To ask if anyone else seemed to spend their childhood permanently thirsty and/or needing the toilet?

[Cheeseandlobster]

I remember another thread a while ago that touched on this and I was surprised I wasnt the only one.

I was born late 70's and my parents used to take us on lots of trips to random towns on the train, often changing trains in London. They would never bring or buy a drink until we had arrived and walked around a bit. Then they would buy one big bottle of fizzy drink which we all shared, often after salty fish and chips. I remember being more thirsty than I have ever been as an adult. They bought me a drink once when I cried as I was so thirsty and I was pleading with them saying I would pay them back with my pocket money.

Additionally they were obsessed with not missing connections for trains and we were never allowed to stop to use the toilet so I also spent a lot of time absolutely desperate for the toilet, again where I was nearly crying with the pain but not allowed to go unless there happenned to be a toilet on the train

I swore when ds was born he could always have a drink or use the toilet no matter what we were doing. And now I am older I am just incredulous they let us suffer this way.

They were toxic in many many ways, but was this normal for the 80's? Was anyone else deprived of a drink or toilet facilities for prolonged periods of time?

I did used to get terribly sunburnt as a kid and skin would peel off in sheets in summer.

This is the reason I’ve had 6 skin cancers removed by my early 30’s and have yearly skin cancer checks.

In the 90s my parents were a bit like this (they had me late though, so probably the same generation as most 80s parents). Not to extremes, but they only drink when they get thirsty, and never water, mostly tea or coffee, and no drinks at meal times unless it is a special meal. I don't remember being made to hold a wee for ages but I often didn't need one when we went out because I was probably dehydrated most of the time! I hardly ever used the loos at school.

It hasn't created anxiety about it, but they have passed it on because I forget to drink still, am not bothered about a drink with meals and should really drink more water rather than hot drinks all the time! Thankfully DH always drinks a lot of water so the kids get lots.

Food was so dry as well. I remember having cereal often so would have had milk on that, but in other days meals would have been something like toast for breakfast,. sandwich, with skip crisps and wagon wheel for packed lunch. Then beige freezer food for dinner, maybe with baked beans.

So not much water being drunk, and hardly any fruit or vegetables to get liquid from.

I remember being a bit thirsty out sometimes but my parents would buy us drinks when thirsty out and about or take from home. Usually sugary panda pops or Capri suns. Again very little water. My granny used to make us ice cream floats all summer (cola with vanilla ice cream!)

I’m amazed I don’t actually have any health issues and have intact teeth. The sugar load would have been incredible, and my parents never made or reminded us to clean our teeth

I'm from a large family. Boys are aways thirsty and wee a lot 😂

Not to this extent but yes drinks were rarer when I was growing up (80s)
Somehow we have all been conditioned to drink all the time now- I do it myself- if I am going on a car journey of 40 minutes, I think 'ooh I'll get a takeaway coffee and listen to a podcast' I'm a teacher and the kids drink ALL THE TIME it's like having a class of guinea pigs constantly sucking away at their water bottles.

I was a child in the eighties but not the UK. Squash and fizzy drinks were more of a treat thing but us children helped ourselves to water from the tap whenever we wanted. School started early and finished at around 1pm with two breaks so you could wee/drink then and when we were younger you could go during class if you asked although the teachers might get a bit eye-rolly if it was a regular thing.

My parents would always stop for me to use the loo when neccesary although that would generally be a bush somewhere but didn't bother me.

I do remember once though we had a day out at the beach and for some reason my mother hadn't brought any water only a thermos of black tea? She offered me that when I complained of being thirsty - as if that would have quenched my thirst. But I am assumming it was a one-off if it stuck my head.

I remember long summer days out traipsing around the shops with my dm but never having a drink and as a young teen being embarrassed to take of my bomber jacket on such days and fainting more than once as I was so hot and dehydrated.
A drink was just never thought of.
Similarly I remember going on long coach trips and sharing a small bottle of coke with dm at the rest-stop then having nothing else to drink for hours. Weirdly we always had lots of food though.
At primary school we had one drink with lunch then nothing else unless we had done PE in which case we were allowed to make a line at the art cupboard and drink from the tap.
Conversely my dm was obsessed with us using every toilet we passed and not needing to go much due to the lack of drinks. I used to sit in the cubicle and make a noise pretending I was having a wee

Restaurants I was only allowed one drink. A huge fuss was made if I wanted another one, normally refused one.
I remember choking on something and needed a drink to force it down. After quite a lot of choking noises I was allowed a small amount of my dad’s drink. Then it was taken away whilst the food shifted and formed a lump, which I couldn’t shift. It was a horrid feeling.

I also remember being 13, and not being allowed a pint of coke at a pub we were having a meal at. It was something like 10p more and you got a pint. I couldn’t get another one even if I offered my own money. I disappeared midway through the meal, bought some coke at the petrol station and filled up my glass infront of family members just to prove a point.

I remember only being allowed water, then not being allowed water after a certain time. I found food too salty, so needed a lot of water to drink with it. My grandmother watched me drink water and started loudly moaning that I didn’t make it last.

I also remember leaving food because I didn’t have liquid to help it go down.

Our glasses must have been so much smaller too- I remember at Christmas we would have a 'bottle of pop' in a glass bottle delivered to the doorstep- I think they were only a litre bottle but all 4 of us would have a glass with our Christmas dinner and there would always be half left- I think our glasses must have been those little ones you get for juice at breakfast buffets!

I remember saving up, buying a plastic bottle of coke and then re-using the bottle for water. I would have to hide the bottle because my mum would seek out this bottle to throw away.

Oh wow.

I didn’t realise other people were always thirsty too. I remember on the rare occasion we met relatives for dinner, we were allowed one paid for drink over the six hours or so we were there.

My cousins would constantly be getting drinks while my siblings and I looked on with envy. If we made a fuss then we got slapped on the legs and given a bollocking for being an embarrassment in the car on the way home.

As a child in Australia in 80s we would have water fountains outside to drink from. You could access them at break or if going to the loo.

In UK, we had breakfast - cereal with milk but no drink, milk at break then water at lunch. I don’t remember ever feeling excessively thirsty.

@Haydugee

As a child in Australia in 80s we would have water fountains outside to drink from. You could access them at break or if going to the loo.

In UK, we had breakfast - cereal with milk but no drink, milk at break then water at lunch. I don’t remember ever feeling excessively thirsty.

We had them in Ireland too. I can't believe the UK didn't.

@GreyhoundG1rl Hmmm, I went to 3 different primary schools and 2 secondaries, between the mid seventies and mid eighties in London and all had water fountains in the playgrounds or near the cloakroom. .. . Bit flummoxed by all this tbh.

[quote Wilkolampshade]@GreyhoundG1rl Hmmm, I went to 3 different primary schools and 2 secondaries, between the mid seventies and mid eighties in London and all had water fountains in the playgrounds or near the cloakroom. .. . Bit flummoxed by all this tbh.[/quote]
We had them but as PPs have said- there was always a big queue so you could only get a few gulps!

That doesn't sound normal to me. I'm more a child of the 70s and very early 80s and don't remember this at all. We travelled a lot on the train (we didn't have car) and was allowed to use the toilet both on the train and at the station. We did long journeys so I can' imagine not using them. I could have drinks if I wanted them. I drank tea as well as squash, and water, and juice at home which would be frowned upon now but wasn't particularly then. I'd have a Coke when my mum had a tea when we went shopping too We didn't really have fizzy drinks at home but that was the cost as much as anything. They were for when you were out.

We had water jugs at lunchtime at primary school and there was a water fountain at school too. They'd give us hot chocolate and hot milky coffee when it was cold as well. I remember the skins that formed on top of the jugs of it.

I guess I remember being encouraged to use the loo too before journey or when one was available just in case.

It sounds really grim not having a drink if you needed one. Or being allowed to use the loo. Not normal.

I think that the UK was much less child-centric when I grew up in the 70's .

I've remembered some more... mm..

Walking from our hotel in Bulgaria (1989, cheapest one my dad could find) wearing ski boots, carrying ski's, to where the snow actually started up the mountain. It was a two hour walk, I was incredibly hot, no drink... I was stumbling and falling, mouth so dry i couldn't talk, crying but no flipping tears and being told to stop crying it'll make you more thirsty!

No idea why they hadn't brought anything though on reflection that holiday was a disaster all the way through and I don't think anything was quite as either parent had expected.

That holiday was pretty thirsty, there was no coke to be had, very salty stews and soups and really horrible tasting pear and cherry flavoured drinks.

Every car journey we did (and we drove from england to wales every weekend to our second home, cringe, I know... I really do), from the age of 5 onwards, I was car sick.. hardly a surprise, my Dad drove like it was an aggressive blood sport, both parents smoked, rarely was a window opened.
Mother did pack our tea (straight from school on a friday, pick my dad up from his office where they'd swap drivers and off we went)... but thick cold butter on mighty white bread with buttery dairylea spread or marmite... not what you want when you are green around the gills.

I got very good at throwing up into an empty margerine tub (the vast catering size ones!). Wasn't allowed a drink after throwing up because 'it will make you throw up again'... Ugh...

I was born 1979. My parents just don't understand the need to drink! They have a tiny orange juice and a cup of coffee at breakfast, a coffee or two later in the day and wine in the evening. They say we all insist on drinking too much water these days, yet my mum always has headaches- probably chronically dehydrated.

Consequently they didn't really carry much liquid around for drinks and if I said I was thirsty I was just complaining . I remember one 500ml bottle of sparkling water (which I hated) for all of us on a whole day walk. There was no concept that they should listen to what we wanted to drink, it was get what you were given and be grateful. Plus, if we were out they would sometimes say I could buy one ice lolly or one drink- what child would choose the drink?! At home we were allowed unlimited access to squash and fizzy drink, so it was mostly just about carrying the drinks and paying kiosk prices I think.

There was no drinking allowed at school outside of lunch time and if we were lucky enough to have a carton of something for lunch we'd be in trouble for sneaking it any earlier in the day. We couldn't eat outside of specified mealtimes either. 30 years later I still struggle with knowing if i'm thirsty or when to have a drink. Sometimes I have a terrible headache and need to lie down in the dark and it's only then that I think to eat or have a drink and it often makes it better, so I must've been very hungry or dehydrated without realising. Eating and drinking was about the clock and not how we felt inside and I still don't know how to fix that.

I was an “accident prone” child (in the sense that I wet myself a lot).

This was mainly because whenever I was thirsty my parents would happily give me Ribena or some other black current cordial that was probably full of artificial stuff back in the 1980s that irritated my bladder.

I was also a bedwetter much longer than I should have been and was given special “Child Sized” nappies that had to be bought from the Chemists.

When my own DD’s turned out to be bedwetters too I thought nothing of it until someone mentioned blackcurrent + artificial sweetener = virtual incontinence.

We stopped with the cordials and the bed wetting stopped overnight.

I wonder whether I would have been such a leaky kid if my parents had known that in the 80s?

I was at school in the late 70s/early 80s. At home I could get a drink whenever I wanted (squash or water). If we went out as a family my parents wouldn't often buy drinks but they did take loads with us so we often had warmish squash but never went thirsty and mum was rather obsessive about offering use of the toilet every time we saw one.

But at school I was almost always thirsty. In primary school we were not allowed to take drinks from home and were only allowed a beaker of water at lunch time, The water jugs were usually warm and tasted odd and the beakers looked dirty so I never wanted to drink it. The only other time we were offered a drink was if the weather was exceptionally hot and then we would be allowed a drink from the same beakers mid-afternoon.

In senior school I could have taken a drink from home and/or bought one but I think I was so used to being thirsty that it didn't occur to me to do this until I was about 15. I remember being in a science lesson and being so thirsty that I was considering whether it would be safe to drink from one of the measuring beakers when no-one was looking. I realised this was a bit odd and decided to take a drink after that. I hated using the toilets in senior school though, which I think was part of the reason I tried not to drink. I very rarely used the loo at school. I remember one day mum was very late collecting me and I wet myself. I claimed that some kids walking past had shaken a can of pop and it went all over me when the opened it.

I make sure my DC take a drink to school and have money on their lunch accounts to buy more if it's hot. They tell me the school toilets are OK

I was always thirsty but only because we were only allowed to drink water at school which I hated, so I just didn't drink. This was in the 90s.

Eating and drinking was about the clock and not how we felt inside and I still don't know how to fix that.

I don’t think this was just limited to children, I think that we did used to have a different culture around eating and drinking generally. Far more so than today where workplaces are more flexible and there’s a broad focus on employee wellbeing and comfort, the clock did rule many people’s mealtimes in previous decades. When I speak to older colleagues and friends, in their early working lives there would be a lunch hour at around 12:30 and tea breaks at 11:00 and 16:00 or whatever but no eating and drinking at desks and getting up to make tea whenever you fancied, as I’ve been used to for much of my working life.

[quote Wilkolampshade]@GreyhoundG1rl Hmmm, I went to 3 different primary schools and 2 secondaries, between the mid seventies and mid eighties in London and all had water fountains in the playgrounds or near the cloakroom. .. . Bit flummoxed by all this tbh.[/quote]
My school had water fountains- we just weren't allowed to use them. They definitely worked- as the teacher would use them to fill up beakers if it was exceptionally hot- but any child found trying to use them would be in trouble.

I can only assume that at some point children had used them an made a mess. We also had playground equipment that we were forbidden to touch!