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 😂

Loads. Being left alone 4 of us under 9 while my mom popped to the phone box.

Going to the newsagent alone at 7 (crossing a main road).

My dad blowing puffs from his joints into my face so I could inhale when I was about 4/5. Although that was probably inappropriate even when he did it…

YES!!! And also the gas pumps at the petrol station!!! 😂

Coming home from Primary School to an empty house, making sure I had the dinner on for my mum coming home at 6pm.

I actually have a real fear of baked beans because of this. It was horrific and I must have been about 5-6 years old being forced fed cold beans. I have never eaten them again, and it used to be so bad growing up I couldn’t sit near people eating them etc!! I can’t even feed them to my children 😂

I’m the same with mushy peas.

My brother and I used to walk to school together when he was 5 and I was 4. It was a short walk, but did involve crossing two roads, and we lived in London not some tiny sleepy village!

That is amazing. And to think there are people on MN who worry about leaving their 12 year old alone for an hour on their own. And there you were caring for 4 small children 😂

Going to the shop to buy fags for Mum.

Playing out with all the local kids from about 5. If you were old enough for school, you were old enough to play out. Until sunset.

Walking to school without an adult from 5 with my big sister aged 9.

Taking our 3 year old neighbour to the park even though we were about 8 ourselves.

Dogs were just let out of homes to just wander the streets and then go home when hungry. People didn’t really take their dogs for a walk.

This was London in the 1970s, early 80s.

Baby sitting when I was 15 but the kids were about 9…
going to the shop at age 12 to buy my mum fags…no questions asked…
holding my mums lit fag when she went into a shop (I had to wait outside with it) I did this at about age 10
going to the pub with parents and all their friends and their kids but we in the beer garden and play then jump over the fence and play knock down ginger on the street

I still do this when I'm with my friends 😆 Although it's been about 7 years since I did anything longer than a 3 mile journey.

I know, I read them and think omg. Can't say anything though, different times. 🤷

There were no rear seat belts at all in cars when I was a kid and it was also considered perfectly OK for young kids to ride in the boot space of an estate car. Babies on car journeys were usually just carried on a parent’s lap.

Guests used to smoke throughout interviews on TV chat shows, discussion panels etc.

At my primary school we had shopping monitors who, aged 9-10, would be sent off alone to the high street at lunch time with some money and a shopping list, to pick up any shopping the teachers needed. I can still recall that one of our teachers was really fussy about her preferred brand of margarine.

One of the play activities on offer at my infant school was a sort of woodwork area in a little courtyard where kids aged 4 were allowed to use hammers, nails, saws and chisels entirely unsupervised on random wood offcuts.

We also had a PE teacher who used to call us ‘spastic’ if we fumbled a catch in netball or failed to jump a vaulting horse. I was also once hit so hard by a rounders ball on PE that I was out cold for two or three minutes. The only medical attention sought for this was a wet paper towel held on to the lump that came up. No concussion check, was not sent home, parents not notified. I just got sent back to the changing rooms to sit out the rest of the lesson and then carried on with the school day.

So many of these bring back vivid memories 😁

Also just going off on your bike after breakfast, coming home when it got dark and nobody had a clue where you were.

I remember going swimming with my mate on the bus when we were around 10. Spending the bus fare home on sweets and having to walk for about 2 hours to get home. Don't know if they didn't exist, or we just didn't think to get a return fare.

Ah, the good old days.

Staying at my Grandmas house in my Aunts bedroom and said Aunt smoking in bed 🤮 the acrid smell of Rothmans.

A mini rammed with kids including in the footwell going to the beach

Getting hit with a leather belt by mum when Us kids squabled (she hit us so hard and repeatedly across the legs bum and back) leaving red welts for days

Being told fresh fruit was too good for us and being fed tinned fruit cocktail while she ate pears.

@ItGhoul Your entire post made me properly laugh😂

One of my memories of secondary school is everyone constantly sniffing Tipp-Ex*

*Other solvent-based correction fluids are available

It’s remarkable any of us made it to adulthood.

I actually think it's the opposite! I think it probably made us far more resilient and streetwise!

I remember flying off a roundabout in a park aged 4 and cracking my head open on the concrete and I got a bollocking from my dad for not holding on properly.

Also remember around the same age going to the local social club and me and my cousins being given a bag of pork scratchings and a few quid to go on the one armed bandit 😂

Being in Primary (age 4 -7) and allowed to leave school any lunch time and accompany town kids home for lunch, also could walk to the nearby park and hill to play as long as we were back when the bell rang!
Swinging on and somersaulting down from high school playground swing sets onto asphalted ground beneath. No sand, no bark chips! The monkey bars etc. were set in concrete and asphalt.
School bus picking up secondary kids with their shot guns on gun club days.
Baby sitting regularly, aged 14.
Sitting in the front seat with no seatbelt, aged preschool.
Auntie and cousins travelled inside their caravan, reading, while Uncle drove the car in front!
Riding my bike without a helmet.
Dad letting me steer the car on quiet roads, aged seven!
Aged about eleven - trotting off around country roads (without ever informing parents of where we were going) and swimming in river on horse, bare back, with friend.
With friends, sliding down banks of operational gravel quarry in old fertilizer bags. Aged about nine.
All adults smoked in houses, everywhere.
Teachers smoked in the classroom.
Nurses smoked in the hospital.
Passengers smoked on the train.

Having the blackboard rubber hurled at us unruly or disruptive kids in Mr Perkin's chemistry class. His aim was scarily good, too.

The teacher throwing a wooden blackboard duster at people’s heads if they were distracted, talking, not paying attention aimed to hit hard

Being asked to go to the corner shop to get my dad his cigarettes from about age 9.

Did we go to the same school? 😂

Teachers giving kids lifts in their cars, happened all the time at my high school. Also teachers giving hugs. Teachers inviting sixth formers to their house.

And you wouldn't dare tell your mum and dad when you got home as you'd just be in for it again!!!