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 😂

My dad often took us the pub in the afternoon and drove home whilst drunk. It wasn't illegal at the time though

Dad used to sit us on his lap in the car and let us steer

On my first day at primary school, my mother stood at the front gate until some “big girls” - they must have been all of 7 or 8 years old - were going past. My mother told them to take me with them. I knew none of them but l remember running, trying not to lose them, as they tried to shake me off!

My gran giving me a shot of whisky when I had a cold!

being sent to the shop with a note to sell me cigarettes.

babysitting neighbours kids from age 11.

my dad learnt me how to ride a motorbike when I was ten, literally as soon as my feet could touch the peddles.

penny for a guy with my brother with a guy stuffed with old clothes.

wearing roller skates and holding onto the back of the bus at the bottom of the hill and getting a lift up lol.

paper rounds in the dark at 6am

Oh God! I remember standing in a garden of large plant pots with my dad, out of the corner of his eye he thought I was a plant pot and stubbed his fag out on my shoulder.

Yes! The tablespoon of brandy if you couldn't sleep was a great one.

Rolling my Dads fags for him while he drove the car. I loved doing it!

4 of us siblings sharing the back seat of the car. My baby brother had a car seat for a few years so my poor little sis would just be wedged in between that and the car door, so basically not sitting at all!

Born 1978. In science. Experiments with radiation and they wrote in a book who was sitting the closest to the experiment so we could swap seats another time and wouldn’t be so exposed.

Also, buying from the off-license when blatantly 14.

My gran giving me a shot of whisky when I had a cold!

My gran used to put (what she called) "a small tot of whisky" in our bottles when she looked after us to get us off to sleep 😃

Loads!

But stand outs, at the age of 8 being able to take my neighbours 3 year old to jazz band practice with me, a walk of 30 minutes each way, across town.

AND
My Saturday job, working at my DM’s estate agency. At the age of 12 my Saturday job was to show prospective house purchases around empty houses!

So…stranger would telephone and book an appointment, stranger would turn up in their car ( couples, single male, single female), pick me up along with the house keys.
I would give my mum a cheery wave, get in the stranger’s car and be driven to the empty house, where I would unlock the door, go in and wait for them to look around, locking up and getting back in their car for them to drop me back to the office! 😱

All pre mobile phones and pre Suzy Lamplugh.

My DS absolutely loves the Famous Five and listens to the audiobooks on repeat. He recently asked if he, too, can start going on camping holidays alone when he's 10. I laughed! 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' and then send them off for a week or four on their own (to places full of criminals, but that admittedly is a series of unfortunate coincidences).

Also we used to give baby brother bottles of milky tea at night. No thought of the caffeine in it! And honey on his dummy for every nap. No wonder he's a bit odd now 😂

Pretty much all of it.

Roaming for miles and hours in the school holidays. Through fields and town, parents not a clue where we were.

I used to (hangs head in shame) peel used chewing gum off the pavement and chew it. Utterly, utterly gross. Although I suspect it had an amazing effect on my immune system as I never get ill and never got covid.

Age 10 - Being allowed to buy my mother's cigarettes at the local shop with a note from her 🤣🤣🤣

We all used to drink milky tea and coffee when we were little! Even the dog got a milky tea in his dog bowl 😂

At secondary school in the 80s I saw a teacher grab a boy back the back of his head and repeated whack his head into a wall.

Our Head of Year came into our class one day, called up a boy and beat him up in front of us whilst we all had to stand and watch. It was really awful. He punched him in the stomach and everything.

At ages 8-10, I used to get picked up for school every morning by my friend's mother, who would then drop us at Monkseaton train station, from where we'd travel to Gosforth (about 7 miles away). Then we had about a mile or so to walk to school. The return journey was the same.

Mum and Dad used to drive down to London to see relatives a few times a year - I sat in the back of the massive Wolsey car, no seatbelt, whilst the parents more or less chain-smoked all the way. I used to insist (as only a 10 year old can!) that we stopped in Sherwood Forest to have a wee behind a tree (I think we must have been on the A1), because I had a thing about Robin Hood at the time.

I often took the dog out alone for long walks along Whitley Bay beach, aged 8 onwards. Sometimes a friend would come with me, but I was mostly alone. Sometimes I'd be gone for hours.

You obviously live somewhere really posh and responsible if you think this is a Then thing and not a Now thing.

Where I live its the norm for people to have no helmets, including on major roads bombing along on e-bikes.

Walking to and from school and Sunday School alone from the age of 5. It was about ¼ mile.
Going to town with my friend on the bus when we were about 8. All perfectly normal then.

Born in mid 60s, so grew up in 70s/80s.
When i was born we lived in a council flat. I dont remember it but i remember my mum telling me the man from the council would come round every fortnight to collect the rent in cash.
Dad smoking in the house and car, and sending us to the shop for his fags.
Smoking in pubs/restaurants /workplaces in general-even hospital wards would have a smoking room! You'd even see newsreaders/tv presenters smoking.
No seat belts in cars. Us 4 kids would be squashed in the back of the family car.
Very occasional slaps. I even remember being slapped by a teacher at school.
Going cycling with no helmet.
Playing out on the street-no adult supervision but we were usually in shouting distance of home. If we weren't we were in one of the neighbours house, known to parents.

1970s, age 8 - in the summer holidays sometimes we would go out with the kids from my lane (about 10 of us, aged 6-11), most on bikes, a couple of the farm kids on ponies. We took sandwiches and went off to another village to play in the river all day long. Out after breakfast, back in time for tea!

1980s - my brother has his first pint in a pub at 14 - he went to said pub at lunchtime with his friends and they were all in school uniform. 😆

Also 1980s, aged 15 on school trip to France - teachers allowed us to drink wine and beer every evening (but spirits were banned, so they were not completely irresponsible 😂).

This sounds so fun!

My physics teacher did that I caught it and instinctively threw it back and hit him. Oddly I didn't get in trouble probably because I pointed out I must have been paying attention to return it so quickly.

Got smacked
Laid in car no seat belts
Slept under table in the pub every Friday night.
Babysat for neighbours kids I was 13 maybe 12. They were 2, 4 , and 5
Apart from a local playscheme we did nothing in the holidays we just played out the front or in the churchyard with friends