I have no idea why some adults are so awful to children, or why they can’t seem to understand that, while children are people like the rest of us, they’re not developmentally on the same level as those of us who have more experience under our belts.
It’s pretty obvious plenty of folks struggle with this concept, though, when you hear stories like these 19 – in which adults are completely petty to children.
19.Wow. Imagine doing this as an adult.
In elementary school I use to talk to the lunch lady everyday and then the one day I didn’t say hi.
She came to my lunch table and told me I was fake, phony, and a few other things and stopped speaking to me.
I still don’t understand what her problem was.
18. That person should not have been a teacher.
I have horrible handwriting.
I have forever, no amount of intervention or practice has helped. When I was in 5th grade, my Social Studies teacher seemed to take a lot of pleasure in constantly reminding me of how awful my hand writing was.
We used to have to bring out notebooks up for her to check our homework. I dreaded this so damn much. She would hold up my notebook so the whole class could laugh at my handwriting.
I’m grown now, that was a long time ago, but I still hate to have hand write anything that other people will see.
17. That’ll teach him.
That brought back a memory. We had a school aide who always ALWAYS went by Grandma Jean. I’m not sure if it was because her granddaughter was in my class or not, but we all called her Grandma Jean.
Anyways, we get a new principal when we’re in 3rd or 4th grade. Principal gave us hell and tried to give us lunch detention for calling her Grandma Jean. Keep in mind, we’d been calling this lady Grandma Jean since we were all in Kindergarten.
Grandma Jean came up to us and the principal and just flat out said something to the effect of, “They call me Grandma Jean. I AM Grandma Jean.”
Grandma Jean is a badass, and last I knew still kicking in what must be her 80’s or 90’s. Still lives in her own home too!
16. The face I just made.
I broke two fingers on my dominant hand in 9th grade and had a splint on them so I couldn’t write.
I had a test at school and the teacher made me write with my left hand then marked my answers wrong because she couldn’t read them.
15. I hope he hates himself now.
One of my uncles was in a years-long fight with my mom. To stir trouble, any time he greeted my sister and I, he would tell my sister how beautiful and wonderful she is and to me just say “Oh, you’re here too” and then promptly ignore me the rest of the night. I used to adore him up to that point so this ended up in me being extremely hurt and crying to my mom for hours about how I’m ugly and not special.
He got his petty vengeance on my mother and crushed my self-esteem. Till today I don’t forgive him for it.
14. That man has a sad life.
At 16 years old, I had a job at a gas station after school. Did all the grunt work (sweeping cigarettes in the parking lot, emptying trash bins, etc.).
I’m taking the trash out one day and a grown ass man in his 40s comes up to me and says something along the lines of “I make more money in a week than you do in a whole year” and all I could think at the time was “Well yeah, I sure hope you do I’m in high school”.
Such a petty thing to say to a kid just trying to make a little bit of money after school.
13. That’s the nicest thing to call her.
My sixth grade teacher didn’t like me, I had transferred into her class when the TaG teacher was needed elsewhere, and this teacher was resentful. She was going to have the class read The Hobbit (long, long before any movies).
I was excited, I had already read it and the Trilogy the year before. She called me a liar in front of the whole class, then went on a tirade about how kids like me were terrible and thought we were better. I was a quiet shy girl, and cried. She mocked that too.
The rest of the year was hell, she let her pets (officers’ kids, it was a school near a Navy base) bully me. I was never good enough. She couldn’t fail me because I excelled at bookwork, but she picked on me at every turn. Trash human.
12. What is the matter with people?
I got in trouble in 6th grade for reading during home room. Home room was like a random 30 min period to work on homework but I always did my homework the night before so I would just quietly read. For some reason my home room teacher hated it.
One day she just yelled at me for always reading in her class and told me to do my homework. I told her all of my homework was done. She told me to prove it so I showed her all of my completed homework.
Then she confiscated my book and sent me to the principal’s office for being disrespectful. I’m still salty about it.
11. A terrible father.
My high school required uniforms. This extended to PE, but we instead had to wear one of two approved PE shirts and khaki shorts. I only had one PE shirt. It had a hole in the armpit. As I walked past, my dad hooked his finger into the hole and yanked to rip it wider. Then he laughed at me when I said I had enough problems without him causing more for me.
My dad again, took me fishing and told me to invite a buddy. Three hours in, we hadn’t caught shit. But my buddy and I didn’t say shit about it. My dad asked if we wanted to just go home. I said yes and he bitched me out. Called me a mama’s boy. Dropped me off about a mile from home so I had to walk, and told me the car had to be washed when he got back. My buddy backed me up when we got back. My mom did not.
Oh look, it’s my dad! I came home from school and he randomly said, “Today, you’re studying Spanish.” I told him I had other homework, but he didn’t care. As soon as he left, I started doing my other homework. He came back and took away my book, grounded me, and made me study Spanish. My teacher didn’t believe me when I told him my dad wouldn’t allow me to do my homework. I definitely don’t blame the teacher – that makes no sense.
10. Because the kid couldn’t possibly be telling the truth?
For background purposes; my full legal first name is Abby. Just Abby. All 4 letters, nothing more.
My 6th grade social studies teacher one time kept calling out the name Abigail one day. That’s not my name, so I don’t respond and looking for this new mystery person. She gets up and comes to my desk and asks me:
“Why aren’t you answering me?”
Me: “you called out Abigail, not Abby”
“Abby is short for Abigail, go to the principle’s office for being disrespectful”
I went to the principle’s office.
P: “why are you here?”
Me: “teacher called out for Abigail and i didn’t respond”
P: “why did you not respond?”
Me: “my name is Abby. Just Abby”
He pulls up my record and confirms that I am not and never have been an Abigale, and sends me back to class.
My teacher never called on me again.
9. Taking daddy issues to the next level.
I had a lot of problems with my dad as well.
- I used to be a bit pudgy when I was around 11 years old. He used that as an excuse to call me things like hippo, whale, sack of shit and so on.
- Throughout my teens, his nickname for me was “asshole”. As in “Asshole, bring me the remote control” sort of thing.
- He used to send me to important places, like the embassy, to get paperwork sorted out. Afterwards he would find something that I didn’t do when I was there, like “did you also ask about x?” If it was an important thing I would have asked it. So when I said no, he would tell me that I was stupid. He would often tell me that I would amount to nothing in this life.
- He would wake up from his 100th nap of the day and make me, my brother and mom do random shit like wash the carpets in the back yard with the lids of pots and pans. I remember being so embarrassed when a neighbor saw what we were doing and kindly tried to lend us the right tools for carpet washing.
- He would be angry whenever food was cold and needed to be heated up, or his own preference of food wasn’t prepared. He would grab random food items from the fridge and walk to his room, spilling some of whatever he had grabbed on the floor as he went on purpose. I had to clean the floor after him.
- He would eat sunflower seeds and throw the shells on the floor in the living room. My mom had to sit there as he ate and pick the shells up as he threw them.
- Once, he pulled a knife on me for siding with my mom because he was yelling at her, and calling her names over nothing of importance. He had called me stupid once again and I told him I was the smartest person in the house, because I couldn’t take it anymore. I went upstairs in my room. He started yelling at me to come down and I wouldn’t. After a few minutes, he walked up the stairs with a knife in his hand. The most terrifying part of the whole thing was that his eyes were all over my torso, searching for the “right” spot to stab.
8. This is gross on so many levels.
More indirectly to me, but when I was graduating high school my aunt asked me which of my late grandfather’s rings I’d like as a graduation gift, along with a card/a little cash. I told her I really appreciated the offer, but jewelry just isn’t my thing and that I felt like it would be wasted on me (I do have other items passed down from him). She said ok no problem and I thought that was that.
Graduation came and went and a couple weeks later a few family members are over for dinner. Well I’m standing talking to another aunt (her sister) and she walks over to us and hands me a little box. At this point I know what it is and even though I had respectfully declined before, I decide I’m going to open it and give a “wow! great thank you!”.
I open the ring’s box and before I can get a word out the Aunt I had been there talking to absolutely LOSES IT. “Are you F##×ING KIDDING ME? You give THAT ring to HIM?!!”. Yelling at her, yelling at me, making a huge scene. Guess that ring specifically was one she had made known she wanted. I look to my aunt who gave me the ring and she just couldn’t hide the little smile on her face.
So the extreme pettiness was really between my two aunts, and I felt like I was basically set up/used as a tool in the whole situation. Would have felt bad for my other aunt, but tbh most of her anger was directed towards me. She did apologize days later. Should mention I had a few friends over as well witnessing this. Just super embarrassing for me especially since I had zero interest in the ring.
7. That’s just not nice.
My mom asked if I wanted to play 52 card pick up, while my friends were over.
I asked her what it was and she said I either want to play or I don’t. I told her I didn’t want to play anything if I didn’t know what it was.
She got visibly irritated and threw the cards on the ground and said “this is 52 card pick up, pick them up.” She then threatened to ground me as she watched me pick the cards up and put them away nicely
I think it was worse because my friends were watching.
6. Nooooo stop it.
I was at an Easter Egg hunt when I was around 6. It was in a big park area with lots of rocks.
I saw a little chocolate egg foil glisten and ran over to pick it up.
As I reached my hand out to pick it up a man trod on my hand to stop me getting it, then he called his kid over to “find” it.
5. This one might take the cake.
My aunt was unpleasant or weird with everyone but always particularly cold to me.
One day when I was about 14 she took me aside and said she’d held a grudge against me because of my name – she had wanted to call her first daughter that name but my parents had had a child first and used it (they had no idea she wanted the name and aren’t the kind of people who would have done it on purpose). She said she’d tried really hard and had just about forgiven me for it.
I just remember being baffled by it and then feeling sorry for her for being that spiteful, to be honest, but it palled later in comparison with all the other crazy horrible things she did to her own family.
4. My heart just dropped.
A math teacher handed back our tests in class. They were graded and marked and all that. She was going over some of the questions that most people got wrong (myself included), so I was writing down some notes on my test so I could reference it later and remind myself why I got things wrong and what I was supposed to do.
She ripped my test away from me and started screaming at me that cheating is absolutely not allowed and that I should be ashamed of myself. Confused and in shock, I started choking up and tried to explain that I was just trying to take notes.
One of the most humiliating times of my childhood (around 13 years old), and I still don’t understand why it happened.
3. That is some low self-esteem.
Growing up, my mom’s sister absolutely hated me and got her dad to treat me poorly, too.
I learned the reason for her behavior and why that side of the family treated me so horribly.
My mom got pregnant with me and I was gonna be born the same year as her sister’s kid and she was mad that my mom and I were stealing their spotlight.
2. That cannot be allowed.
In grade four, a teacher gave us a few questions before lunch break and expected us to answer each of them correctly right after the break was over.
A classmate couldn’t get a few answers correct so the teacher made him walk to each bench and get a slap from each student present in the class.
Thinking about the incident now, I feel like going back in time and beat the shit of that horrible teacher.
1. Attendance awards are the worst.
Had a teacher in kindergarten threaten to expel me because I was sick and didn’t show up the day before.
She put me on the spot in front of the whole class telling me not to lie and that she’d call the principal. I cried in front of the whole class not knowing what to do. Apparently she wanted to win some attendance award and thought confronting a child was a good idea. Like bruh I was fking 5.
Still salty on how she got away with it.
The adults are the ones who should know better in these situations, don’t you think?
Did something like this happen to you as a kid? Tell us who and what they said in the comments!