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 😂

I used to regularly get the metro from town and go to Cullercoats with the dog, always alone, maybe 12?

Doing pe in your underwear when you forgot your kit.

So many.

In the last year of primary school we were allowed out to the nearby chippy for lunch I remember the whole year being excited when one boy aged about 9 sneaked out and caught the bus into town.

Being able to buy single cigarettes on the way to/home from school.

Board dusters and chalk being chucked at us if we weren't listening in class.

Seeing kids who had been naughty in class running laps round the playground, or those who had forgotten their PE kit found it in their undies.

Getting drunk in friends houses on cider in-between our GCSEs.

My favourite school memory is in 2000, when on a school trip to London, we were strolling past Hyde Park and the security guard let us (about 50 kids and a few teachers) in for free to watch the end of Party in the Park.

As for doing PE in your underwear if you forgot to bring your kit......
My Junior school had a more subtle approach; in Needlework, us girls got to make, first a PE top, then a short wraparound skirt, which was the only kit provided. We were measured, and the material was cut out accordingly. Magyar sleeves, so no sleeves to set in, armholes and neck bound with bias binding. French seams, hand sewn, skirt had six panels, and stitching had to be small, neat and even. So the faster you sewed, the sooner you were fully kitted out. One mummy tried to be helpful and did a couple of seams on her sewing machine at home to hurry things along, and the infuriated teacher ripped the machined seams out because that constituted cheating!
It was a large group of girls (the boys went off to do woodwork) and I was more interested in quietly socialising with friends who were usually in a different class, so I only ever got as far as completing the blouse, and attaching three skirt panels, but luckily girls' underwear in the 1950's was of sturdy construction, so navy blue bloomers it was!
As a general rule, puberty came a little later in those days, but it must have been awkward for the girls who already had developing bustlines.
I was much happier when we simply changed footwear, and did Country Dancing.

Going the to buy my friends mum cigarettes aged about 10 lots of times

10 John player special and they were in a black packet

The school caretaker's house was opposite the school and he used to let the boys skive there. He'd also sneak them cigarettes during school. It was the world's worse kept secret.

I don't think anything dodgy was going on. I really hope not!

I was thinking that we never heard any rumours of him being dodgy but unlike a lot of schools, we didn't really have any rumours about "Mr x looking down girls shirts" or "Mr y being a peado" so it doesn't mean anything.

School exchange trip in primary school - the students were just handed out to any random families who would house them. They weren't even necessarily the families of the kids you were exchanging with.

I had to share a double bed with 2 other girls. The family looked after us but did like their racist slurs eg the corner shop was called the p* shop, the Chinese was a "ch**ky" etc. Even for that time period it was a bit much.

We used to go to the shop for my grandparents to buy John player navy cut . I actually bought Guinness in bottles too for grandad , he died when I was 11 .lovely old shopkeeper knew my grandparents and she always asked is it for your nanny . I wouldn't even let my small kids walk to the shop alone nevermind buy cigarettes and alcohol .

That just reminded me of the 'magic E' song from Look and Read. Imagine playing a kid a song about a magic E now! 😅

Blimey yes, I was sent to the shop so many times to buy my mum's cigs, aged only about 8 or 9. It was Kensitas for a while and then she switched to Embassy. (Early/mid 70s - are those brands even still around? I've never smoked so don't know much about cig brands.)

I also remember, when only slightly older (about 11ish) a friend of the family giving me and their daughter (bit younger) money for fireworks - which we went to the shop and bought ourselves. 😮

Wow your kids wouldn't be allowed to walk to the shop at 10? Bit extreme the other way

I remember my mum giving my brother a note asking for players no 6 cigarettes when he was about that age

I heard of an upper sixth-former, the only one doing A level music, and who'd passed his driving test, who would go with his teacher to concerts in town then drive her home from the station when they got back.

The thing that most tickles me about the set-up in the Famous Five is that it's made very clear that all the children go to boarding school and literally the day they get home for the school holidays their parents start saying 'hmm, it is awfully inconvenient and noisy having children about'

I think Enid Blyton really thought that about her own daughters.

7 - 9 not 10

At nursery school - which was just the proprietor's house - half way through the morning we would line up on the stairs and take it in turns to go into the bathroom and wee in a potty (I think there was only one) gazed at by everyone else.

Fourteen years later we would go to university interviews by ourselves, which I think applicants still should - if they can't negotiate public transport alone, are they really fit for higher education?

Do uni applicants not go to interviews by themselves now, then? (Genuine question, I don’t have DC so have no idea about these things.)

Different skills.
I'm very academic but directions? No hope. My husband is less academic but dump him anywhere and within 2 hrs he's got the whole placed mapped in his head as if he's lived there since he was born. My brother is very clever but no common sense. He'll stand at the bus stop and forget to hail the bus as it drives past.

Just after uni I went for a job interview for a job I really, really wanted in a part of London I'd never been to. I'd never even been to London by myself. This was before Google maps etc on your phone and I was broke so couldn't just get a taxi. I got hopelessly lost (even the bus driver didnt know where I wanted to go). I phoned the interviewer to say I had no idea where I was but I wasn't going to make the interview. I think she took pity on me because she phoned me back and said they were able to squeeze me in at the end of the day. Unfortunately, the day had just about done me in and the interview was a waste of everyone's time. I sent her an email afterwards thanking her for rearranging it but they never even bothered sending me a "you've been unsuccessful" letter which was just rude. Still gutted about that job 20 years later! 🤣

My 7 year old biked to the shop at the weekend and bought himself a treat

Consequences, including expulsion prevailed when I was a child and younger adult.

@ruethewhirl our DC went to some of the open days by themselves, or rather with a couple of chums. I recall they arranged the London to Durham trip and stayed overnight in Halls. On the whole I agree with @florabella - employers require the whole package.

@BeatleBattleInABottle Did you not have an A to Z?

Not for one trip that on paper was very easy. I think it was 2(?) buses but I got the first bus the wrong direction and it got worse.

They were meant to pay costs as well but I didnt pick up a claims form and they ignored me afterwards. I was really mad because it was a lot of money for me.

Basically a disaster. I wouldn't have hired me either. 🤣

However, I knew I hadnt got it within minutes of the interview starting (these days I think I'd just ask if I was worth continuing) so I wasn't waiting for a decision and they asked me some questions that I wasn't expecting so I looked those up afterwards to see what I should have said. I have never been asked them since but I know what to say if I am (and it was not the nonsense that I said. 🤣).

It'd be a 5 mile bike trip to a shop from my house on a main road but maybe if I lived close to the shops it'd be fine .

Its only 2km to our nearest shop and all along a shared path rather than on road so really safe and pleasant to bike along. He's already begging to take himself to circus school by himself which is more like 5km and involves crossing the main road so that's a no for now!

Campuses are crawling with parents every open day. I once went to a conference at a university on a Saturday. They'd arranged their open day for then too, specifically so parents wouldn't need to take time off work to come. Another time I glanced at a book in my local library called What every parent should know before their child goes to university and was so shocked by what I read that I borrowed it to take a closer look. It suggested you, the parent, should keep all the papers relating to the application in your own desk drawer and writing to tutors about any family problems.