To sometimes wonder what my mum was thinking?

[AintNobodyHereButUsChickens]

I was born in '91 to give you an idea of just how young I was.

She used to let me stay up and watch murder shows with her like Jonathan Creek and Midsomer Murders I'd actually go into my primary school the next day and discuss the previous nights episode with the dinner lady who also watched MM! I have an 11yr old and I wouldn't dream of letting her watch either of those shows! She'd also record stuff like South Park and Stressed Eric etc (she watched them herself so she knew full well what they were like!) so we could watch them in the mornings.

There is a particular episode of JC that gave me nightmares for years, I man had (I think) been trapped in a cellar which flooded and he drowned. I still remember the moment they opened the door and he was at the top of the stairs with his arm outstretched, and he was all yellow and waxy looking 🤢

It's only recently that I've begun to wonder what on earth she was thinking! I'm not sure if there's even any point asking her because she'd probably get all defensive and tell me I was attacking her parenting 🙄

@LiarLiarKnickersAblaze Omg yes - casualty used to be so gory - I was allowed to watch it when sleeping over at my nanas , an episode that stuck in my mind was a big crash episode , was it a train or big bus crash and all the patients came in bleeding , like a disaster episode , would have been late 80’s maybe.

Because we are far too precious about what kids can watch these days!

Yes !
I was talking about these health and safety ads a few weeks ago !
the boy who climbed into the electrical sub station
the kid who went down to the reservoir in the quarry
Also the Aids tombstone adverts 🫣

I’m a little older than you , but am sure I watched similar programs at the same age; I was just too young to understand it or even be interested in it though.
Unfortunately, my mum did take me to the cinema to see a special showing of Jaws 1 and 2 when I was only 6/7 yo. I have never been able to swim in the sea ( even in U.K.) since!! I sometimes even panic in outdoor swimming pools and very small boats to this day! It’s a huge phobia that my friends/husband/family find funny!! So yes, perhaps we should take more care on what children watch.
I’ve never been a fan of horror movies though and would never choose to watch one.

Shoot me now, I let my 4 yo watch terminator.

My DM let me watch nightmare on elm street age 8 and the word by age 10.

The watershed didn't exist in our house.

I had a tv in my room from primary school.

The only film I wasn't allowed to watch was body heat. I've still never seen it.

Wtf were you thinking?

I was allowed to watch Hammer House of Horror (particularly remember a scene where a child was eating a dead lamb) - I was 10 or 11, we talked about it at school next day, so I wasn't unusual. Tales of the Unexpected which was seriously weird. Also the cop stuff of the day - The Sweeney, The New Avengers.
I do remember watching a horror film called The Legacy, which still makes me feel a bit iffy thinking about it.

My memories of being allowed to stay up late at weekends and watch Hammer House of Horrors, V, Prisoner Cell block H, Tales of The Unexpected, random vampire and werewolf films, are some of the very happiest of my late ‘70s/ early ‘80s childhood. I would have a blanket and sometimes a hot water bottle on the sofa and was allowed to stay downstairs until I fell asleep, when my parents would carry me up to bed. I hated going to bed early for school on weeknights. I’ve always been a night owl and still enjoy creepy/ gritty entertainment.

As a pp mentions, I was far more traumatised by the public information films of the day, although I guess that was the idea...The black cloaked figure waiting by the deep water...

ByTheGrace
I was allowed to watch Hammer House of Horror (particularly remember a scene where a child was eating a dead lamb)

That’s the episode with Diana Dors as the werewolf mother. I think it was called “Children of the Full Moon”. It’s one of my favourites! 😃☠️

I loved V! I was older for that one though. Had a crush on both Marc Singer and Faye Grant.

Tales of the Unexpected was a classic. That and Miss Marple entirely fueled every play and essay I was expected to write throughout school!

@elfd I also remember staying up to watch I think it was called great expectations, I loved the music and video at the beginning. A silhouette of a black female figure dancing possibly in a flame.

I think you mean Tales of the Unexpected. They’re still repeated on Sky Arts, sometime in the afternoon. They were thought very creepy and off-beat at the time , seem very tame now.

I’m a 1993 baby and my Mum had shown me all the Inspector Morse’s from when I was about 5! I remember it was a treat if I was off school sick that I could pick one. I was devastated when John Thaw died, and I was only in year 2 when that happened! I can’t see the harm really.

Not a five year old. An 11 year old, yes.

I do recall a lot of kids at school watching horror movies and shows I was never allowed to watch. Pretty much everyone but me.

The ball one where the older brother goes to get it, gets electrocuted, so the younger brother runs over to him and gets electrocuted too 😧I have an unhealthy fear of getting electrocuted now.

I was speaking to some of my friends from London and they didn't watch these and I didn't watch them in school when I moved to London, which makes me wonder whether my first primary school had particularly dopey kids or whether we had so little to do in my town that playing on train tracks and in sub stations seemed fun (I did break into the grounds of a sub station in primary school so...)

I remember as a small child my Mum putting Predator on during the ad breaks of the Royal Variety Show (or something like that). Just those few 3 or 4 minute snippets gave me nightmares for years,
to the extent where I could never have even the tiniest bit of light coming in between my curtains because I was scared the predator would see me through the gap and kill me. Even now I don’t like gaps in my curtains.

I once came home to the teenage babysitter showing my child a light horror movie. I was not pleased and told them it was completely inappropriate and why. Fortunately said 3 year old had a good sense of reality and it didn't phase them one bit.

Oh god, you Just reminded me of my friend and I in primary school (born 1989) asking my mum what gay porn was after Estelle told Joey about a job he wouldn't take in Friends 🙈

I guess that's the sort of reason I wasn't allowed to watch these kinds of shows and was all sorts of ignorant. I didn't even know gay people existed till I was a preteen.

I was born in 1982

Used to watch Brookside, Bad Girls, don't Forget Your Toothbrush later too.

Also watched Silence of the lambs around aged 11

Was reading Virginia Andrews aged around 11 too lol

My kids are around 40 years old now, and when they were young no one was too worried about what the kids watched(within reason). Their bedtime was 7.30 so not much M rated stuff before that time. Although the news hour was pretty disturbing - but we rarely ever watched it because it was bath time and dinner time. I live in Australia, and lived in a very safe area - so once kids were old enough to play outside with friends the tv wasn’t watched much at all. It was during the VCR years, so rainy weekends we all went and selected movies to watch as a family - some would be considered not suitable today.

There were some concerning kids/teens shows though on Saturday morning tv - implicit racism, misogyny etc., all wrapped up in ‘jokes.’

Now I’m very switched on to what grandkids can watch when minding them. If we are unsure if something is suitable we ring their parents to check, or watch it next time with parental approval.

I really wish that, as a child, I had been watching unsuitable tv shows rather than having a drunken father, home from the pub, ranting and raving abusively at us. I developed an anxiety disorder as a result, that has been with me my whole life (worse in times of stress). Unfortunately my kids experienced some of the same from their Dad (although I managed to stop a lot of it). Because of my dad’s behaviour & then my husband’s, I’ve never been a drinker, (had a few drunken episodes as a teen but have not drunk alcohol since pregnant with my oldest child). A Family member who is an Alcoholic or just a nasty occasional drunk, will do more psychological damage to children than any tv show in my opinion.

If that’s the worst she ever did count yourself lucky. Why on Earth would you challenge her on ONE decision amongst the thousands of decisions she made correctly.

I see quite a lot of adults looking back on small moments of their childhood, applying modern day principles and deciding they were wronged…and then writing their parents off completely based on that one thing. It’s sad. And the worst thing is - it will probably happen to you. Think you’re raising your kids now? Think again. They’ll be 31 and sulking in a forum about how terrible you were.

Some of these things were so tame. Hammer House of Horror? The scariest thing about it was the music. Midsummer Murders was basically a nice English village where someone got stabbed with a letter opener at their desk. Zero gore, it was like televised Cluedo.

You seem to have been a pretty sensitive child - almost everyone will have been watching the same programmes as a kid. There wasn't much else on early 90s. No 24-7 kids TV channels.
Perhaps your other complaints about your mother's parenting could be reconsidered in this light? If this was your biggest complaint, she sounds pretty normal.