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 was born in the mid 60s so numerous things - no seat belts , dad smoked in the car ( and house ) , rode my horse on the road in flip flops and shorts with no hat . It’s amazing so many of us survived really .

@maxelly Agree with everything you said!

Same here. We got eight of us in a ford cortina estate. Only four (adults) would have had seatbelts, not us four kids. Brother and younger male cousin in the boot; me and older female cousin squeezed in the back seat with our mums.

I grew up in a mining village with farms around it and we used to play on the pit tip, around the slurry ponds and also in the fields, we would grab a load of hay, climb a tree and jump of into the hay.
One popular game was swinging from a rope tied to a tree over a stream with a high banking on one side, knife in hand. We'd swing as high as we could and stick the knife in the banking. The next person had to swing to get the knife and then stick it higher up the banking. The winner was the one who'd got the knife so high up that nobody could get it.

✔️Pit tips
✔️Slurry ponds
✔️Hurling yourself out of trees
✔️Playing with knives.

A while back I told my mum what we used to do and I thought she was going to faint.

She'd thought we used to play in the park all day.

Only time we were at the park was when we were climbing the row of garages next to it and trying to jump one to the next.

Edit.
Thinking about it, these were probably never ok. 🤣

Playing out in totally unsuitable places such as inside burnt down houses (accessed by a smashed window)

Playing out without a mobile phone, being tracked and only a curfew

Buying fags from the shop in singles

Babysitting a complete strangers children for pocket money

Going door to door car washing to try and earn money

Same. With my sister on the parcel shelf. In a Mini!

Aged 4 1980 I went to the children’s hospital for adenoids / grommits, had to stay in on my own on the children’s ward for a couple of nights. My mum was offered a room to stay with me but my younger brother was at home and my dad couldn’t look after him on his own. All the kids on the ward were by themselves. The nurses were pretty scary! No one dared get out of bed unless told to. There were no play specialists like now!!

I got taken with some other little kids in a small bus to another part of the hospital for the operation and remember the guy driving the bus was chatting up and trying the grope the young nurse and making her uncomfortable.

My mum and nan came to collect me after a few days, we had to get 3 buses home as my dad was using the car for work. Completely different experience to now with my own kids, they’ve always had a parent with them if they’ve been in hospital.

Babysitting a complete strangers children for pocket money

This was actually insane but absolutely true 😂10-13 year olds babysitting small children. Nothing ever went wrong either! And if it would have done then you would have had to ring round the local pubs / social clubs to find where the adults were.

So much stuff 😂🫣

Both of my parents smoked in the house, in the car - lots of enclosed spaces where me and my sister were.
My sister and I played around our estate from a a very young age - our parents never knew where we were or what we were up to, as long as we were home before the streetlights came on, all was fine.
My mum had us nap outside in the back garden in the pram as babies during the spring and summer while she did whatever in the house.
Car seats were basic and not a must-have if we were in someone else’s car.

All things that were perfectly normal back then, but I wouldn’t dream of doing now have my own DCs 🫣🫣🫠

Throughout the summer holidays, my friends mum made us take her little brother around with us (from 3 years old) all day long. He was actually no trouble at all and very sweet, but we were primary school age and were wandering around everywhere across two villages and around the fields, woods and parks. Obviously no mobile phones. Looking back it was absolute madness, but nothing ever went wrong bar a few bumps, scratches and nettle stings.

We went to Youth Club (which was absolutely brilliant) and often in the summer would all load up into a few adults cars and head to the big park. No seat belts, kids in the boot and footwells, sitting on laps.

Regularly going to the shops with a note from friends parents to pick up cigarettes and cigars.

Friends dad used to let us sit on the bonnet of his car while he drove around a local car park. He would also tow us on the sledge when it snowed attaching the rope of the sledge to the towbar. We were about 7/8.

I have such good memories. It was an amazing childhood and I wouldn't change a thing.

Oh and playing in the beer garden of the local pub with all the other kids who’s parents were inside, and being given a a panda pop and a packet of crisps to keep us going!

Our bedrooms were heated by oilstoves burning over night which we told not to touch. There was no option and even with them lit, we still got ice on the inside of the windows in winter.

We used to spend a week with grandparents in the summer. My mum would put us on the train at our town station. Tell the conductor where we were going. Grandparents would be waiting at the train station other end. Conductor would remind us to get off at the stop. 2 hours on a train alone with my brother. I was 7 he was 8.

I'm not even that old only 37 now but I cannot fathom this being OK today!!

Friends dad used to let us sit on the bonnet of his car while he drove around a local car park.

@JackieDaytonaLuckyBrews I'd forgotten about this one 😂Yep this is another one we used to do. So much fun!!!

No they just didn't want to hit the glass containing chemicals, including mercury.

Always sitting 3 to a seat on the school bus that I caught age 5.

Before starting school bring sent to the shop with a note to get cigarettes and spending the change.

I travelled from Lancashire to Spain (Dover to calais hovercraft) to Spain in the boot.

Yes to lighting my parents cigarettes.

A friend of my mum was a teacher, when she had a baby she took it to work with her and let the kids push the pram around the playground. She taught primary.

Yes to knocking on doors to take a dog or a baby for a walk.

In my teens my friend's mother was a child minder (and a chain smoker) we would take her mindees out for the afternoon.

Can you imagine on MN someone going to pick up their child and finding the child is off somewhere with a couple of teenagers and the childminder is having a fag?

At secondary my school had some pipes burst so we had no heating for a couple of weeks, the school stayed open. We were allowed to wear gloves and a scarf but no coat and certainly no trousers.

Then there was the flasher in a flat by the bus stop. No one told a teacher or parent, it was only when one of the teachers, a nun, was on the bus that the school became aware.

Oh and the constant smacking! For everything!
been naughty? Smack. Being annoying? Smack. Accidentally broke something? Smack

My mum regularly hitting us with her hard soled slipper for the heinous crime of being noisy. She wasn't lashing out in anger, it was a slow premeditated ritual with a set script and that terrified me as much as the hitting hurt me.

Doctors smoking in the consulting room.

The utter bliss of being sent to my Grandparents in Ireland for the summer holidays. We could run riot in the woods and fields, fish for sticklebacks in the river, ride the neighbours donkeys and no one ever hit us or shouted at us. There would be 4 kids and my grandparents in a 2 up 2 down cottage with an outside loo and no bathroom at all, just a one cold tap in the kitchen and it was wonderful.

My husband and his SEN sister sat on deckchairs in the back of their dad’s van.

My headmaster smoked a pipe in the classroom. Early 60’s.

As teenagers, before driving at 17, we used to thumb lifts everywhere. Lived rurally, very few busses and it was the only way to get to town.

On a chalet holiday in Torbay. All the kids from 3 families in 1 chalet being 'babysat' by the listening service whilst the adults went out drinking! Totally acceptable in the 80's...

Yep this was what inspired this thread 😊Occasionally a parent would pop out and fling some scampi fries or cheese moments our way to buy another hour or two 😂

I travelled from Lancashire to Spain in the boot.

😃😂😁

I have some photos of a birthday party when I was4 or 5 and we are all sitting there drinking orange squash out of paper cups with ads for Players cigarettes on the side. This would be mid 60s. Innocent days.

My Mum and Dad letting an assortment of random people stay with us probably wouldn’t stand today. The most baffling was a homeless juggler, we stopped to watch him busking and next thing I know he’s staying on our sofa. I was twelve maybe thirteen at the time.

No seat belts and my baby brother in a carry cot on the back seat.

Lying in the boot and waving at the cars behind.

Those hilarious high speed metal roundabouts in the playground that couldn't be stopped.

Having those wooden blackboard rubbers or chalk thrown at your head. Or being spanked in class (that was only boys TBF).

Travelling alone by the normal public bus home from school age 6.

Fruit picking age 10.

Can you imagine on MN someone going to pick up their child and finding the child is off somewhere with a couple of teenagers and the childminder is having a fag?

I feel like this was a missed April Fools joke.

AIBU to send the children I babysit for out for a couple of hours with some local teens I barely know so I can have a fag break in peace?