Green Betty, your story made me think of a song my dad taught my little sister and I when we were really small...
"We must, we must, improve our bust. The bigger the better, the tighter the sweater we must improve our bust". One sang the song while thrusting your elbows forward and back behind your back. 
Green Betty, your story made me think of a song my dad taught my little sister and I when we were really small...
"We must, we must, improve our bust. The bigger the better, the tighter the sweater we must improve our bust". One sang the song while thrusting your elbows forward and back behind your back.
"....the men will be rooting for us!"
Groan!
I remember something that my foster mom and one of her friends did. Her and her friend came home from the bar, and they were drunk. It had been snowing, and the roads were slippery, so they came and got us, and they drove to an empty parking lot where they started doing doughnuts, and tipping the van. They thought it was hysterically funny. Me, not so much. (I was 15 or 16, and had I had any idea what they were planning/where they were going to take us, I would have tried to get them to let us stay home.)
This wasn't from my childhood, but my Grandma once bragged that *she* never picked up and cuddled my mother when she was a baby. She would never spoil her in such a way.
And I think to myself, No wonder my mom was so screwed up. I think I had it bad with my mother, but she had a lot of Undoing to do. I've ended up being thankful it was as good as it was.
Of course, I've mentioned in another thread before that when I got my period (or when she discovered I had my period) she walked into my room and threw a box of tampons and pads at me and stormed off. I swear, she would have exploded before talking with me about this kind of stuff!
Well, I think the reason why so many medications warn parents not to give to children to make them sleepy is because doctors used to tell parents to do just that. My oldest two daughters' pediatrician was a really nice guy. He started off in our town with a small practice and would take the time to talk to me and my husband and even once gave us his background story on why he became a doctor. I loved him. We were young and poor and he knew I couldn't afford some of the medications he'd prescribe so he'd give me samples instead. I know, they were meds but still, he was going out of his way to help out a poor teenage mom and I think that counts for something.
Anyway, when my oldest was little he told me the exact amount of extra cough syrup to give her so she'd "sleep better" at night. And when my second child was born, he'd prescribe the jumbo bottle of cough syrup so I had extra to give them both at night. Back then I did what the doctor told me to do simply because he told me to do it. So my babies got that larger dose at night.
I now spend a lot of time apologizing to my oldest especially for the stupid advice I used to follow when she was a baby.
Oh, and there are lots of things I remember my parents doing when I was a kid. One thing was we used to babysit my baby cousin a lot (this was in the late 80s early 90s) and I remember at least a couple of times where she got injured in the back of our car because she fell over while my mom was driving. Usually it was a bump on the head.
When I was a kid my grandpa always used to send me into the house to get him a beer. He and my uncles must've given me some before this particular memory because one time he sent me in for a beer and I told him I'd get it only if he agreed to let me have some. He did. I lived at his house until I was about 5 so I couldn't have been any older than that when it happened. My sister and I used to run wild all day on my grandpa's property unsupervised. I loved it. He had several acres with sheds, a chicken coop, tractors, old vehicles, trees, cactus, mean dogs, chickens and even a donkey for some years on his property and no one kept a close eye on us. My mom was single and worked lots of rotating shifts. I think she would've been really upset had she known how much time we spent unsupervised. I still don't think she realizes how much all that time we spent outside was really good for us.
Once she got remarried and we moved out of my grandpa's house she used to make us sit still and quiet and not go outside. Of course, my step-dad was even worse than my relatives at my grandpa's. We lived in apartments and he'd send us out to play until 10pm. He had no idea where we were or what we were doing. I'm really surprised nothing happened to us. I remember our neighbors back then were social and would invite kids into their apartments and stuff. One mom used to leave her little girl with me and my sister alone at the pool with not a single adult in sight and that little girl nearly drowned us several times a day because she couldn't swim. I could barely swim. The little girl was about 5 and I think I was 7 or 8 so my sister would've been 9 or 10. I guess her mom figured since she had arm floaties she'd be just fine.
My step-dad also used to leave us alone at night when my mom was working nights. He'd frequently come back a few minutes later to try to surprise us in case we'd gotten out of bed after he left. He'd get mad at my sister because she'd lock the door behind him and he'd have to find his key to get back in. One night, though, that locked door paid off. Some guy that was on something came pounding on the door, yelling and trying the door handle and then he tried to get in the window. My sister called our aunt and my aunt called the police but the guy left before anyone got there.
Oh this reminds me of my MIL. I don't know why I ever listened to her but she'd tell me not to pick up my oldest because it'd spoil her. So I didn't and I really think it contributed to our lack of bonding when she was a baby. I was also to always have some background noise like the TV or radio on. She says she started doing that the day she brought her oldest home from the hospital and therefore her kids would sleep through anything. She goes on about vacuuming in my DH's room when he was a baby and he'd sleep right through it. Funny thing is every time we go to her house she complains about her oldest son waking up at the sound of her fork touching her plate and that she never ate a hot meal for.... who knows how long after he was born. Um... why didn't she just turn on the TV?lol.
What's super annoying about MIL is that she repeats these same stories every time we go to her house and she's been doing it since my oldest was born... 19 years ago. I understand that I was very young when DD was born but since then I've given birth to twice the number of babies MIL has so I guess you could say I actually outrank her with baby experience.
Ok, I held my baby a lot so my defensiveness isn't warranted but there were a couple of times when I sat the baby on a blanket in the middle of the floor and hid in the closet and cried because I couldn't handle the noise.
So maybe she was hiding in the closet. Who knows.
We grew up with a station wagon and laid in the "back back" everywhere we went. It was fun.
We also roamed free in the nieghbourhood. I grew up in a large city.
I was almost kidnapped at age 6. But I was pretty street smart and instead of getting in the guys car I ran to a friends house and her older brother walked me home where my parent called the cops and I was able to give a description.
When we went for drives in the country my Dad would speed up and down the hills to give us a thrill. We loved how it felt when gravity hit after going 100 over a large hill.
We never wore seatbelts. Even when the cars had them. My parents still do not wear seatbelts.
When I was 1 yr old we got into a very bad car accident. It is a miracle that anyone survived. We got into a head on accident with a tractor trailer and were crushed in our car for hours while the fire department tried to free us. My mother was very badly injured, with a broken pelvis, broken hips, broken arms etc. She spent months in the hospital, over a year in a wheel chair and many more months learning to walk again. Us three kids were in the back seat. My parent put luggage on the floor with a blanket over it for a bed for us kids. My Dad says that I was actually asleep in the back window during the accident. Us three kids ended up being crushed between the back seat and the front seats and got out of the accident without a scratch or bruise.
Even after this accident, my parents still drove us all over the place without seatbelts.
We also drove in the backs of pick-up trucks.
My father liked to hunt, and I was shooting a 22 at beer can targets since about age 5 or 6. I was shooting a shot gun by age 10.
I retrieved beers for my Dad and company from an age too early to remember.
I went to the store for smokes for my parents from about age 5.
Since age 6, 8 and 9...us three kids were alone from 2 hours before waking until 3 hours after getting home from school.
We would make our own breakfast, get off to school, come home and make a snack and go out playing around the neighbourhood until supper time.
We rode public transit around the city alone from about age 8.
We drank milky tea from about age 1. My gran or Mum would just mix 3/4 milk and 1/4 tea in the baby bottle for us to drink.
And a common treatment for a cold and sore throat was black coffee with a half shot of rum in it.
I have been laughing aloud as I read some of these! Too funny.
I remember my brother and I riding in the back of a pick-up from southern Alabama to St Louis, MO one summer. I remember thinking it would be a great adventure. It was so loud we couldn't talk, it was too windy to play cards, and I got a wicked sunburn (no sunscreen of course).
I remember driving my dad home from the bar (I was 'nearly driving anyway' he said. I think I was 13yo.)
I remember taking apart old lawnmowers and bicycles and such and building go-carts. Building ramps and jumps in the Alabama red clay. No helmets.
Later when my parents divorced and mama and I moved into an apartment complex (around 7-8 yo) I used to pull my wagon around and wash peoples cars or sell lemonade or rake leaves. I would go into each apt building and knock on random peoples' doors and ask them if they could use my services (ie. whatever I was selling at the time).
I also ran pretty free as a kid. I hope that my DS is able to experience a similar freedom. Although I can't imagine allowing kids do some of the stuff I recall doing. But maybe it was more that I was "getting away with something" rather than "being allowed" in the first place!
It was the advice of the moment. The point was not to spoil your baby by cuddling or holding them too much. I think the Dr. Spock phenomenon was in direct response to the advice given to my grandmother's generation.
Ok, I held my baby a lot so my defensiveness isn't warranted but there were a couple of times when I sat the baby on a blanket in the middle of the floor and hid in the closet and cried because I couldn't handle the noise.
So maybe she was hiding in the closet. Who knows.
I wouldn't be surprised if most if not all of us had a moment or several like this. And I'm sure my grandmother had her moments in that closet as well. But no, you weren't supposed to cuddle with your children. This advice did not stop at simply not picking them up when they were crying. No. Cuddling. Ever. (Well, according to my grandmother--"ever".)
I retrieved beers for my Dad and company from an age too early to remember.
I went to the store for smokes for my parents from about age 5.
Ha! Who didn't?
My BFF uncle had a beer tap system in the basement. His house was always full of people, drinking beer and playing cards. He had a set of beer mugs with bicycle bells on the handle and when anyone needed a beer, they would ring the bell and the kids (always a lot of kids there) would race to fill the empty mug. Our "pay" was to be able to drink a couple of sips of beer.
I have no idea why they didn't have pitchers for the beer. And more importantly, why they thought it was perfectly fine for 9-12 yo to drink rather large amounts of beer over the course of a typical Saturday night.
I had my first mixed drink at that house when I was 15yo. It was vodka and oj. I felt terribly grown up.
Originally Posted by colsxjack
I went to the store for smokes for my parents from about age 5.
This was very common when I was a child (70s). I can remember my uncle sending us (the cousins) several blocks away and across a major road. We were 5-7yo at the time.
I remember driving my dad home from the bar (I was 'nearly driving anyway' he said. I think I was 13yo.)
Well, at least he wasn't driving drunk I guess!
The first time my sister drove it was on the highway (just a 2 lane highway mind you) a distance of about 50km. My dad was her "teacher". He fell asleep half way through the drive! lol. Not that he was drinking or anything (my dad doesn't drink) but what kind of supervision is that?? I guess my sister seemed like a capable driver or he wouldn't have relaxed enough to fall asleep!
Try 18 months old. I remember my cousin, with his toddler son on his lap, letting him have sips of beer from the can during lunch. And then the toddler slumped on dad's shoulder, fast asleep, and everyone laughed and thought it was so cute. Mind you, I was maybe 5 years old and my perception is probably flawed. Toddler likely had a full stomach and was ready for a nap anyway.
We did that too. In the late 60's. I had forgotten about that!
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