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 😂

When I was small, about 4/5 in the mid 60s, our GP used to smoke when seeing patients. I can still see the ashtray on his desk.

The Times Flatshare column. Late 70s/80s.

GP here… wou;d love to have my dog at work!
I worked with a colleague who’s dad was a GP in the 50’s and 60’s .. he had a bottle whisky and used to drink that and smoke a cigar ( because that was better for you than cities 😂😂)

As a child in the north in the 60’s and 70’s.. ditto sitting back car with window wound up and my sister and I coughing like patients in a TB ward whist my Dad lit one cigarette after another.
Great family Sunday get together with extended family.. men would go downtown uncles allotment shed .. all uncles would arrive back Sunday lunch absolutely trollied from the beer in the “allotment shed “
Aunties drinking copies quantities sherry and smoking whilst they made dinner.
Being sent down to shop to buy more ciggies.
Us kids roaming the roads and ringing random no.s from red phone boxes.
My cousin teaching me to say “F-ck”.. I liked the sound of it so said it at home and had my legs walloped.. still haven’t forgiven cousin.
Holiday camps like butlins ( or the cheaper ones… butlins too expensive for us) .. watching knobby knees competition and being made to sing in the talent question at night.
Caravan holidays in Wales … seemed like a never ending summer…
Such lovely memories.

My mum drove a pick up truck with me tucked behind her seat in a moses basket as a baby!

Allowing children to sit in the boot of an estate car free range in the 80s. No seat belts in the back seat of an old car in the 80s when I was a child either. Also no car seats!

2 children being allowed to sit in the front passenger seat (with the seatbelt over bother of them) as they were arguing about who should sit in the front. This was probably early 1990s!

Going to school on the tube by myself. 3 stops, with a change at Victoria !! Then a pretty busy road to cross - my parents' advice was to follow other adults.

Can you imagine how popular that GP would be these days - probably quite a good treatment for a lot of people to see a doctor plus friendly lab!

My GP (actually he has just retired) had a lovely old spaniel that laid under his desk. You would not notice her if you didn't look.

I was having a really bad day and asked if I could take her out for a walk around the surgery.

When we came back she just ran to his door.

Unfortunately someone made a complaint and he had to go on some sort of training course. I feel bad that I might have been responsible.

He should have claimed she was an emotional support dog.

This was about 10 years ago.

When I was about 14 (so about 1990) me
and my best mate decided we’d go see another friend of ours one summer. We walked 10 miles down a disused railway line. When we got there she wasn’t in 🤣 so we walked all the way back again. Didn’t know until many years later that the railway line was a haven for sex offenders and we were bloody lucky we got home safe 😱 this wasn’t a busy city or anything, this was rural Lincolnshire so things like this didn’t happen, except they did and we were oblivious. If my daughter had done this now, I’d have a bloody heart attack and she’d be grounded for life lol

A minor one, but I'm sure that in the 90s and earlier, lots of us wore trainers without socks in summer; (and before that, the canvas shoes beginning with P which we can't mention on here) but now, almost everyone wears invisible or very short socks with them. I remember people doing it all the time, both adults and children, and nobody wore invisible socks. Most of us even did this for PE at secondary - I know because I saw lots of my fellow pupils putting their trainers on their bare feet, for everything: running, netball, and so on, as soon as there was spring in the air. Nobody seemed to worry about the ill effects on our feet. (I still wear them that way, to the horror of MN.)

It was very much a thing when I was child in the late 50s early 60s - waiting outside the bride's house and then having the money flung out of the car window as they drove away and the mad scrabble of children scratching around on the road and pavement for the coppers.

My mum ran a B&B in the 80s. My cousin & i (around age 15) used to work serving breakfasts & cleaning the rooms on weekends & school holidays. We had long term guests who were student doctors. We noticed they had a lot of alcohol in their room while we were cleaning. So one day we got a large jug and poured different spirits into it from their supply. We drank it with some lemonade that evening. We'd also be allowed any food that was left over from breakfast. My cousin would often wolf down several sausages, bacon, eggs, toast. At the end of the 6 week school holidays she wondered why she'd gained over a stone 🤣

I’m not sure what era your mum was in but I’m a retired nurse and can honestly say I cannot recall this ever happening . Some people did have a bit of booze in the staff office on New Years but there was never any taking medicines / drugs or using a bed area .

Letting the dog out. Sixties. Dogs were just allowed to roam on our estate. You rarely see an unaccompanied dog today. Thankfully.

I got drunk with my cousin on cheap cider we bought from the local off licence from the age of around 15. Never asked to see id. My dd1 hadn't touched alcohol until she was at least 17 & certainly never got drunk until she was probably nearly 19. Dd2 (16) is terrified of alcohol but I would certainly know if she was drunk! But there's nowhere these days that would serve alcohol to one so young I don't think.

Yeah, that's how I remember it, and yet, weirdly, on here we constantly see posts about how 'anti-child' the UK is today.

You went into adult spaces with the adults and nobody expected the pub/restaurant/whatever to have colouring books, or kiddie corners or the like.

You were expected to think about the neighbours in your own back garden. Screeching like a nutter was met with 'sny more of that or you'll be inside' from my parents. I didn't feel terribly aggrieved at being denied 'age appropriate' behaviour either.

'The village' meant every adult in the area was allowed to tell your child off if they were being a nuisance. You didn't whine to your parents about it when you got home because you'd get another bollocking for doing whatever it was you did to get told off.

My late mother used to tell the tale that when she was a child, dob 1914, her father sent her to buy some eggs but for some reason they were the wrong eggs and he threw them at her. She ducked and they smashed against the wall so she get smacked for causing the mess on the wall!
Thinking of teachers and board rubbers, we had, 1961 Grammar school, a very strict English teacher who wouldn't tolerate the slightest noise and we 'knew' that he'd been in something like the SAS in WW2 and was trained to kill sudden noises! I later, Sixth Form, was told by another English teacher that he knew all about his secret past and was quite flattered by it. Even later, I found he was a member of the church I went to and he was the kindest soul one could ever meet, I was very sad when he died. Horace, if that means anything to anyone.

Children's memories and perceptions of whether they're being loud or annoying others aren't perfect, though! Mine would say they are constantly being told to behave and that they 'ARE using our quiet voices, mummy!'. We regularly get complimented on how well behaved they are; we also get plenty of glares and tuts from people who consider what I think is very normal and reasonable noise from children existing to be annoying. These things are all very subjective, so I take with a pinch of salt people who say children today are very loud and inconsiderate, but they themselves never bothered a soul as a child...

Smoking around kids.

The children are no noiser. But it used to be shut down very quickly by the parents rather than letting the little darlings ," express themselves"

Being stuck in a car with smoking parents who refused to let us open the windows because 'it's not smoky'

Oh, I wouldn't say I never bothered a soul, it was more the point that we got told off for bothering said souls. Or potentially bothering them.

And the neighbours or our street thought nothing of giving our kids a bollocking if we annoyed them. I wouldn't dream of doing that now, for fear of some irate parent turning up.

I certainly wasn't an angel, and used to get shouted at by neighbours. Wouldn't dream of going home and crying to my mum about it, because I'd only get another bollocking for being a nuisance.

A teenage girl who never actually spoke to either of us on the estate was trusted to make us beans on toast whilst our mother was at work, brother and I were under 10. As Gen X kids we could’ve done it ourselves. We had one of those old fashioned ovens with the grill bit at the top. She set fire to the tea towel every single time.

Talking of smoking, the upstairs of a bus was for smokers, and downstairs for non-smokers.

And there was a smoking section in the cinema, and in restaurants too, @Gundogday. Because the cigarette smoke knew not to drift out of the smoking section.