What made your parents paranoid when you were growing up?

[BeCraftyFatball]

For myself -Danger when leaving the street

That I would knock my front teeth out when I fell over. My Mum used to pick me up with her hand cupped to my mouth to catch them in case I’d knocked them out. Still seems weird to me all these years later 😟

Errrr nothing particularly. I was a child of the 70’s and both my parents worked so there was a great deal of benign neglect.

Escalators- my dad was convinced we'd have a loose shoelace and get sucked down into the mechanism. Then by chance he was on an escalator with DS when DS's shoe did get a bit caught on the escalator and my dad was THERE, like an absolute ninja, hoiking DS to safety- his whole life waiting for that moment 😂

Same here. My f's threat was that if any of us got pregnant, he'd kill us and go to prison proud.

Not unreasonably we were all nc with him by the age of 20. What on earth was he thinking? 😳

The irony is I can’t have children and my mother was desperate for more grandchildren…you reap what you sow.i remember her once saying ‘I was pure on my wedding night and hope you’ll do the same!’ I said nothing as that ship had well and truly sailed and the previous evening I’d been engaging in some shenanigans’.

I always remember my mum telling her friend that I ‘told her everything and confided in
her’ no mother dearest you get told what I want you to know! I was very good at hiding and twisting the truth.

As someone who actually did that as a kid, I can confirm, it’s a nightmare! Super expensive to have dental implants and bone grafts etc.

The iron. In fairness they did know a toddler who got burnt by an iron falling on them, but I was still not allowed near one even as a teenager.

Education.

My mum went to my school to speak to my head of year after we chose our GCSE options because she didn't think I should do 9 GCSEs and thought my time would be better spent learning typing and childcare.

My mum was convinced that, if I got an education, no one would want to marry me.

Fortunately, the head of year disagreed.

Then she tried to sabotage me going to university. Twice.

Anyway, it's lucky that I got an education and a career because I've spent most of my adult life as a single parent 👍🏻

Germs. Don’t touch this, don’t touch that,

Abduction, but only in a certain road.

susan maxwell was sadly taken there by Robert Black.

we were banned from that road, for life.

we could go anywhere else in either town and village, but not that road.

made no sense why if we were to be abducted it would be in the exact same place and nowhere else.

What other people would think of us/ our behaviour.

That my sister and I would constantly put on weight during our teen years if we so much as looked at a slice of cake, had a few chips or ate an ice- cream cone.

How I looked and what would people think when I went through my goth/ grunge stage ( early 1990s) The caused endless arguments between Mum and I.

Eating with fingers in a fast food outlet, such as McDonalds/ KFC. If we ate out as a family it had to be a sit down restaurant with knives and forks.

Teenage pregnancy

using the landline phone before 18:00

Ahhh yes. My mother also had extreme paranoia about leaving the house with wet/damp hair after swimming or showering. You’d have thought it would cause instant death as if being struck by lightning the way she carried on about it!

Also wearing red. Wearing a red top or dress would be giving “people the wrong impression” apparently and that decent women don’t wear red as it’s for “those types of women” She used to clasp her hands together and lament “but what will people THINK of you?!”

I honestly have no idea why this bothered my mum so much - but using tampons and shaving my legs. She got SO ANGRY when I asked to start using tampons as I a) started my period at 11; b) had them very heavily right until I started on the pill; c) danced 5 days a week which pads were very uncomfortable for. I don't know if it was money related, but she also used to get annoyed I used so many pads, leading to me trying to eek out the usage by not changing them as often as I should. Not to mention, not having bins in the toilet for some reason! I don't know why she seemed to have such strong and weird thoughts about periods.

The leg-shaving thing was also odd - I was 12, started secondary school, I was teased for having hairy legs. Asked mum if I could shave and was given a flat No - note she shaved her legs! I was never a rule-breaker, so when a friend and I did some Immac during a sleepover it felt very daring - I loved the smooth legs it gave me but not the telling off!

She was also very upset when I lost my purse and she found it, looked through it found a condom. I was almost 17, had had a boyfriend for at least 6 months at that point, and - she let me stay over at his house every week!. She ripped an absolute streak off me about that, apparently it was not responsible to be having sex at my age. She also did not like me telling her I was of age to do it, and I was also on the pill which I'd got on my own. I was less of a rule follower at that age lol!

Radiation - we had a geiger counter to measure everything. Also fluoride - not allowed in our house.
Government plots, you see.

My mum: the thought of me having sex before marriage, or “making myself cheap” (her words) in any shape or form. The latter covered benign activities such as using a henna shampoo, wearing an ankle bracelet and having red shoes, all of which were associated with “women of the night”. She often told me that men don’t want “second hand goods” without passing judgement on whether they themselves could warrant this label if they’d been around the block a few times. Made teenage years/early twenties a little hard to navigate!

Joss sticks. In the same category as mainlining heroin according to my Dad 🤣

What will people think mostly
hot drinks near the edge of a table (nursed in a children’s burns unit)
watching eastenders wasn’t allowed
knocking off glass/crockery in a department store. I was 30 and she still panicked I would run riot smashing things

on the other hand I had no curfew, I could bring anyone home without judgement (friend that needed help, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever)

Not paranoid, but my mum was very squeamish & hated the thought of me getting my ears pierced. At about age 11 I bribed her into letting me & went with my dad.

She was also very hot on table manners. Hold cutlery properly, eat with your mouth closed, no talking whilst eating etc. She was horrified when I brought a friend home for tea & she didn't do some or all of the above. She said afterwards "that's because she goes home for lunch!"

Raw egg! We were little when the salmonella in eggs thing happened in the 80s and my mum was terrified of us eating even slightly undercooked egg

I had quite a lot of freedom as a young person but my mum seemed quite worried about me getting an eating disorder. I didn’t eat much of my dinner one night and she was apparently fretting about it in front of my brother who told her I probably wasn’t hungry.

She once shared a conversation she’d had with female colleagues who all said that their biggest concerns for their daughters was that they’d end up in an abusive relationship.

Weidly similar to others escalators, bins in bathroom, leg shaving and periods - wasn't allowed tampons and disposiing of pads was made really hard.

Spending money - even when they could afford it - every decison needed mulling over for months biu I think that was reaction to money being tight most of their lives but insiting we need clothes then moaning about cost of said clothes we didn't ask for to us wasn't great to experience all the time.

Maybe my Mum knew somone who that happened to. Would explain her paranoia 🫢

Oh yes I’d forgotten about that but I was never allowed an ankle bracelet I think for that reason. As an adult now I have a wide selection and love them!

That I would pet a stray dog, it would bite me and I’d get rabies. Rabies was around in the country I grew up in. So a slim chance I guess.