Childhood trauma - AIBU to think that the past was a dreadful time to be a kid?

[shareacokewithnoone]

I haven't thought this through logically really but from a mishmash of ideas - I was born in the early 1980s and corporal punishment was abolished in schools but gosh, I remember some nasty, sarky teachers. I remember one boy being made to stand in the corner and when he cried being told 'turn around, no one wants to see your ugly face!' (this was in RECEPTION!) That's one example, but there are countless more.

Pre 1960s (?) children were smacked pretty brutally - not just a tap on the bum but pants pulled down and smacked repeatedly? Humiliating as well as very painful, surely?

Children were sent to hospitals alone, and I don't know 'put up and shut up' was the order of the day. We had a teacher who used to touch us inappropriately but none of us girls would have DREAMED of challenging it or telling - you just didn't. And this was early 1990s.

I guess - AIBU to think it's really only the last decade where safeguarding and child protection have emerged? And what brought it on?

Fairylea *At the same time I was being force fed at school and being violently sick even before it got to lunch time with the fear of it.

Very weird times.

I still can't eat certain things now because of it and the thought of that awful teacher shouting at me. *

I had this too in the 1970s. The Headmistress (a very stern spinster who hated small children) decided that I must eat custard. Custard was pink, yellow or brown claggy nastiness that I really didn't enjoy, but that just made her more determined. I think I spend my whole lunch hour for years sitting in tears at the only table left up in the hall with her standing over me until I took a mouthful of custard. My Mum knew it was happening but there was nothing she do about it.

I can't stand custard now, can't stand the smell or the sight of it but I reckon it wouldn't have been a problem if I hadn't been abused daily by this woman. She's probably dead now, but if she isn't, I wish her indignity and distress.