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!

Then a 3000km drive back home again.

My mum flew once and didn't like it. She also didn't like sea travel but could mange Dover the Calais.

We went on holiday to the south of France, Italy and Spain, by car. Oh and she had not forgiven the Germans for WW2 so we couldn't use the most direct route.

We were the same with set meals each day of the week and strict meal times. My dad was a steel worker and we always had a hot evening meal and Sunday lunch (1pm on the dot). I was in my twenties before I not only had a salad but had one as a main meal. Spring onions were called scallions. I’m sure I’ll remember some other. We stayed dressed until bedtime. My father in law even wore shirt, tie and jacket up to bedtime all year round even after he retired.

Yorkshire pudding with beef mince meat stirred in and cooked a la Toad in the Hole.....solid and filling.....have never ever had it since or known anyone else whose Mum cooked it and I can’t eat anything now made with a batter, especially the soggy bit.
We had ‘inspections’ too to check hands were clean. Parenting skills involved humiliation and making everything seem like a punishment or a chore so washing up, for example, was preceded by my Dad declaring that he earned the money, Mum cooked the meal so we ( 3 siblings) had to wash up and clear away.
Hearing about Holidays from schoolfriends was beyond comprehension for me and the fact that a family might actually have a holiday away, have fun and enjoy being together.
Drinking cocoa made with water, stirring a teaspoonful of cocoa with a teaspoonful of sugar and pouring hot water in to make a paste then filling with boiling water and a slosh of milk.

My childhood embarrassment though was that we were the only family who had Izal toilet paper, my dad insisted on it, so the loo was like a public convenience. He grew up very poor with a outside loo and newspaper squares so I guess it was the height of luxury. But to me it was awful.

I wouldn’t mind but it was dearer than soft paper as well.

I did know it wasn’t normal though even then.

We never sat at the table for dinner even though we had one, always on our laps in front of the tv, I mean if they really wanted to watch tv just put one in the kitchen! It's so bloody awkward eating food off your lap.
The lack of routine has made me crave a bit of structure however reading about people having the same meals on certain days puts me off.
My grandparents came round every Sunday and just sat and watched tv and I can't understand how no one died of boredom in our house.

@groovergirl

Then a 3000km drive back home again. This sounds horrific! Probably in a car with hot vinyl and a busted AM radio, too. And to not even stop at the Big Banana! I hope you go there one day, as it's interesting for history and botany as well as for kitsch, and worth a visit.

Speaking of food and this is not my family thing, more of a general observation about 1970s Australia kids were never allowed to make their own sandwiches, or "sangwidges", as the olds would say. If you dared to slip a hand inside the Tip Top bread bag, someone would snatch it away from you. Two flabby white slices would then be engulfed in margarine, with just a dab of Vegemite or whatever in the middle. "There yar. That'll keep ya going 'til tea."

I once got busted for wiping the marge off on a tree, and also for eating just the crusts (which had escaped the marge) and frisbeeing the rest over a fence. I hated margarine so much and couldn't understand why it was compulsory. I've eaten plain, dry bread many times and not once has it killed me! Or glommed up my gullet!

Actually I loved the driving! When you never went anywhere except school or home, it was great to look out the window and see different stuff.

DH and I take our kids on road trips all the time. Heading back from one now- 4000km in total. But we stop to see stuff and do fun things too. And yes, we have the family Big Banana snap! We even brought the kids overpriced ice creams. My parents would have fainted in horror.

I just woke up to see all the responses so will read through but first:

GINGER ON MELON.... Why do so many of you have this in common?! What? Haha! I'm tempted to give it a try. I wonder in what decade the trend started?

Thanks for your answers all; I'm finding them truly fascinating.

That mums and dads actually loved or even liked each other.
That people could go from A to B with parents without shouting, fighting, swearing or smoking 25 fags.
That mums could drive cars. It didn’t occur to me that women could drive cars.

We also called a toe poking out of a hole in a sock a spud.

Shoes with a split in them were 'laughing'.

It's not weird but my dh always had a salad every Saturday with cold meat and half a boiled egg .
The odd thing is he tried to request it with me , if I do say we'll have a salad for tea tonight with jacket potatoes he thinks this is most odd and will say no salad with ham is enough. I'll say well I'm having a jacket potato so you have one or not .
I just don't understand people who insist on having the same thing from childhood just because they never had a jacket potatoes with salad .

Sugar on chewing gum.
Sugar on strawberries.
Sugar on oranges.
Sugar sandwiches.
Theme here.

We wasn't allowed to talk if my Dad was watching the news , the football results whilst he was checking the pools ( you betted on the results of the match, and the pools man dropped off the fixture a few days before ) and the wrestling that was on the tv on a Saturday night. The house had to be in silence for those times .
During the winter Saturday ' tea ' was hot dogs and during the summer crusty cheese and onion rolls, other than that I can remember it was always chips on a Friday.

Fruit sandwiches...either a sliced apple sandwich or sliced banana sandwich, not sure if these are normal or not but definitely a thing in my house growing up.

The remote control was called The Black Thing. My mum still calls it this. I think I stopped when I went to uni and must have asked someone to pass me the black thing and their response was .

On a personal note, we shared a house with another family. I think it started off for financial reasons but worked so we lived like it for years. Each family had their own living room and their own half of the kitchen etc. Took me most of primary school before I really noticed it was unusual.

All our meals were at the table. The only exception was the occasional Saturday and only if it was baked potatoes. Dad called this 'pigging it' and was disapproving of it in the extreme and he would resolutely sit at the table to eat his.

We didn't eat anything between meals at all until we were teens and then Mum bought some crisps and biscuits which she kept hidden if Dad was around.

We were thin and healthy though to be fair. All meaks cooked from scratch. I loved my parents and as an adult I see their struggles. Keeping order was part of stopping the chaos coming in!

We never had regular mealtimes. Dinner could be anytime from 6 till 8 and Sunday lunch sometimes didn't happen till 6pm.

And when she did a Sunday roast, she'd put a few scraps of meat and some chopped up veg in a bowl with gravy, so the dog got a roast dinner too.

The dog was a beautiful German shepherd who moulted like a bastard. My mother used to take the brush off the end of the hoover pipe and vacuum the dog. Amazingly, the dog tolerated this and actually rather seemed to enjoy it. She would roll onto her back to have her tummy done.

She maintained it was easier to get the hair off than off the carpet.

Love this thread.

I can't really remember anything weird from my childhood. I'm sure there is stuff but my memory is shocking.

My DP's family still serve women with less food than men. I was baffled on my first Christmas Day with them and abit gutted to only have 3 small roast potatoes!

Every time we had a barbecue we had to go to the common first and get a load of gorse to add to the charcoal briquettes "for flavour".
When we'd been out anywhere, first thing when we got back we had to touch the taps "to Earth ourselves" from the charge we'd somehow built up from being outside.
When going out, we had to close the back curtains, to stop people seeing the back garden through the house.
Dinner was always a random selection of "stab 'n' ding" meals, like some sort of World Foods buffet of things that were reduced in the supermarket.

Every time we had a barbecue we had to go to the common first and get a load of gorse to add to the charcoal briquettes "for flavour".
When we'd been out anywhere, first thing when we got back we had to touch the taps "to Earth ourselves" from the charge we'd somehow built up from being outside.
When going out, we had to close the back curtains, to stop people seeing the back garden through the house.
Dinner was always a random selection of "stab 'n' ding" meals, like some sort of World Foods buffet of things that were reduced in the supermarket.

Love this thread!

I'm bemused by the number of people eating ginger on melon - I have never heard of this?!

Yes to sock potatoes and eating leftover Sunday roast on Mondays - hated it. Was always with lumpy mashed potato and the meat was hard with cold bits of fat on it. I was never a fussy child but I really struggled with that.

In the summer we had strawberries with (full fat) milk on so my mum didn't have to buy cream.Tasted lovely but I don't know any other household that did it

My father once told me you have to put sugar on strawberries or the acid would give you tummy ache. (70s childhood)
I still feel I'm living dangerously when I eat them without, despite them being much sweeter now.
Breakfast was sometimes grapefruit with crystallised sugar on top.
Meals were also quite regimented, but my mum cooked well and conversation flowed, so they were happy times, except when mum was in a bad mood and gave us the silent treatment. I was the youngest child yet it seemed to be my job to figure out why.

My Yorkshire student landlady way back, used to serve Yorkshire pudding (with sultanas in) and gravy, as a first course. I found it strange at first but did enjoy it.

Potatoes in socks have always been a thing here. Just the other day dh asked whether I’d meant to chuck out a sock that was in the bedroom bin. ‘Yes of course, it’s got a potato in it.’

My mum and Dad never changed anything in the family home for decades. After Christmas dinner some time in the late 90s, we let off party poppers that went over the chandelier with their little paper streamers. There were Christmas decorations there too. The unspoken decision was taken to never take them down and the decor was kept exactly the same for the next 20 years. A visitor once commented on how it closely resembled Miss Havisham's wedding banquet.

My room and my brother's are still full of all our toys, trinkets and children's books. Stars are still stencilled on my walls. I'm 37 and he's 39. I'm quite glad that the house will be sold soon, it's like a shrine to the past.

I noticed the difference when I met DH. His family fed women less and didn't cook from scratch. Children were expected to 'be quiet and eat your tea'. They also ate at 5ish. In my family it was always at 7pm.
Rebellious these days - usually dinner on lap, mostly from scratch food, and lots of chat.

@GilbertMarkham - yes, my dad is ex army, a prison officer and works as a fire fighter, how did you guess?! Lol. I personally think all the drugs from the gulf war messed his head up massively so that’s why he’s a bit crackers.