Were adults such as teachers ever hateful to you when you were small?

[Toughsuitofarmour]

Just something on my mind today. It strikes me as bizarre when looking back, how contemptuous and cold certain adults were to me when I was a child. A couple of teachers, a sports coach, etc.

I was born to an unmarried mother in Ireland over thirty years ago and wonder if maybe part of it was because of that. My grandparents were well regarded in the community though.

One of the adults in my home life was a bit of a bully, which definitely affected my self-esteem, and I wonder if these other adults who were scornful of me maybe picked up on some vulnerability in me - combined with their ideas that I was 'illegitimate', maybe that was their justification because somebody like me didn't count? I don't know.

I'm not talking about anything extreme and I had lots of nice other teachers and neighbours too!

The whole thing though makes me think that was a mad way to behave - I couldn't imagine saying nasty things to a child, or going out of my way make them feel small, or ignoring a distressed child.

Was childhood just a bit tougher back then for everyone? Did people not think much of how their words or actions could impact on small kids?

My aunt took a really strong dislike to me (and still hates me but luckily I see her only rarely). She's got cancer now that's apparently terminal. I really don't feel anything at all - I know that sounds terrible but I don't feel sorry for her at all.

At the first school l ever went to, we had an evil bitch. She was a teacher, and quite frankly, she should never have been allowed near children.
lf you made a mistake with your writing (we're talking 5-7 year olds here) she'd punch you in the back.
After lunch she'd come round the class and you had to hold your hands out, palm up and palm down, so she could see if they were clean. lf they weren't, or if you bit your nails (which l did at the time) she'd rap you on the knuckles with a ruler.
Horrible woman. She wasn't strict, she was just nasty.

Why start a thread and then not participate OP? There seem to be a lot of these lately.

Teacher at primary school decided to share my confidential medical information with other members of my class and make a joke out of it. She was horrible to me, evil cow.

I was bullied throughout primary school by a girl who forced me to be her "best friend" but treated me really badly. In year 6, I finally managed to break away from her. However, my year 6 teacher hated me (for reasons I'll never understand - I was quiet, academic and well behaved). She refused to let me move away from this girl and told me I had "silly schoolgirl-itis". She came up to me when I was reading and hissed in my ear that I had a real attitude problem and told my parents I was a troublemaker. I had literally done nothing but ask to move desks to get away from a bully. I wish I could meet her now. I'd have a few words to say!

Yes my P6 teacher was absolutely vile. Why she worked with children, I don't know.

P7 teacher didn't like my name so shortened it and called me it for the whole school year, I told her I didn't like shortened version and I was screamed at for backchatting and being rude.

One teacher. Took an instant dislike to me and then made my life a misery for a year. Even to the point other kids noticed and wondered what the fuck was up. Only teacher who’s name I actually remember.

A “friends” parents. Her mum would make fun of my clothes/shoes/hair constantly. Told me my Dr Marten boots were fakes and made me lift them up so she could show me how she knew they weren’t real. Utter cunt

Almost all of my teachers/helpers in primary sadly. I had undiagnosed dyspraxia and I was forever getting side smirks, told frequently no one would employ me or that I wouldn’t make a good housewife or mother all because I was naturally disorganised and found it hard to plan in my head and co-ordinate myself. They all laughed at my sensory processing issues too and once even held me down and force fed me food.

It would never happen now, plus I’ve learned good coping mechanisms (without their help) and have achieved all the things they said I wouldn’t do.

1960's Catholic junior school it was barbaric, the staff were catholic's all attending the church which was attached to the school. The problem was my grandma, she wasn't pleasant but was president of the union of catholic mothers, the teachers hated her, they couldn't or dare not challenge her, so us the grandkids coped it at school, about 8 of us. Any opportunity to belittle or punish us. I have nothing to do with anything catholic since leaving school.

to all those who had difficult childhoods. I hope life has since made it up to you.

I was one of those children who didn’t bring out the best in adults. I was lucky enough to have mostly wonderful, kind teachers, but even then used to puzzle over their lack of warmth towards me compared to other children. It took me an embarrassing length of time to work out it was the result of my poor social skills. I would feel normal emotions, but did not realise until adulthood that you have to arrange your face and body language into outward expressions of those emotions. My parents still joke that my year 6 teacher feared I was some sort of sociopath because she always used to bring up this apparent absence of emotion (I should point out that I was actually a very, kind thoughtful and sensitive child).

Not reacting as expected did get me into trouble a few times. Mostly though I just felt a bit sad that my teachers didn’t seem to like me as much as the other children.

I have made bloody sure that my own DC have a good understanding of non-verbal communication. I don’t think it comes naturally to us all.

Yes, I was either extremely unlucky with my teachers or extremely lucky with them. I didn’t have any ‘ok’ teachers, they were either fantastic or terrible. My experience with teachers ended when I was 14 and my teacher bullied me so badly (and encouraged her class to do the same to me) and I ended up playing truant for so long and moving away from the area so I didn’t ever go back to school and left with no GCSE’s.

There was one teacher in our primary school who was just absolutely horrid. It wasn’t just me she picked on, she was just downright nasty.
I’ve always had a good singing voice and she removed me from the choir because I couldn’t sing in tune. Which wasn’t true at all. She would come up close and put her ears close to my mouth and then humiliate me in front of everyone saying I couldn’t sing in tune. Some of the children used to wet themselves as she refused to let them use the toilet. We had her twice in primary school in J1 and J3 as it was back then. So years 3 and 5 in today’s school system.

A maths teacher in secondary school took a dislike to me. He was a crap teacher and he used to like talking to the pupils more than teaching. I remember him biting my head off a few of times. I can't remember why but I didn't get that from any other teacher. I generally got on well with them.
A friends parents and older siblings used to treat me like I was something they had stepped in. I had a turbulent home life growing up because of my dads drinking and because of this they looked down upon me.

I haven't posted in ages and I had to log back in to post on this one but it really struck a chord with something I've been thinking about lately.

I had a hateful PE teacher Mrs Smith who refused to accept that my medical condition meant I couldn't do games and would make me sit in my PE kit and watch, often on a freezing cold yard.

Also a hateful high school English teacher who was beyond unprofessional and used us as a free counselling service (sixth form)

But the thing that I REALLY remember from my childhood is KNOWING at say 11/12 or so that my best friends mother hated me.

It was awful because I couldn't explain why I knew that or how she made me feel as I hadn't had the life experience to articulate what it was.

A throwaway conversation about her years later made me realise that she simply didn't think I was "good enough" to be her daughters best friend, preferred one of our peers and resented it. Probably also didn't think my parents had the "right values" - class snobbery

Having the words for the feeling was a relief but it also really hurt.

11 yo is a kid still no kid should know that an adult thinks they aren't good enough and for the things that they aren't rather than things that they are.

When I was about three I went to a neighbour to be looked after when my mum was at work. She was a spiteful bitch. I remember her force feeding me and even though I was sick she carried on. She used to pinch my arms and was generally very nasty. She had a daughter who was a couple of years older and she used to encourage her to hurt me to me too. One day she pinched me so hard I had several black bruises. When my mum saw them and asked me how it had happened she finally stopped taking me there.

When he was 5 or 6, my brother had a primary school teacher who would tie children to her desk if they misbehaved, and would make them spread their hands out on the desk and then whack just in front of them with a wooden ruler, so they’d be terrified it was going to hit them. This sounds like something from a bygone era but it was the 1990s. I’m sure there was other horrific stuff too that I can’t remember.

Eventually another teacher caught her tormenting a child like this, and he and a few other teachers banded together and threatened to walk out if she wasn’t fired. Evil, evil woman.

I'm so sorry to all of you who had such shit adults Many of these sound very abusive, it is absolutely shocking.

I do think the world is in many ways a kinder place for children now. Thank goodness. I just can't imagine deliberately trying to cause a child distress.

I had a Y5 teacher that was vile, looking back now. He was lovely to me (blonde hair, massive dark brown eyes), but his behaviour to other students in my class was horrendous. Two things stick out. One of my best friends was called Neil. He'd trained the whole class to chorus 'down' after saying Neil's name during the register. I can only assume it was for his own amusement. The other thing he used to do focused mostly on one other boy. Back then (early 90s) he was seen as being 'slow'. Nowadays we'd recognise immediately that he needed intervention from the SENCO. Anyway, if he got something wrong in class, the teacher would hit him on the head with a book!

So tempted to name and shame him.

Yes, I had teachers who were awful.

I'm dyslexic (and my brother is more dyslexic), and we were both picked on. I had a teacher who terrified me, aged 5, by being angry I'd 'deliberately' done things wrong, and who got me into a total panic by telling me my arithmetic was wrong. I'd spend ages frantically adding up 2+3 to try to work out how it wasn't 5, and only realised much later the issue was that I was writing 3 backwards.

I had a lot of that through primary school.

Much later, in sixth form, I had a teacher who bullied me because I caught a rural bus - the only bus - and it was scheduled to arrive just before we were due in to school. She decided, at random, that we students who were in her class has to arrive five minutes early, and she spent two years being furious with me because I 'disobeyed' and 'couldn't be bothered'. She told me I must be autistic as I was so unable to comply with rules and relate to people (and I didn't know enough about autism to know this didn't make sense), and I ended up believing her. Horrible woman.

Yes my teacher when I was 10 years old so 1989, she use to bring me to the top of the class she would poke me really hard in the shoulder with two fingers, I remember getting upset not being able to catch my breath. Mean cow.
Dad was hard on us too, used fear for good behavior he rarely smacked us, but scared us.
My DD had a mean teacher when she was 7, teacher had a face like thunder most mornings, she shouted a lot, their previous teacher was kind so it was new ground, I felt helpless knowing this adult caused DD fear everyday.

Yes. I left the school about a decade ago and can still remember how small a member of staff there used to make me feel. She had so much venom towards me, and had done since I started at the nursery there.
She went on to get an award for services to teaching which really rubs me up.

I'd love to bump into my maths and chemistry teachers now as an adult and tell them how they made me feel

I had the chance to do this with a vile junior teacher - a crazed slapper, she laid into absolutely everyone except a couple of favourites

Doing a presentation at my late mum's WI, I realised who the frail old lady in the front row was, but was surprised when she made some incredible remark about "hoping I had happy memories of x school". She was politely and coolly told exactly what I recalled, and it was so chilling to see the very same crazed expression return to this elderly lady's eyes

Yeah. One teacher in particular was very transparent in her feelings towards me: yes, I was an obnoxious teen, but fuck me it was obvious she hated me. She really friggin nailed me to the cross on parent's evening too!

There was also a lot of predatory teachers at our school : seems like this was common in the 80's, 90's. One teacher asked me once how many teachers I'd slept with! ( and this was in the pub!)

Yes my year 2 teacher was known as the “Dragon Lady” because she was a vile piece of work. I remember one time she wouldn’t let my friend go to the toilet so he wet himself on the carpet and it turned out the poor lad had diabetes which is why he needed to wee so often.

My year 4 teacher turned out to be a paedophile and they only caught him after he moved schools and just had a baby daughter of his own. I don’t remember the details as I was so young but it really reframed all our interactions with him.

I was stalked and harassed quite viciously when I was 11 to 13 or so by a boy in high school and it got to the point it needed police intervention and a restraining order which meant he couldn’t be in the school with me but because he was a “nice quiet boy” and I was more “outgoing” type girl the year adviser took me aside and grilled me about how I was ruining his future and it would be my fault if I drove him to suicide.

How the fuck ANY of these people got into the teaching profession is beyond me and I can’t imagine any of this sort of behaviour being swept under the rug these days as it was back then.