There are plenty of amazing things about being a kid – people do stuff for you, you can eat whatever you want, mostly you can play all day – but there are also plenty of downsides.
It can be interesting to look back as an adult on your time spent as a dependent under someone else’s roof and rules and figure out what you disliked the very most about being little – and these 17 people definitely did some deep digging!
17. Just because they’re little doesn’t mean their feelings aren’t big.
I was also made fun of for having any kind of negative emotion. Mom would literally play a pretend tiny violin ‘feeling sorry’ for me. After she instigated said negative emotion.
16. Being made fun of never feels good.
This is a big one for me too! It seems like the previous generation of adults loved to tease and make fun of us. I think maybe they thought we would grow up with “thick skin”. It doesn’t work.
Along that same vein, when adults would tickle and wrestle with me until I felt scared and overwhelmed was probably my most hated thing about being a kid. I had an uncle that would pinch my nose so hard it would make my eyes water. I hated it SO MUCH.
Some adults are so immature.
15. Not being able to really let it out.
Oof I think this is where all my unhealthy coping mechanisms came from – I never got listened to about how bad I felt so I ended up just taking things out on myself.
14. Hahaha this definitely brought back memories.
When you went to a family friends house and you were playing with their children and then your parents said it’s time to go so you’d go and stand by them but then the adults would remain talking for another half an hour but you couldn’t go play with the kids because you were “about to go” so you had to listen to adult talk whilst staring at the coffee table.
13. There is nothing more frustrating.
Being talked down to, or people laughing at me when I was telling them something serious
12. It’s sad when nobody listens to kids.
False accusations but when you try to defend yourself you get told to shut up or even worse you get punished further.
11. Learn to read a pint-sized room, please.
Like when people do some dumb ass “prank” on you, and you get angry and they are like “Chill dude, its just for fun”. Yeah, but it wasnt fun at all you dipshit
10. When it’s light in the summer!
Going to bed when other kids are still playing outside
9. Yeah, the first person laughing is kind of essential.
That phrase: “We’re not laughing AT you, we’re laughing WITH you.” But I wasn’t fucking laughing at all
8. We’re all like that at some point, too. Humans are rough.
The cruelty of other kids.
7. Just because they’re kids doesn’t mean they’re stupid.
My mom used to mimic things I told her to her friends. She’d use a high pitched voice. I hate being mocked.
6. This makes my heart hurt.
I don’t know if hate is really the right word, but when I was really little, I was terrified of my dad. My earliest memories of him are being woken up in the middle of the night when he got home, smacked around a bit, and sent off to bed again without so much as an explanation. “You know what you did”, he would say, but of course I didn’t, because why would I ask if I already knew?
I put a ton of work into trying to keep him happy and not pissing him off, but it didn’t always work.
I say hate might be the wrong word because I didn’t really know better back then. I didn’t start hating him until I met kids and parents that had better relationships, which wasn’t until high school. Until then, that was just how it was and I didn’t really question it.
5. Some teachers are not in it for the right reasons.
I broke my arm in the 1st grade playing tag. I slipped and fell into a banister. Went to push myself back up and couldn’t put pressure on my arm. I remember it clear as day.
The teacher on duty wouldn’t have it, and claimed I got ran over on a tricycle. Even despite the other kids I was playing with tell her the same thing I did. To this day more than 20 years later I still get talked down to about it.
I had several issues with this teacher before this event. For further stories of how crappy she was, here’s another story I shared a couple of months ago on another thread for the handful of people who would be interested.
In the first grade I had a problem with a certain kid and his friends constantly trying to bully me. One day he (Kyle) and his two best friends surrounded me, pinned me by the arms and drew their fists back to punch me when suddenly the teacher on duty blew her whistle. She then proceeded to scold 3 boys for causing a scene with their violent behavior. And by three boys, she meant the two friends of the boy, and me, who was on the ground by the other two. She sent us to the office. We all three were forced to sit every break without being able to play for three weeks. Even in the office, the other two boys were saying I was innocent and that Kyle was guilty, that they all three were attacking me. The boys even told the teacher that it was the three of THEM that were about to attack me. Her response was “No, HE was the only one not doing anything, I heard u/myjellojiggles yelling, egging y’all on.” Even the boys admitted the only thing I was yelling was “Please, no.” I was totally innocent, even the principal wasn’t hearing it. She actually made me feel worse about it because In her words “You are the first problem students this school has had since we started that student of the month program.”
First day sitting out from recess I stared at the ground on the verge of tears, and the teacher forced me to watch the other kids play as a punishment. I “deserved” to watch other kids have fun. Every day Kyle would run by and throw sand in my face with the teacher less than 5 feet from me who literally turned her face away as she smirked. Kyle, the boy who never got in trouble, was the son of that teachers best friend who, by the way, was the local school bus driver who backed into our horse trailer earlier that year and tore it all to hell and tried to take no responsibility for it. She blamed us for her hitting the horse trailer because “We put it in her way.” Truth of the matter was the she was being lazy. The bus driver before her just went up the road (MAYBE 400 feet ahead) and circled back around. She would pick me and my sister up, and then put the bus in reverse backing into a small ditch into our front yard where we parked all the cars and trailer. To make things worse she never actually looked all that much when she was backing up, she designated a couple kids to be her watcher. I guess they thought it would be funny and not let her know she was about to majorly f up.
The kid has issues. I remember hearing about a time he tried to literally kill his older brother. The family kept a boom box in their bathroom that plugged into the and played music while they were in the shower/bath. One day his older brother was taking a bath when Kyle came running in and threw the boom box into the bath. Thankfully it ripped the cord from the back end, so nothing ever came of it. Other incidents besides this happened, but I can’t recall the details of what all they were.
4. This guy has a way with words.
Being 4’3″ with the voice of a tuba
3. Something to think about when you’re naming your kid.
I have a name that has a million different variations and for reasons that confound me people insist my full name is one of the other variations. Even when I send emails with my damn name in the signature they still fuck it up. Fortunately after dealing with it for 38 years I don’t care at this point but it’s just a real head scratcher.
2. I really, really hope we can change this for our kids.
That my feelings didn’t matter. If I was feeling anything other than happy, I had to “get over it”. If I was crying, I was ordered to stop or get something “worth crying over”.
1. Injuries could wait until after the weekend.
I hate when parents don’t listen about their kid’s injuries. I sprained my ankle really badly when I was 18. Slid down a steep hill at my university, dad blamed it on me having too much shit in my backpack, and said I was fine, despite me not being able to put ANY weight on that leg, and having to hold onto the wall for support when I walked.
Next day was Saturday, and I was told to get up and do my chores. I said I couldn’t walk, and they didn’t believe me until my mom unwrapped the ace bandage and saw that my ankle was the size of a very large grapefruit.
She made my dad take me to the urgent care; I was in a gel brace for months, and was told to take an ungodly amount of Ibuprofen for swelling. This led to a lifetime of issues with that ankle; it gives out for no reason whenever it wants.
Fast forward 20 years and I find out that the ankle was actually broken, not just sprained, back then. There’s a big chip missing out of the non-weightbearing bone, and I need to see a podiatrist when the ‘Rona is over because it’s getting worse. Fucking fantastic! I still never got an apology from my parents for thinking I was faking it.
I can definitely agree with most of these, but I still wouldn’t mind being five or six again.
You can keep the middle school years locked up forever, though!