Things you remember from your childhood that would not be ok today!

[Starlight1984]

Light-hearted and inspired by the comments on the baby in the pub thread (and TikTok!)😀

But what are things you remember from your childhood that people would be absolutely outraged at today?!

I remember being babysat by our neighbours child when I was 4/5 and she was about 12/13. God knows what she would have done if anything went wrong as there were no mobile phones to get hold of our parents?! 🤔

Also remember going to the pub in the summer but kids weren't allowed inside so we sat in the beer garden with a coca cola and bag of crisps whilst the adults were inside 😂

It was normal to think some adults were creepy or too touchy-feely (or a pervert) and that there might be a flasher somewhere if you were out. If anyone saw a flasher it was considered hilarious to kids. 1980's.

The Head girl was going out with the Biology teacher . A few years later we were in the Lower Vi, Year 12 today, and the Head of PE said there would be a new teacher next school year and it was the ex Head girl! They'd married after she did her teacher training and he was still working in the school, we gave her some stick, she was only here to keep an eye on him!

It’s a great thread! Makes me feel so nostalgic, but is also hilarious - when you look at them from a current perspective (and our own kids’ childhoods) it’s unbelievable these the things that were just considered normal 😂

My dad used to drive an artic and I sat on his knee and 'reversed' it round a corner when I was about 4/5 😂

It happened a lot more than we even knew! My favourite English teacher turned up
at my house once - just finished Year 12.
Had his cat with him, remembered we’d lost ours and I was so upset. My mum came out and was delighted and asked why he was giving it away.
He said oh I’m running off with my girlfriend to get married, she’s in the car now.
Looked over and it was a girl who’d just finished Year 13!
Also remember my first teaching job (haven’t been in the job a long time!) and another new recruit said to me he’d just met his future wife in first period. We’d been attached to more experienced teachers and the lady he’d shared form time with was 60. I was perplexed.
When I asked him he said it was a girl in the new form. Year 7. He said he was going to wait for her and he did. Seven years! But it was odd. He never told her how he felt until the last day of Sixth Form.

@kirinm yes! There was a rumour went round that a female English teacher had slept with a Sixth Former at the Leavers Ball. We asked another teacher and she laughed and didn’t deny it

We used to love giving the pages that had come out of the purple photocopier a good sniff just to try and get all the solvents up our noses.

Having to scrunch the loo paper before using it was less fun.

Lots and lots of very violent smacking, hitting and kicking.

being left in the car for up to two hours with the windows up on a hot day while DM was in the supermarket.

I can remember a PE teacher chatting up a girl from my year, asking could he meet her. Her boyfriend (same class) came over and the PE teacher chinned him. The local paper had been there to cover the party and it was headline news.

I lived in a tiny village with 40 house, no shops but a big play park, church and 3 pubs. Half of all houses had kids (some only had 1 while others had 5 or 6), there where probably as many kids as adults in the village.

On a weekend every family went to the pubs (like a mini pub crawl) with kids in toe.

Either a band played or they had a DJ and games or just family tv games shows on the tv, kids played together, fire roaring, parents drinking and chatting... if the kids where a bit older and bored they where sent to the park in a big roaming pack to play by star light.

Its sad you can't take kids to pubs anymore, I guess its to do with licensing because everyone has a time limit on children now. It's why most pubs have closed down and most parents are isolated and feeling the effects on MH. It doesn't even 'stop drinking' as people drink far more at home now (my kids school is full of proud prosecco mummies) than they did in the pub days. People here act like they are crack dens or something but they where the thriving social hub of most villages where everyone socialized and totally child friendly, not seedy hovels full of wasted perverts like some mumsnetters make out.

Also kids do not need to be in bed at 6pm... staying up til 10 or 11 on a weekend to enjoy social time will not ruin their lives and patterns. Most other cultures don't have these ridiculously early and ridged bedtimes, kids socialize with parents at gathering, meals, parties in the late evening/early night.

I also HATE they have basically done away with prize bingo, it was a pure joy of my childhood every holiday and it had zero negative effects, I don't gamble at all not even the lottery or scratch cards. My teen is now desperate to play bingo but you have to be over 18 everywhere.

The tobacco tins that housed spellings in Primary School. I loved the smell and even now brings back fond memories.

@PeggyMitchellsCameo Before my time at the school it was said that a 15 year old got told to leave for having “an affair” with a teacher…hearsay maybe but unthinkable now that an underage girl would get blamed

Hahaha oh loads of things!

Being smacked when naughty. Being clearly told off when naughty/being told behaviour WAS ‘naughty’. Climbing over neighbour’s fences to retrieve balls. Playing outside unsupervised from around 6/7. Drinking shandy with Sunday roast. Everyone smoking indoors. Unlimited TV, Drinking coke/fizzy drinks daily. Weekly visits to the pick n mix newsagent. Travelling without seatbelts/even in the boot on occasion when extra cousins/friends were in the car.

There was so much love, fun and happy memories amongst my big, close, proudly working class family, I had a great childhood 😊

I loved riding in the boot of cars, or loads of kids all squashed up on the back seat.
My parents never smoked and didn't go to pubs except to go out for lunch when we went on countryside rambles so I was lucky not to experience all the second hand smoke or hanging around for hours in pub gardens (though I very much enjoyed the times we did go, usually because country pubs often had dogs in and I was dog-mad!)
We weren't allowed to roam freely at home but whenever we went on holiday we were allowed to roam freely even though for some holidays my parents would have no idea of what the area was like, what dangers there were etc. Me and my brother would head off on our bikes in The Netherlands and be gone all day exploring and getting lost, with no phones. In Finland we'd explore the forest and climb up those big granite rocks - once my brother got stuck and I started to worry I'd have to actually go get an adult to help.

Standing up in the car with your head out of the sun roof. Teachers throwing platform shoes from the cloakroom at us. Going to the shops for cigarettes for my neighbour. Taking their baby out for the day and a pram age 11. Disappearing all day in the holidays, going miles, playing in rivers and ponds, nobody caring where we were. Having a key on a string round my neck to let myself in from school aged from 5. Dm was at work. Sitting in the car outside pubs drinking lemonade while our parents were inside. Being left in museums all day in the school holidays. Just dropped off and see you in 8 hours. It was a different world!

We used to get dropped off at the outdoor pool with a couple of quid and agreeing a pick up time. I loved those days.

Being left in a hotel with my little sister whilst my parents went to the pub. We had no idea where they were and we were in the television room with a load of random people including a sleazy looking man. Think I was about 11.

Yes ours was a female English teacher! Maybe we went to the same school - or it happened a lot!

Immoral aswell as innopropriate

I’m another one that rode in the back of a Bedford van in a deckchair and lived to tell the tale. Fell out of the chair a few times but that just made it funnier. Was left all afternoon with 3 other kids to play on a bit of disused railway line with a pump trolley. Also a year 10 school trip to Belgium where the legal drinking age was like 14. We were left to our own devices in the evenings and ended up wasted each night. The teachers did the same and nobody spoke of it.

Being left in bed in a guest house 2 floors up while my parents had a drink in the bar.Woke up crying and made my way down looking for them.Mid 80s.

I had the type of roller skates that went over shoes and you just adjusted them as you feet grew bigger. I opened them as far as it goes and put an annual on top of them , then sat on top of that and went Weeeeee down a steep hill not even thinking about any cars. Luckily this was late 60’s early 70’s so there were not as many cars around. I like to think if it as precursor to the skate board. Obviously my parents knew nothing about my “ invention”

Oh I’ve just thought of another one. My dad had a van and although it did have a back seat, there were no child seats at all or safety belts so it was decided it wasn’t safe for me as a toddler to be bouncing around on my own in the back. My uncle could make or mend anything so he made a seat that went over the handbrake and was between mum and dad’s seat . Luckily dad could still use the handbrake 😀.

Absolutely - but at the time shrugs.

I was always under his cannabis fog anyway so I probably spent a fair bit of time as a high 5 year old.

I’m fine though now 😅

My mum used to get me to light her a cigarette on the gas fire and take it upstairs to her ( no heating upstairs)