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 15 I went out with a man in his mid twenties. There were quite a few of us in my school year going out with adult men. Horrifying really. They were aware we were kids as some would pick us up from school in their cars!!!! We all thought it was so mature and cool at the time. Awful.

I remember in year 8 there was this girl in my year (12/13) boasting about her boyfriend in sixth form.

There was an episode of Grange Hill where they had a day trip to St Albans and two girls got into the car of older boys.

At my junior school, there was a public park next to the school. During lunchtime, we used to play there. It was open to the public. I guess there were dinner ladies or teachers overseeing, but I don’t recall (over forty years ago).

(Memory triggered by seeing white flowers on nettles this morning on dog walk which we used to squeeze/pop to get the ‘milk’ out).

My athletic career at school was greatly enhanced by the practise I had in fast starts by being out of the door and half way up the stairs as soon as my mother would reach for the bamboo case, do swings and roundabouts..

With the exam season upon us, I can remember the odd student in my year at school (albeit not many) who had to stay overnight with a teacher as they had exam papers that clashed. By being supervised overnight it would prevent them finding out content of the exam (and having an unfair advantage)
I mean safeguarding ??????
This was late 1990s

These days I guess it doesn't happen (or students can be supervised in school and take the exams back to back )

Thinking again of my days in the Girl Guides, I remember that most of us added a knife to our uniforms! Not as equipment for a marauding gang, but either a sheath knife or Swiss Army folding type, a useful thing to have on a hike for such things as cutting turf and rolling it back so that a fire could be laid (!) and the turf restored when the cooking was over, or cutting sticks to the right length to make "gadgets" for the tent, like a temporary trestle to keep bedding rolls off the ground.
It never occurred to use them in anger, and it was the done thing to remove them from our belt before church parade, but I'd probably be a bit wary nowadays of a bunch of 12 and 13-year olds all lightly armed.
I was reminded again of the changes in toy safety regulations when a catalogue came through my door advertising a local auction house holding a sale soon. There, on one page, were several of the type of toys I happily played with, now considered totally unsuitable to pass on to today's younger generation: tin plate with sharp edges, toys made of lead or decorated with leaded paint, small steam engines fuelled by methylated spirits; it was almost like a Darwinian selection process.

Embassy coupons. You got them in packs of embassy cigarettes, saved them up then exchanged them for material goods from a catalogue.

Rewards for smoking, the more you smoked, the bigger the rewards!

When my DD was in scouts a sheaf knife was on the list of necessary equipment. But they were only in the hands of the children (this was from 7 years old) when they were doing something that required knives. She quit when she was about 12 so don't know what the rules are with older scouts though I imagine as they get to be teens they are trusted to keep their knives at all times.

DD forgot to take her knife out of her backpack after a camp once so accidentally took it to school with her!

We provide knives when the Scouts need them now.

Some of the knives I have in our "personal" collection (not belonging to the Scout troop!) Are Scout branded... that we bought in a toy shop in Germany a few years ago. Functional knives, they were from a range of whittling sets they sold, aimed at 5+

My grandparents collected coupons.
Looking back hundreds of coupons to buy a deep fat fryer after smoking thousands of fags 🤷

This is the kind my DD had - branded Scout knife with 9cm blade , were the German ones similar?

The blade has a rounder edge (so you can't actually stab something with it) but very similar.

I guess that's a bit safer for children if it has a rounder edge but not as useful - the pointy end is very good for opening packets of sausages to cook over the fire!

The nit nurse.

A nurse actually came into our primary school and checked heads 😂

My friend and I hung around this taxi office which was full of old men. The owner once picked us up in his convertible as we bunked off school and went to the coast with him. He must have been 60! We were maybe 15.

Oh that bloody bone comb being raked over your scalp.. bloody torture.
Scarred for life 70s kid 🤕

Oh lord, I grew up in Greece in the early nineties. So, everything, from the moment I woke up until I went to bed at night 🤣

Why is that a bad thing? Perhaps if it was done now there would be less of a head lice problem

When I was in the lower sixth form, we had a uniform and most of us wouldn't tuck out blouses into our skirts because it just wasn't cool.

One day, one of the teaching heads of 6th after weeks of telling me to tuck my blouse in, grabbed the waistband of my skirt and physically tucked my blouse in with her hand.

I can only imagine the cries of 'sexual assault' you'd hear on MN now :)

I didn’t even know the nit nurse wasn’t a thing any more! 😄

1980s kid here.

Sweets with E numbers and ingredients that would make your hair curl.

Kids at school and nursery being told
off for things like crying, being sick, falling over or having an accident.

At Christmas a local church would arrange for children to go around the surrounding area singing carols to raise money for charity. As it was always dark and icy/snowing, a lady nearby who owned a riding school would ferry 20-30 children around the icy roads in her horsebox!! This was 1990s. Not one parent seemed remotely concerned!

My neighbour's parents got them one of those above the ground swimming pools when we were all primary school age, like a massive paddling pool for big kids about 3 feet deep. The dad set it up in a field way out of eyesight and earshot of the house because he didn't want it to kill his lawn, and all the nearby kids would swim in it completely unattended.

Ours had wooden sticks like giant coffee stirrers, rubber gloves and a distasteful expression in her face 😄 Surely it was a good thing though?

I had things with E in it but they were disco biscuits 👀💗