bookcases with numbers embossed in the wood, which would have held encylopaedias.
• Bakelite light switches, and black telephone rented from BT.

She didn't buy new gadgets, except as a last resort, and she often repaired devices herself. We bought her a video recorder in the mid 90s, which I successfully taught her to use, and to be fair, she did use it regularly.

But I didn't realise until much later that this way of living was somewhat unusual, and that lots of grandparents readily embraced the modern world, with all its throwaway gadgets, and updated their houses regularly.

My parents still don't have soft drinks with a meal but, oddly, wine is fine.

My mum used to make a turkey curry with little dishes of peanuts, desiccated coconut and sliced banana (?) to sprinkle over the top.

The tv was never on in the mornings. Ever.

My father feels that satnavs are cheating and, in some way, undermine his usp of being an expert on the road network of Britain. Back in our childhood, he delighted in rarely needing to consult the AA road map before holidays. Having convinced then to get a satnav in their last car, they seem to spend all their time trying to catch it out. I'm convinced mostly they don't understand the concept of it giving you advance notice. After 5 years, it's still on probation and turned on for all local journeys to prove their point that theirs, and theirs alone, is "set up wrong".

Both my parents were strongly influenced by having grown up during post-war austerity, but it affected them in opposite ways. My father was continually turning off lights ("It's like Blackpool illuminations in here" ), and would refuse to eat anything if he had to open a new packet to do so - though snarfing leftovers was fine. My mother couldn't bear the house being dark or cold, and was fixated with food being served hot, as she had grown up in freezing houses, where everything was cold by the time you got to eat it.

One of the things I had in common with dh when we first met, was that we both came from families of 4 children, where money was always very tight, and we only ever had chocolate biscuits and orange squash on special occasions such as birthday parties.

It was a matter of wonder to me when a child that in many families they were available on a regular basis and considered nothing special at all.

Picnics on family holidays: piles of different sandwiches in tin foil. Crisps. Boiled eggs with salt to dip.

This brings back happy memories of summer holidays in north wales, eating this exact picnic in the car with the rain bouncing off the car roof

Re: top of the milk.

It was the shape of the bottles. Our milk was delivered in those old fashioned bottles with the long neck, so the cream, which floated, was forced up into the neck. Nowadays the bottles are short and squat, without the neck. So, although the cream does settle at the top, it's much harder to siphon it off!

@MrsNoah2020 my Dad was also always comparing our living room to the Blackpool illuminations! They did take us to Blackpool one year though. Maybe the money saved by switching off the lights paid for the trip 😀

We didn't have central heating, a car, or a telephone until I left home. The war made a BIG impression on my parent's generation. It was illegal to show a light and it had been drummed into them that you ALWAYS closed the curtains tightly before the light went on. When we asked our mum why she continued it past blackout, she'd say 'the neighbours can see in' as her reason for drawing the curtains. Why our neighbours would have been bothered by seeing us sitting eating tea and watching the TV I don't know...

I think she just didn't know why she kept it up. But childhood conditioning is hard to break.

We'd always have a roast for Sunday lunch. Then Sunday tea would be left overs- generally cold meat sandwiches but if the meat had all gone you'd have a mashed potato sandwich.
Roast dinners also had a selection of potatoes - ie you'd have roast plus mash - I still make it like that but my partner thinks its odd- maybe a northern thing?

We always had charity shop or jumble sale clothes. I didn't care where they came from I was just happy to get something new to wear. I can't remember ever going clothes shopping as a child to an actual shop. If I got a 'hand me down' from my Sister I thought I was the bees knees. One day in Senior school I was proudly wearing my 'new coat' on the way to school. A lad in the year above shouted out " That's your Sisters coat". That was the first time I felt a bit embarrassed about wearing someone else's clothes. I always had to wear Clarks shoes though, bought new, these were seen as really naff in Senior school so that was embarrassing.
When I got a pair of trendy Jesus sandals I was in heaven. We would wear them until the back snapped off. They would be hand sewn back together until it was impossible to do so and then they would become flip flops with another good few months wear in them.

We had a big roast dinner every Friday night, and Sunday was our use-up day for the week's leftovers.

I was in my 40s before I realised that for most people Friday is the quick-and-easy dinner day, and Sunday is the roast dinner day. Also that for most people roast dinner is a middle of the day meal, not an evening meal.

@Woofer18

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

Mine used to give me cornflakes for breakfast, primula cheese sandwiches on white bread, super noodles for dinner with a slice of bread...every day! She says now that it's all I would eat but I'm not a fussy eater, I had to tell her I wanted this to make sure I got a meal each day. Even to this day she refuses to spend money on food and will often will just have a cheese roll for dinner. Also DM eats no fruit or vegetables so to be able to eat an apple at my aunts house was the height of luxury. It's unsurprising that a large portion of my grocery budget is spent on lots of fruits and vegetables, my children love to eat loads of different fruit through the week. Feeding them so well is what I feel most proud of.

letsgomath it was mostly the threat of losing the privilege of the story that would keep us in line but if one of us was cheeky/ answered back or didn't finish our dinner then we would lose the story which made it rather hard to keep up with the story line.

bringbacksideburns oh this brings back memories of my mum and lil bro doing the same but to the Archers theme tune at five past six weekdays. Only he had this tradition with my mum and we would have to leap out the way as he hurtled down the stairs and start dancing round the kitchen. 😂

giffgaff yes to the dripping pot which would be used for next weeks' roast potatoes - absolutely yummy.

Another memory I have was my mum was obsessed with our temperatures and at the slightest whiff of illness or mention of not being quite right she would whip out the thermometer and that would determine if we could have a day off school or not. My sis was always just a tiny bit over "normal" so it would read 99degrees and would only be one notch over the red normal line but she would be bundled into bed and made to miss a Sat night trip out with her friends. It's only years later that I realised that our temps are always up and down and only if we have a fever (38 degrees or over) do you need to worry. My sis prob has a temp of 99 degrees today but shhh don't tell our mum. 🤣

My family meals growing up were 1000 and 1 ways with mince, mutton and sausages.
Cheap meat bulked out with tonnes of veggies, lentils, noodles, rice sometimes daringly with exotic Maggi spice flavour sachets such as Singapore noodles or devilled sausages. Otherwise it was mutton and 3-4 veggies. (Plus always a puddling of some kind)

Once a month a sheep was slaughtered and cut up with a old hack saw and my mums super sharp boning knives on the kitchen bench (killed in the killing shed though)

Mum baked on Sunday’s so the biscuit tins were always full of chocolate chip cookies, ginger crunch slice, shortbread, melting moments with passion fruit icing, chocolate Weetbix slice, Louise cake, banana cake, piklets and my sisters and I always traded them at school for proper brought from the shop biscuits with our mates.

Mum or nana made a lot of our clothes or changed/added new patches or embroidery to an older siblings cast offs.
Once a month we drove into town from the farm to do groceries and see my grandparents. (Which would always end in one of my sisters bawling on my grandparents steps after my granddad had said something awful to them.

Each year at Christmas we used to go camping at the beach on a friend of a friends sheep station for 5 weeks in tents with a stinky long drop toilet. Lots of fishing, swimming and sunburn so bad I get skin cancer checks every year!

Now I know it was because my parents were totally broke.
Farming was doing it tough, drought and wool prices had hit rock bottom and they were mortgaged to the hilt.

We were the first family in Dundee to have spaghetti bolognese, VERY exotic!
Sometimes my Dad would have a Vesta curry in a box after we had gone to bed.
Later, he started making his own curries and these were always served with little dishes of chopped banana, dessicated coconut and raisins, no idea why!

@BillywilliamV We always had slices of banana with dessicated coconut as a side dish to a curry. I didn't even think of it as a thing until you mentioned it. I think the logic was it would cool the spiciness...but our currys were very mild

@ letsgomaths I know it well

I love this thread!

• having no heating in any room apart from the living room, so doing almost everything in there (eating meals, changing, drying hair after a bath etc)
• never having pudding/dessert, snacks, squash, juice or anything really other than meals, water, and tea/coffee
• having chippy tea but not being allowed fish, it had to be sausage or pie
• later on when they started getting more adventurous we would have the occasional Indian or Chinese takeaway but we (kids) weren't allowed to choose what we wanted, my dad chose for everyone
• my dad doing nothing around the house, ever. I was so surprised to learn that other dads ironed etc
• we would regularly eat evening meals between 10pm and midnight, usually because that's when my dad would come home from the pub. No snacks allowed as above, so we would be starving. It wouldn't have occurred to my mum to not wait for him
• them being obsessed with the food being hot. So plates warmed in the microwave, hot food dished out, then gravy/sauce kept boiling and poured straight from pan onto the plate so it wouldn't cool the food down, then the whole thing would go in the microwave again. We obviously then waited for it to cool down before eating, but then would be asked if we needed it to go in the microwave again because it had cooled down!
• only ever going to the park during the 6 week summer holidays
• everyone having their own "spot" anywhere, so in the living room, in the car, when walking etc (I had to be to the left of my mum, my sisters were in front, dad was behind)

I'm sure there are more but can't think just now!