Growing up in my family, I used to think it was normal that ...

[China Rider]

my dad played softball when i was a young kid

after the games we went back to the bar as a family

my brother and i(5 years older than me) sat at the bar , bought my mother cigs outta the machine, played shuffle board and arcade games

i was 6 years old

we weren't the only kids

i guess it was safe since so many people were watching us?

 

[Perpetual Indulgence]

- both my parents worked, and my sister and I would go to daycare before and after school. It was only after we moved into a nicer neighborhood when I was about 10 that we had bus service that went to our new school, and my parents trusted me and my sister home alone. All the other kids in the neighborhood had ridden the bus their whole school-lives, and everyone had at least one parent home during the day.

Both my parents worked 40 hours/week too. It was normal to be woken up at 5am for a big breakfast then go back to bed and be awoken by the baby sitter to get ready for school. It was normal to have our clothes laid out the night before (which I still do). It was also normal to have a super clean apartment and dinner on the table 530pm every night. It was normal to be in 3rd grade and take city transit to school and sometimes walk home alone for 30 minutes. In 5th grade (age 10), I became a latch key kid and took care of my brother 3 years younger.

 

[addictivepersona]

^ I didn't think it was normal, but I too went to a before-school program--And (as I later found out) when my grandma had cancer, we would go to the after-school program. Used to lay out clothing the night before to be up and out of the door by 5:45 during the school year, 5:30 during the summer. Though I went to an awesome baby sitters during the years my grandma was getting treatment: The baby sitter had five children, the youngest being 1 and the oldest being 16, so it was quite fun despite the early wake up call. /rambling.

 

[Psyke]

Growing up in my family, I used to think it was normal that ...


You were forced to go skiing every sunday. No matter how many screams, tears, or tantrums, you WERE going to go skiing goddamit

 

[footscrazy]

We also used to play word games after dinner, without fail.

Same, I was going to say this My dad is fantastic with words and languages, and often conversations focused around the history of words, languages and wordplay.

My dad was also a singer/musician and I thought it was normal for families to sing together at the kitchen table, or in the car!

I thought it was normal to go bushwalking every weekend. My parents met in a bushwalking club, so every weekend we'd go to the country and hike. I loved it, bushwalking is still one of my favourite things to do. I learnt such a great appreciation for nature. When I was little and my parents would take me on long camping bushwalks, I'd be carried on my dad's back along with the camping gear

 

[joannie_mhm]

Growing up in my family, I used to think it was normal that ...


You were forced to go skiing every sunday. No matter how many screams, tears, or tantrums, you WERE going to go skiing goddamit

This is awesome. I guess the Australian equivalent would be "I don't wannnaaaaaaa go to the beach!!"

 

[Thou]

...That everyones parents had the same birthday. Therefore, in order to get married, you better hope that girl has the same birthday as you. Turns out they were the only two.

 

[animal_cookie]

^my parents' birthdays are a week apart.

 

[queenbee1127]

I used to think it was normal that when we went out to dinner as a family (which was rare in and of itself) that we never got dessert. When the server would come by and ask, my parents politely declined and there was no argument out of me and my sister, we knew that was how it would be. On the rare occasion my parents relented, it was incredibly exciting.

I work as a server in a restaurant and it blows me away how many kids either expect dessert, or how they bully and shake down their parents into buying it for them. We have physical displays that we explain to each table, and they can be pretty tempting but the way kids command to their parents which dessert they want it always shocking to me. I can't even imagine what would have become of me if I would have demanded my dad buy me a creme brulee every time we went to dinner.

 

[Perpetual Indulgence]

^that would have got me a threat of a back hand across the face or sitting in the car alone

I don't recall ordering dessert out either. It was not part of the meal routine at home.

 

[joannie_mhm]

It wasn't a standard thing but this thread has just reminded me of one day my brother and I were fighting so much in the back of the car that my mum had to make good on her threat of kicking us out and making us walk home (about ten minutes in our own neighbourhood). She felt so bad that she just went around the block and came back to pick us up, but my brother was so proud he refused and we walked the rest of the way!

 

[AmorRoark]

^that would have got me a threat of a back hand across the face or sitting in the car alone

I don't recall ordering dessert out either. It was not part of the meal routine at home.

Same to this and queenbee. I still don't ever order desert... it's pretty much a waste to me because 1. I can't remember the last time I went out to eat and was still hungry after the regular meal (shocker: they give way too big portions at the majority of the restaurants in America) and 2. I don't even really like desert.

 

[MyDoorsAreOpen]

It's interesting how a lot of the idiosyncrasies families have are related to rules about food, which is one of the major ways that cultures disagree also. People get very opinionated, even emotionally attached, to their ideas of the "right" and "wrong" ways to prepare food and eat, what constitutes "good" food, or whether something should ever be eaten. Anthropologists would probably have a field day with this -- I wouldn't be surprised if family-specific rules and taboos related to food predates (or perhaps even laid the groundwork for!) what we recognize today as culture. It's a pattern that's been seen in non-human social animals, IIRC. It really goes to show that we are what we eat, and deep down we all know it.

On that note, growing up in my family, I used to think it was normal that the whole table shared one butter knife, which stayed on the butter dish when not in use. As we ate meat sparingly, a knife was not a common part of the placesetting, and my parents saw no point in laying out and washing knives that saw little to no action. But when we had guests for dinner, there would be a knife at each placesetting. I once caused an awkward moment as a kid by asking a guest, "Can I use the butter knife when you're done?"

 

[Perpetual Indulgence]

hahahaha Joannie. My dad made me get out and walk after I spilled ice cream in the car when I promised I would not make a mess if he bought it for me. I must have been 8 or 9. It would have been a 20 min walk to my grandmother's house but my uncle picked me up on the side of the road. My parents grew up in a small town and they are each one of 13 children so I am related to almost everyone in the area. My dad did not fuck around when it came to consequences he followed through. He once left his mother at the grocery store (in an unfamiliar city to her) because she took too long. My mom asked him to go back and get her.

 

[Kenickie]

... you didn't drink during a meal. To this day, I don't drink while eating.

ditto. it came from my mother's governess, she said all germans observed such eating practices?? (anyone in germany care to confirm or deny such claim?)

...that maypoles and the dancing and the chanting happened everywhere on mayday.

...that we could make a meal from food our family grew.

...we didn't wear shoes during the summer, at all, to do anything!

...neighbors rode their horses to our house.

...my entire maternal side of the family lived within walking distance of each other

...my entire paternal side of the family lived on the same street

 

[InvisibleEye]

Growing up in my family, I used to think it was normal...

... for the whole to be outdoors at -25°C in February and cook sardines on a charcoal grill, on our tiny balcony. My first Canadian friends used to laugh so hard at that and 'sardine' was my official nickname. To this day I still can't live without charcoal-grilled sardines. The entire neighborhood smells like fresh fish because of me! Força Portugal!

 

[addictivepersona]

... you didn't drink during a meal. To this day, I don't drink while eating.

ditto. it came from my mother's governess, she said all germans observed such eating practices?? (anyone in germany care to confirm or deny such claim?)

To add another layer to mystery, no one in my family is German, LOL. My mom is Polish and Irish, but the rule most likely came from her mother, who is 100% Polish, though not first generation off-the-boat.

 

[Belisarius]

1.) That kids weren't allowed to drink coffee. I certainly wasn't; for years, my folks told me that it would stunt your growth. In fact, I didn't drink coffee until well into my adult years, and even today I find something vaguely unsettling about minors drinking coffee. Of course, I realize that they only told me that myth because they didn't want me to turn into a caffeine-fueled holy terror (which would have happened--count on it), and in retrospect I probably would've enjoyed adolescence a *lot* more if I'd had coffee to take the edge off it, but that feeling lingers to this day.

2.) Making your bed. I had to make my bed before I could do anything as a kid, and the fact that many people *don't* make their beds weirds me out. In fact, if I leave my house without making my bed it feels as awkward as walking out in my undies, and I neglect to do it only in great haste. I'll even make my bed if it's been unmade all day and I have to go back to bed in a few hours. Don't ask me why, but it's an old ritual.

 

[joannie_mhm]

^My mum tried sporadically throughout my childhood to get me to make my bed but didn't have much luck, she must have decided at some stage to take the path of least resistance.

I've recently started making it now as an adult and it's really weird the happy it gives me.


Growing up in my family I thought it was normal to sell your mum's baking to other kids at school, then use the money to buy chips. Grass is always greener, kids whose mum's didn't bake wanted our stuff, we just wanted junk food!

 

[Kenickie]

To add another layer to mystery, no one in my family is German, LOL. My mom is Polish and Irish, but the rule most likely came from her mother, who is 100% Polish, though not first generation off-the-boat.

same here -- my mothers family is all danes.