To ask what the weirdest thing you experienced or saw at someone else's house when you were a child?

[BillHadersNewWife]

Inspired by a Reddit thread...there were some absolutely weird things that people experienced or saw at their mates' houses as children.

There was a man who said he hated eating at his friend's house because they weren't allowed to drink water with a meal.

There was someone who said their friend wasn't allowed in any other room but the kitchen and their bedroom.

That kind of thing! I'm thinking myself and can't really dredge much up. There was one friend who lived in a huge mansion...think National Trust style place...and it was empty!

Just room after room with less furniture in the place than in an average semi!

Normal-ish family...I think they were broke due to having 5 kids and privately educating them all!

@FunkyPidgeonPie @FannyDingo
I was the weird house. Parents super strict. Mom used to buy all my clothes and each day lay out on my bed what I was to wear when I got home from school. I was never allowed to ask to wear anything different to what she selected. That was questioning parents authority. I never invited anyone to my house and was never accepted invitations to anyone else's house. I had few friends at school and used to carefully keep school and home separate. I lived under the threat of being home schooled. At night required to wear a nappy with plastic pants and not allowed out of my bedroom or I would receive the 'rod of correction'. Fearsomely painful. So basically had no option but to wet myself. One time when I was 13 another mom invited me to a sleepover at her place this was done mom to mom. I was mortified when my mom spoke to the other mom and described me as a 'wetter with no self control' and said she would send my 'protection'.

@kristen80 so sorry for you. Your mum was a horrible person

@Footiefan2019

I'm from a little town that begins with a P that isn't too far from the East Lancs, we had soup over chips too, usually oxtail or tomato

This thread has been an eyeopener to just how much povert, neglect and creepy people kids have been exposed to. Some of these have had me close to tears no child should go those this stuff to all x

I agree Freddiemercuarysmoustache

And despite this, most seem to have grown into functioning adults who are able to cope with life, on the whole (although we none of us know what demons they are battling in the early hours of the morning).

Human resilience is amazing.

However, MNers are a very small %age of the population - maybe 98% are struggling with MH issues and not on this forum. Who knows?

I’ve nothing dramatic to add to the thread but I was always amazed (and a bit intimidated) by the levels of clean, neat and tidy that other households had.

Our kitchen and bathrooms were always clean but most of downstairs had a faint dog hair covering and dog smell. Our bedroom were up to us to clean and tidy so I just chose not to and my parents didn’t mind! All our furniture was handed down and my parents had no concerns with us jumping all over it and making forts. Food was always dropped down for our hoover (big hungry lab) and shoes were never taken off at the door.
Friends loved coming round because there were very few rules.

I remember going to one friends house in particular who’s carpet was a white and fluffy and their toy dog. I felt so nervous and I think spilt something which created a massive commotion of cleaning it up before her mum got home. I was mortified!

Our house was always under construction, with various DIY projects so tended to be messy and potentially dangerous with floorboards missing, wet plaster on the walls, loose electrical wiring etc. We weren't poor but the house was a state. I know friends who came round were often shocked at various states of disrepair but it wasn't a bad way to live.

Not exactly a childhood memory as I was 19, but an funny thing which happened at somebody else's house. There was a naice family I used to visit, whose youngest daughter was the feistiest 8-year-old ever, who teased me good-naturedly whenever she could, telling me that she wanted us to go on the TV show Get Your Own Back (where children competed to get adults dunked in gunge). I laughed it off, as you do; perhaps this girl knew from my body language that throughout my childhood I was a magnet for teasing, which I didn't like then.

When the adults sat down to dinner, this girl told me she was going to tie me up. And she was true to her word: while I sat eating, talking to the adults and completely ignoring her, she worked at me with a skipping rope, before running from the room laughing. And she knew what she was doing: I couldn't stand without taking the chair with me. Even though my hands were free, she had put the knots where I couldn't easily reach them, so somebody had to rescue me! I thought nothing of it at the time, but I wonder if such a thing would raise eyebrows now?

I grew up on a council estate and I remember most people didn't have carpet, they had the obligatory cardboard covering the floors tho!
I remember when I went to secondary school and I made friend with a girl from the village nearby and was invited over, It was the first time I'd seen laminate flooring and I thought she was so posh!

There was a druggie mum who lived a couple doors down with 2 boys both about the same age as me, I must have been about 11 at the time and we were out playing kerby in the street, we could hear her son begging and pleading for her to stop. It went on for about an hour. We saw him the next day covered in bruises. No one ever did anything. This was the late 90's so not all that long ago.
I sometimes see the mum now as she works in a local shop, I can't bring myself to look at her, both her boys have had drug problems and been in and out of prison.

Our house, with 6 children on a working farm, was chaotic, messy but clean. Sometimes after school, if my mum was working (she also had a part time job to make ends meet) I would go from primary school around to her friend's house. Her friend had 2 children, a girl a year of so older than me, a boy a couple of years older than that - around 10 or 11 at the time.
Their house was always immaculate - not just tidy, but not a speck of dust to be seen. One day the boy asked if we wanted to play with his lego - we said yes, and he led us up into his bedroom. He opened his wardrobe door and pulled the box out, and there, sitting proudly in the middle, was a huge turd! He was very animated in his description of laying his brick in with the lego bricks, his sister didn't seem to think there was anything unusual in this, and he was obviously immensely pleased with himself. Apparently he had several others in storage too.
I never really enjoyed Lego after that.

This doesn’t seem like classic material to me

So many represent profoundly painful and distressing childhood

Some of these are hilarious,
Some are weird,
Some are very sad.

It’s a slice of social history, as others have said.

I’m so glad that safeguarding is now at the forefront of people’s minds.

And can I just say, to those who witnessed or experienced sexual abuse, please consider reporting it to the police if there’s a chance that the perpetrators are still alive, as they may still be doing it to other kids (even if they are in their 80s or 90s).

The police and CPS will take it seriously even if they didn’t then.

@kristen80

Oh my! If Kristen isn’t your actual name, I wonder if you might be the person I slept over with?

Were your parents nice in company and come across as caring to people who visited?

Either way, I’m so sorry for your trauma.

Wow, I've been totally consumed by this thread reading in snippets over the last few days. It has been horrific and so so sad in lots of places. When I first read the title I thought to myself, well that's going to be a huge list of abuse, and lo it was. It's awful that so much of it was not reported, even as children knowing something was wrong but for whatever reason not being able to tell trusted adults. Ive done so much safeguarding training and it's eye opening to hear of a different time (although that's obviously not to say children aren't abused these days as the statistics are still so high ). But as PPs have said, it's good we have safeguarding nowadays, it is all our responsibilities. Also interesting how important it is to be believed as a child, so many where they had told their parents and were told off for telling lies or they had laughed it off.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51105266

Let’s hope the number reduces now everyone’s more aware of the phenomenon.

Thanks for sharing @Softskin88 they are such awful statistics but important for us to know.

My stepdaughter visited an old(er) friend of mine. I hadn't seen her for years although we were in regular touch by phone and she offered dsd a bed for the night when she was going to an audition in a nearby town. Her husband had died 7 years before. D sd came back.somewhat traumatised.as the entire house, every surface, was covered in thick dust and my friend happily told dsd that she never cleaned because dust was mainly made up of skin cells and the dust was all she had left of her DH!!...Dsd said there were mouse droppings in the sugar bowl too....

This was in the 1980s.

In Junior school, I had a friend whose family were very devout Christians. She used to tell her younger sister that if she did XYZ, Jesus would;d make her fall down and bang her head.

I once slept over and the girls said their prayers (fair enough). Then the mum said "And what is your prayer, Cru?" so I made one up. My Mum was really cross when I told her the next day because the family knew we were not religious (in fact my Mum is quite a militant atheist).

I’m shocked this has gone in to classics. It’s full of deeply painful memories for many posters, detailing neglect and abuse. It seems ghoulish to say it is ‘fascinating’ and to keep it available for all to read and reread. I’m sure there will be some posters who wouldn’t have contributed if they’d known it would be categorised as a ‘classic’ thread that is easily found. Ive messaged MNHQ and I really hope they reconsider this. It’s intrusive and unfair.

@buscake classics isn’t only full of happy shiny stories and amusing ‘fails’, there’s often some quite heart wrenching stuff in there that is still interesting and important. How is it intrusive to anonymously talk about something? Anything identifiable on here has been removed.

A lot of this massively highlights the mistakes of the past and how parenting and modern life has changed. I don’t think it’s helpful to erase anything bad that’s ever happened and have no trace of it.

The drug addicted Foster baby was one of the saddest and most poignant threads I've ever read on here, that is in classics. The OP sadly passed away a few years after it was written.

@Footiefan2019 “classics isn’t full of happy shiny stories and amusing ‘fails’”

I didn’t say it was. Nor did I say the past should be erased it’s clear that some posters have experienced some really heart wrenching things, and to have it categorised as ‘classic’ seems gross to me.

Of course there are other more serious threads in classics, but the contributions here on this specific thread make it appear more like an attempt at a ‘lighthearted’ thread that has gone horribly wrong. There is a huge difference in tone between eg the drug addicted foster baby thread and this thread.

@Buscake if you’ve said something on this thread you aren’t happy with other problem reading just ask for it to be taken down. I don’t see why you should have to speak for everyone else