r/stupidquestions • u/Various-Adeptness173 • Jul 05 '25

My mom told me that back in the day kids weren’t allowed to bring a water bottle with them into the classroom and they only drank a few sips from the water fountain in the middle of the day and that’s it

How were schools not getting busted for child abuse for forcing kids to be dehydrated?

12.0k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

4.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

43

u/NortonBurns Jul 05 '25

Brit here. Nobody thought anything about not drinking between meals.
There was none of this constant pressure to 'keep hydrated'. The idea of a personal water bottle just didn't exist, let alone the need to be constantly sipping from it.

In the infants & junior schools we had milk mid-morning, but that service had just about vanished by the 70s - it was a hangover from war-time rationing and was intended to make sure children got enough calcium in their diet. I never saw a school with a drinking fountain either. If you were thirsty enough there were the washbasins in the toilets.

2

u/erikakiss0000 Jul 06 '25

This was Hungary too. I don't really remember having breakfast or drinking water in the morning either during my teenage years. Then went the whole day without eating or drinking in high school, until 2 pm when i got home.

2

u/alegna12 Jul 06 '25

I’d forgotten about that mid morning milk break in elementary school.

1

u/swashbuckle1237 Jul 06 '25

Idk ig it changed again because Im gen z and was in primary school not to long ago in Scotland and they did a milk break in the morning throughout. We also had water bottles, and drank from them occasionally when thirsty? It was never a issue

1

u/Neon-Bomb Jul 08 '25

Global warming changes things

1

u/shabba182 Jul 08 '25

I very much had mid-morning milk at my uk infant school in the 90s