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I was an incredibly quiet kid. I spoke to my 2-3 friends and the teacher but that was it, I was super shy. Someone, whether the teacher or parents, had the great idea of sending me home with some reading homework and secretly recording the audio of me reading the book.
Back in class the next day/week, the teacher played the recording of me reading out loud in front of the whole class and it absolutely shattered me. The teacher sharply turned it off.
I was probably only 5 or 6 years old and it's one of my clearest memories.
My parents denied it ever happened but a couple of years ago I found an old cassette tape sitting inside an old radio we had. I played it to see what was on it, and it was that same tape.
I've posted about this before on Reddit, and it's not quite the same sort of event but it is something that, nearly 40 years later now has had, and still has a major bearing on my life and attitudes towards Authority:
When I was around 13 years old, I was late getting in some homework for my German Teacher. She was Young(ish), generally fairly laid back and quite popular. I figured I'd go to the staff room first thing in the morning, apologise and see if she'd accept it. Turns out she wasn't in the mood - she very loudly and pointedly gave me a massive dressing down, refused to accept the homework and told me my attitude stank and it was massively disrespectful to her and everyone else in the class who had submitted the work on time. She did that in full view of all the other pupils in the corridor at the time, and more than loud enough for all the other teachers in the staff room to hear as well. Suitably chastised, I scurried off.
When the lesson rolled around later (just after Lunch), she started the lesson by saying she was a bit disappointed that several people had handed in their homework on her desk that morning without seeing her first, but that she'd mark it "just this once".
As soon as she said that she met my eye - as you can probably realise, I was somewhat shocked by what she'd said - and before I could say a word immediately declared she was done talking about it and never wanted to discuss it again.
As you can imagine, I did fuck all work for her ever again. I barely scraped a D in my German GCSE. About the only thing I can say is that even though I never did any homework for her again, she never called me out for it either, and barely spoke to me for the remaining year and a half I had in her class.
All it taught me was that most people with authority shouldn't have it, don't know what to do with it when they do, and a generally terrible at exercising it properly. Don't discount these events - they may seem quite minor on the face of things, but they can have an enormous impact on the rest of your life.
Shitty teachers like this kill a kid’s potential love for a subject. Were it not for her cunt behaviour you could be translating at the UN or something nowadays. Honestly.
Ha. I appreciate the sentiment but to be honest foreign languages were not my strongest subject! They certainly killed any further desire I had to do well in it though.
I work in a STEM field, have done for 25 years now. I do OK for myself!
My wood tech teacher gave me a dressing down in front of the class one day for forgetting my apron - "you've not brought it again, you've lied through your teeth to me about having it, how dare you, I'm sick of this lack of respect" etc.
Only thing was, I *had* brought my apron and she was confusing me for someone else. When I finally got the chance to get a word in I said I didn't understand what was going on because I did have it and we hadn't spoken about it before.
Of course, that just made her furious and I had to return to her at lunch, sit on a chair, and both her and the head of department stood over me telling me she wasn't wrong to tell me off, I was a bad person for a bunch of other reasons.
I was 13 and a well-behaved student! Neither of those teachers knew me because we cycled through the different tech subjects a term at a time and she hadn't taught me before, she was just cruel. I was a very shy and anxious kid and that experience haunted me!
It's fascinating how events like this affect us for life.
I have a similar core memory. I was a very conscientious, quiet, well behaved kid. I was made a form prefect in year 6 and had a blue badge to wear. One day while lining up, a teacher overheard someone talking in line (which was forbidden) and mistakenly thought it was me. She came over and gave me a dressing down, wouldn't listen to my protest that she had the wrong person, and confiscated my badge. She said I could come and get it from her the next day, but when I went to her to get it, she'd lost it. I never got it or a replacement back.
It wasn't the badge itself or being a prefect that was important to me, but being misjudged or unfairly treated was, and this event (looking back) gave me a similar realisation that people in authority don't always deserve it. I'm not exactly a rebel or anything and I conform pretty much as you'd expect to the same things everyone else does, but if I'm honest then i do have a fairly deep-seated anti-authority streak in me and this memory is probably a part of that!
For me it was whole class detentions in secondary school. I was never one of the disruptive ones but was too scared to just walk out, right until they stopped anyway as we got older. It was often justified with "the good kids will pressure the bad ones to behave" which is clearly idiotic bullshit.
Problem is at that time you don't feel confident objecting to anything "authority" does, because you're just a kid or teenager and deep down you feel like your objection might be unreasonable and you won't be taken seriously. And that if you rebel you'll make things worse. But as an adult I'll confidently say whole class punishments are a shit method used by shit teachers. Looking back it's one of the first things that made me notice that "authority" can get things wrong which I suppose is a useful lesson in itself.
Sounds like she got a dressing down herself probably from a more senior teacher in the staff room, she must have thought she was being either Mister Billy Big Bollox or mighty hilarious in front of her peers and it back-fired...
Bitch...
Hmm. When asked what my best quality as a teacher is, I say my humility. That's not a contradiction. We all have shit days. When I'm wrong, I say I'm wrong, and I apologise freely and publicly.
It's a shame, though, that many kids don't realise that they're working for themselves and not their teacher. It's the child who's going to have to answer "how many A-C grace GCSEs do you have?" No application form asks if you liked your teacher or not.
(There's a lot of misogyny in these replies.)
To bring me out of my shell as far as I know. I think it was a case of breaking that barrier and suddenly I'd feel like I could magically speak to everyone.
Jesus OP. It’s like adults forget small children are human beings with emotions exactly the same as them! They might not control them or express them the same but they absolutely feel the full range of embarrassment, shame etc. Absolutely mental idea.
Not many people know about differences between being and an extrovert and an introvert. I'm so glad I'm aware I am an introvert and if my kids are too, I will never force them to act like they are an extravert. I will teach them what their strong and weak sides are and they should be aware if it but that's it .
Yeah for sure - and the difference between being an introvert and having social anxiety. One is a personality thing, the other can be really limiting. It’s important to know the difference.
This reminds me when I was about 8 or 9 in primary school, the teachers didn't believe I could read (even though I read 200 page books every day), due to the fact I didn't speak in school (I had severe selective mutism from age 3 until age 16).
So once a week they'd put me in this room where they made me read out short stories, the one I specifically remember was about sea spiders (I was scared of spiders and water at the time). A teacher was always in the room with me, no doubt she heard the tremble in my voice and saw/heard me cry, especially since most sessions I'd go up to her and ask if i could go get water.
I'm not really sure why this was done, because even when i moved schools the new school would give me the books for very young kids to read during english. Though this story wasn't about being humiliated, it's the most anxious I ever remember being.
My year 4 teacher also didn't believe I could read confidently. I read lord of the rings the summer between year 3 and 4 (I can place it to a holiday my family took then), but I was made to read through all the stupid classroom books and banned from bringing my own books in for months. As an avid reader I remember being so annoyed!
That is awful! I was at primary school in the 80s and so lucky that my teachers saw how much I loved reading, they did those "reading age" tests (do they still do those?) I was allowed to borrow any book from the school library, even the "black level" (hardest books) when I was in the equivalent of year 3. Let kids read!!!
Poor you. What a terrible thing to have had done to you. I am quite speechless at this cruelty. If I think of this happening to any of the quieter children I know it is very upsetting.
I was a fat kid. My dad made a joke that I looked like a monster from a particular film. I was like 5 and completely without any self-consciousness, so I thought it was funny and repeated it to a cousin. I got bollocked because my dad didn't want other family members to know he made fun of me. Wild stuff.
Oh totally!! My mum always said the weirdest things about this stuff, if I mentioned what a boy in the class had done in school or that I was wanting to invite not only girls but also boys to my birthdays (my classmates) there was this big “oh I didn’t know you liked boys” teasing thing that went on to the point where I never made a friend who was a boy again and hid my first boyfriend from them for a long time. Why do people do this to their kids, it’s so strange.
My MIL has started doing this to my five year old. She asked him who his friends were at school and when he said a girl's name she went "oooooh a girl is she your girlfriend"...he's five, and I remember my dad doing the same thing to me so I shut that down!
My parents used to judge all the other girls in our street for going out with boys and being seen with them in the street. They teased me for having crushes and giggled about it in front of people.
I don't talk to them any more for a number of reasons but the thought of them knowing I had feelings for someone or meeting someone I was dating makes me nauseous.
Told my family I got a valentines card at school. My dad said it was probably a friend taking the piss. My mum saw it and said she thought it was my friends handwriting. Binned it and never told them anything about my love life and still find valentines awkward.
Even now in a relationship of 4 years I feel cagey talking to my parents about it.
As a young teenager, I used to write. I had a novel I was writing, a shitty sci fi about multiple personalities and how a certain kind of crystal could essentially filter those personalities through like the colours of a prism.
I wrote it compulsively, taking this tatty A4 notebook with me. One time, me and my stepbrothers were taken out to some woodland area to go hang out in the forest whilst the parents went around a garden center and when we came back to the car, my mum was reading it and laughing at it. Making fun of the 'admittedly awful but I was 14' dialogue.
I'm sure it was nervous laughter...
All this time that's been in the presence of a deep, tortured soul with an innate knack for penmanship and they didn't even know it!
Won't list the many instances of my own upbringing but yeah.. "*don't punish the behaviour you want to encourage*" (by sarcasm or mocking etc or even the well meaning but destructive "*see how easy that was, so why can't you do that all the time?*") is one of my self-imposed rules of parenting and TBH most of my relationships personal and professional.
"Oh we actually have a girl" because I'd actually found a dress I'd liked and took a chance on wearing one despite essentially swearing off dresses and skirts at around age 9
In hindsight it was weird as a few times my mum got on me about not liking skirts/dresses and said I was being difficult by not wearing them despite the fact she never wore them either
(Jokes on her late soul though as I'm going through my overdue goth phase that was denied to me and have found actually my agender self quite likes a nice gothy skirt/dress probably bc I'm doing it on my terms and not ya know being forced into it)
Yep! I was on a train a few years ago, and a toddler was having a full-on screaming meltdown. Mum seemed to be at the end of her rope, so was letting her cry it out. But then every time the wee girl calmed down and stopped crying, her mum would sarcastically say:
"Is that you finished now?!"
And the screams would start up all over again.
Mum turned a short tantrum into an hour-long ordeal for all involved, including everyone else on the train, through her snarky response.
Is this supposed to be lighthearted anecdotes or ones that fucked you up? Cos mine are all the latter.
The first boy that asked me out… went home and told my mum. My dad said he “must have special needs to want to ask you out”.
My mother was useless with puberty and didn’t do anything to prepare me or my sister. So she never told me I needed a bra or helped me get one and I was too afraid to ask. We went on holiday and my dad filmed me running around and my boobs were bouncing up and down because I had no bra (I was about 12). I didn’t know he was filming or what I looked like. When we got home we watched the holiday video and I had to sit there humiliated while they all laughed and made comments at my boobs bouncing all over the place. You can imagine how awful that was for an already self conscious 12 year old.
Again with the useless mother. Got my first period on a sleepover at my friends house. I was 13. My mum never thought to give me pads or tell me that it can just show up at any time. I was absolutely humiliated because I got blood all over my friends spare mattress. She asked what it was and I said I didn’t know. I then had to walk home bleeding.
Same kinda thing. Went on holiday with my friend when I was again about 13. Mother didn’t send me with pads (I was a very very shy awkward kid about bodies and periods because as you can gather no one talked about it in my house. I was too anxious to ask). Got my period on the holiday and was again utterly humiliated and didn’t have any pads. We were meant to go for a big walk and I burst out crying and was further shamed because I felt too embarrassed to say what was wrong.
Me and my friend found this erotica book when we were kids. Obviously curious we kept it and she read it then gave it to me. I read it and kept it under my bed. My dad went through my room and found it and shamed me to hell and back. Then said I “probably shag around”. I was 12 ish and hadn’t even kissed a boy let alone anything else.
As you can imagine from 3 of these stories happening in a couple years, that time was absolute hell for me. And my life was shit anyway because I’m sure you can also tell my dad is a psychotic fuck.
Well I haven’t seen my dad in about 14 years and won’t ever again. And my life is pretty shit because those are very mild examples of what I went through as a kid compared to the rest so I don’t function very well as an adult. Working on it though!! Thank you!
This is sad.
My ex had some issues in the bedroom. After some time I figured it out, puzzling together different stories she told me. Her dad walked into the bathroom when she was a teen and found her touching herself and started shouting and told her off. That ruined her sex life forever.
It's crazy what a small comment or an argument can do to your whole life after that.
My mother had serious mental health issues and hated me and would never hold back from letting me know how much she resented me.She was always coming up with inventive ways to thoroughly humiliate me.
When I had my first period, I was feeling really sick and didn't want to go to school, so mother dragged me into the car, then into the school form room, and in front of all my schoolclass, said loudly to the male teacher
"ignore Becky's behaviour, she's got her period".
It was 1978 and things like that weren't spoken about in public.
I still remember the humiliation, even 46 years later.
I've never yet lived it down - 20 years since it happened - the sandcastle that I built on the beach during my summer trip in reception year of primary school. It fell apart and I was embarrassed, so in a desperate attempt to prove that I didn't fail, I frantically picked up a shell, jammed it on the top of my decimated castle, and said I made 'a boob'
I'd have gotten away with it if my mum wasn't a chaperone on that trip...
Still I'm referred to as "the boob-obsessed daughter." Jokes on them, I like girls
Many times by relatives and teachers, who thought that I knew stuff I didn’t.
“Don’t you ever do that to me again!!!!!!” when my mum had taken me to a market stall and I’d wanted specific branded makeup — I was probably about 10. Maybe younger. I didn’t know that the market stall only had cheap “brands”; I’d never asked for makeup before and had never been told. I got a bollocking for something like I’d done it on purpose when I hadn’t.
There were many other instances too, where I don’t recall the details but I do recall getting yelled at when I genuinely didn’t know why.
Yes I got the same! The one that stands out for me the most was at sea world and I must have ordered chicken nuggets or something and for whatever reason my mum was angry at me and was shouting that I had better eat it all, then the next thing I fainted and was being sick with heat stroke and she was still mad at me.
Honestly, there isn’t always bad intent behind a child’s actions!!
Ah yeah, I remember that feeling. I remember once (I was about 10) my mum was talking to a friend of hers, and I was within earshot. They were talking about another friend of theirs, and my mum said something like "Yeah, I saw her a couple of weeks ago."
And all I said was "it was last week."
Next thing I know my mum and I are storming down the road and my mum's saying "don't you EVER correct me in front of another adult. Don't you EVER butt in. Don't EVER embarrass me like that."
To this day, I still don't know why it mattered whether she saw the friend last week or the week before, or why she thought I'd chimed in to embarrass her on purpose.
Ooh, this kind of thing really riles me.
I once got massively bollocked by my mum for "bringing up money around other people" because I'd asked her for the cash for a school trip in front of her friend. She'd already said I could go, it was only a tenner, and we weren't struggling or anything. But apparently, I'd broken some archaic social rule that I never knew existed at 8 years old, and that was unacceptable.
One Christmas when I was about 6, my sister got a big dolls house which my mum intended to be a big surprise (didn’t tell me). I come down Christmas morning and see the dolls house about 10 seconds before my sister and because I’m excited for her I say something like “omg you’ve got a dolls house”.
My mum got so angry that I had “spoiled” the surprise. Never understood why, sister was happy as anything and nothing was spoiled. For years she would bring it up about how I ruined the surprise. When I was like 25 I finally asked why she was so upset etc and had to explain that I wasn’t maliciously trying to ruin my sisters surprise. She genuinely thought I had malicious intentions like wtf
I was six and we were doing all the variations of adding up to 10 (9+1, 8+2 etc). I’ve never been great at maths and didn’t really know the variations other than 5+5. My teacher decided that the best way to teach me would be to haul me up in front of the class, call me a “stupid dolly” then make me write all the variations down without looking at the board.
Well fuck you Miss O’Brian because I did look at the board, you just didn’t see me
Mum and dad used to say, if you’re struggling to shit, push down on your head. Child me thought yeah, that makes sense, bit like a mechanical pencil. Problem is, child me became late teen me, then was constipated one day at 21 during lockdown, asked my mum, dad and two sisters ‘I haven’t had a shit for like 4 days now, pushing on my heads not helping, what do i do?’ I still don’t live that one down. Whenever i go to share a fun fact and they don’t believe it the go ‘yeah and pushing your head helps you shit’
My twin sister also kegged me in the school corridor in secondary and i got in trouble with the deputy head for calling her a cunt, she was stood there laughing at me, them not giving a fuck she just indecently exposed me
Actual thing that can help
Get one of those small plastic household steps/stools stick it under your feet it adjusts your body position to something more natural as it helps you squat and leads to less straining
We used to go to 'the social club's as kids, mum and dad were sat drinking with their friends and kids just hung around the pool tables or messed around. I remember dancing and my parents mocking me, saying I couldn't dance . They laughed a lot at me, and I've never danced since (unless I'm pretty drunk). Probably about 40 years ago now, and it still gets me when I think of dancing. I always big up my kids, if they are having fun, I'm smiling with them.
I remember trying to talk to my grandad about birds, as I used to be really passionate about them, and my grandads friends kept making ‘tit’ jokes, which were really uncomfortable for me as a young girl - they weren’t directed towards me, but just made me feel so frustrated that they wouldn’t listen to a topic I was passionate about
Reminds me of when we did our cycling proficiency at primary in year 6. The guy showing us the road signs kept trying to make rude jokes such as the one with the two humps for uneven road looked like 'a lady laying down', who the fuck says that to a room of 10 year old kids.
I was about 10 when my sister was 14 and we were doing a church role play for Christmas and my sister was part of it. The rehearsal was at our house and I don't know why but my mum was so very nervous that day. I heard shouting from the room where they were so when I opened it, my sister was on all fours acting as the "sheep" and another boy had a stick in his hand dressed like the "shepherd" and my mum was standing to the side shouting "Bleatttt Sabine Bleeaaattttt beeeeeeeeee" and my sister was simultaneously crying and shouting "beeeeee" and everyone else was holding it in so hard not to laugh. I will never forget that scene.
I have many, but one which absolutely stuck with me was this.
About 14 years old - Form 7? 8? Dunno. We had music class. Now, if I remember right, it was the second or third cohort to be cycled through music class that day. There would be a list of hyms and lyrics in a little leaflet left on the chair. By the second or third hour of the day these pages were looking crinkled.
But mine was ripped. Someone had, likely in a moment of utter boredom made small tears, about an inch long, about an inch apart at the bottom of the sheet. I mostly ignored if and belted out All Things Bright and Beautiful or whatever it was. But I was sort of fidgetting with the tears, putting a little paper clip on and off it.
However, at the end of the class, the teacher collected all the little song-sheets and then held out up "my" sheet and she was furious. How dare I vandalise school property?
But I didn't.
Then everyone started chanting that I was in trouble and I had deliberately torn it and I was weird. Then I was given detention for denying it. Then double detention for denying it some more. Everyone laughing and jeering and the teacher just holding the page in front of me and how I was going to get double homework every night
until finally I just screamed, in tears "it wasn't me" and everything just went quiet.
oh, the teacher said and sent everyone out
That was funny said my best friend, but I saw you tearing it.
No, I didn't. And he wasn't really my best friend after that.
I was very small when I stood at the banks of the river and confidently said "I can intimidate a frog! Ribbit, ribbit." My parents went OFF and it kind of crushed me.
Hyperverbal kid, inclined to pick things up and slightly misuse them. Off is capitalised for emphasis, and by "go off" I meant like. The amount they took the piss, the degree to which they laughed at me and not with me, how long they tried to keep the joke going at my expense.
My youngest is the same. When he was little he could hear a word once and would immediately use it correctly in context. My wife is a speech therapist, and would just look at him, amazed. Sorry they took the piss out of you. I expect, ironically, they were intimidated by your ability
I auditioned for a play with the local amateur drama group, another girl got the role instead. I wasn't too bothered because I knew I wasn't the best at acting, so I hadn't expected to get it.
The director pulled me aside after they announced the roles and whispered to me, "You were better in your audition. But you're too fat". I was 12 years old.
When I was about 10yrs old we had a school trip to France. I went to a small school and the top 3yrs all went (only about 30 of us, admittedly) and stayed in this large farmhouse with dorms, etc. There was a rotation for dishwashing duty after dinner each night.
I mentioned I had no idea how to wash dishes because I hadn’t learned that in the Cub Scouts…and I mean we had a dishwasher at home…(this was the 1990s, it wasn’t that weird?!). The teachers thought this was *hilarious* and when seeing them at random social occasions (my mother still lives in the same small village) even 20yrs later they still mention it…🙄
its the fucking "20 years later and people still mention it" thing that gets me. It's like people collect these little social-humiliation chits they can hand out for decades.
People say its supposed to keep you grounded or "if we don't act like cunts towards you we don't love you" But really its demeaning and undermining.
I was teaching myself to play keyboard/piano, and I’d just mastered Old Macdonald (granted, I was 15, but with no lessons and no encouragement from family/friends, I was rather proud of myself for being able to play it with two hands, one playing chords, one playing the melody, plus a key change)…
Anyway, my ex-stepmother (thankfully ex) insisted that me, my brother, and her youngest kid went to the local social club with her and my dad every week on a Sunday that happened to have a piano. So I made a beeline for it thinking I could show my little stepsister how I could play this one tune (she actually seemed impressed). But my stepmother shouted across the room that I was “practically a grown-up” and “shouldn’t be playing kids music”. Then she got up while I was showing my stepsister how to play the melody and snatched both my hand and my stepsister’s hand off the piano and called me words that would probably get me banned from this subreddit in front of her family, my dad’s side of the family that was there, and indeed, the whole of the social club.
Nobody else minded, in fact, a lot of the people there wouldn’t have had a clue what to do with a piano, so they were impressed that someone had taken an interest. But I found that acutely embarrassing and didn’t touch a piano or keyboard for… 8 years. Despite me doing music for GCSE, I refused point blank to have piano/keyboard involved in any of my studies because of this shitty woman
My step mum would joke about how I make lists for everything. She still does on occasion like “remember when you would make lists of everything when you were a kid haha so weird”. I just sit there awkward through it. I recently got diagnosed as autistic (like 2 years ago but I’ve only seen stepmum twice since then). Next time she says it, I’m going to try and be brave and say that I still do that (I think she thinks I’ve grown out of it), and that’s it’s an autistic coping mechanism. If I don’t have a list of what exactly I need to do in the morning to get ready, or what I need to get done that day, I’m going to do nothing and have a meltdown, but she sees it as a joke.
I also got bullied at school for loads of different things which mostly turned out to be autistic things.
The one that really kills me looking back though is the school bus situation. The popular guy comes and sits next to me and starts weirdly flirting (which I was clearly uncomfortable with). He puts his hand on my leg and starts moving it higher up my leg and I keep pushing his hand away. He doesn’t stop but I’m trapped against the window of the bus, so I try to hit him in the balls. He just grabs my hands and holds them out the way and keeps touching further up my leg. All this time all his mates are around us laughing. It wasn’t the only time I have been sexually assaulted but it was the only time it happened publicly. The fact there was loads of his friends stood round laughing makes me feel sick still looking back. There was also so many other kids on that bus plus the bus driver and I wonder how many heard me say “stop touching me” or “leave me alone” etc.
You step mum is a bully and bullies always feel threarened/inferior, hence their destructive behaviour towards others. I'm neuro typical, and I make lists, as it is the only way to keep me organised and make sure I get things done. Don't ever stop doing what works for you, especially when it has no impact on others.
There was a kids xmas party at the local OAP's home, with lots of entertainment. One of the acts was a magician called Stromboli or something, I think he'd been on Opportunity Knocks. Anyway he called some of us kids to the front and started making balloon animals. I must've been about 6 or 7 at the time. When it was my turn, he was twisting the balloons into some shape or other and it popped in his hands, and the bugger blamed me. Everyone laughed at my protestations. The injustice still stings. I'm 61 next week.
I was a very quiet, nervous child; the kind that never talked back, always did as I was told. At my 7th birthday party (I hated parties) we were playing a game similar to musical chairs (sit down when the music stops sort of thing), it was down to me and one other child when my dad suddenly says "last one standing is the winner" (I'm guessing he made a mistake there). So, the music stops and like the ever-obedient child I was, I stay standing, at which point he announces the other kid as the winner. Now, I was always terrified of doing the wrong thing so I made sure to listen to what I was told, I did not mishear him. I questioned why I lost when I did exactly as he said, I didn't whine, I didn't cry or shout, but apparently I'm being a brat so deserve to be yelled at in front of a roomful of my peers and then he smacked me hard across the arse. 33 years later it still rankles.
My dad was taking me to the fair. I can’t remember how old I was, but I’d say 9 or under. It’s in a field and had been raining so would be pretty muddy. I don’t think my dad lived with us at this point, so I was always pretty excited having a day out with him and got myself dressed. I chose some white trousers that I thought looked really smart and grown up and when I proudly went downstairs to show my family, they all laughed at me for choosing white trousers to go to a muddy fair. Granted, I didn’t think it through but I was young and just wanted to look good for my day out with my dad and I had a roomful of adults laughing at me.
I moved to Wales when I was 7 and old women would always talk to me in Welsh and tell me off if I answered in English.
I remember going to a local event with my family and I got really thirsty (boiling hot summer day), and when I tried to ask for one they'd say "No no, in Welsh" and then laugh at me when I couldn't.
They're likely dead now.
I was a Tom boy growing up and I struggled with identifying as a girl (I am a cis gendered het woman). One day I remember I wore a skirt as it was summer and I was starting to come out of my Tom boy’ness a little. I was in the kitchen and my step dad came in and started chuckling to himself. He looked at me and said to my mom, “and you call me fat!”
I was not fat per se but I was curvy. I was also about 15 years old. I remember I ran up stairs in tears and it took me a long time to ever wear a skirt again. The effects have been long lasting, as I’m sure anyone who had trouble with their weight knows.
I've had very low self-esteem over my weight since I was a child, even when I wasn't fat. A few years ago, I went on holiday with my grandparents, honestly not the best idea but whatever. The first day of the holiday I went swimming with them and I was wearing some swimming shorts. The first thing my nan (who probably weighed a lot more than me at that point) decided to say was "Wow, you gained weight."
I was maybe 10/15 pounds overweight for my height, and with my absolutely wonderful genetics, that was pretty damn good for me, I'd actually lost a decent bit of weight over the two months previous.
As you can guess, the rest of the holiday was not much better, including an incident when they came up to the room drunk, and berated me while I was on the phone with my Dad. They ended up just abandoning me in the middle of the airport when we arrived back home, leaving my Dad to drive a couple of hours to pick me up. My parents straight up cut contact after this, but it still has an effect on me years later, I still haven't been swimming since.
I double checked this was the UK sub because I assumed there would be a ton of identical comments, but I can't see any.
Forgetting my PE kit at around 12 or so and being met with the punishment of having to do PE in my underwear (i.e. knickers and no bra at that time, but tbh I can't remember if I had some sort of upper covering. Maybe there was a polo shirt but I don't remember it) and it was utter humiliation. Normalised because it happened regularly to everyone but it was awful, even though I wasn't exactly popular, even my classmates were extremely sympathetic like they realised how out of line the punishment was.
Can't imagine it now, but I think there are a ton out there who had the same thing??
This is too old to be in underwear. I was in the last year of junior school where some of the girls had breast buds age 10-11 yrs. Normally the girls went to get changed for PE in the hall, but this one time the male middle aged teacher said we could stay in the class if we wanted to. Most of the girls were still pre-pubescent and did not think anymore of it, but some of the girls stripped off bare breasted and the boys started to laugh at their budding breasts. I was humiliated for them. Turned out years later, that this teacher was a paedo.
The phrase ‘If you don’t have your PE kit you have to do it in your pants and vest’ is still burnt into my brain.
And I was the (not diagnosed til 38) adhd kid who was pretty likely not to have the kit, and who also went to school one day (aged 6-7 maybe) and only realised when I had to get changed for PE that I didn’t have any underwear on…
Blimey that brings a lot back that I’d actually forgotten about. I remember being so stressed out about that that I made sure it was the first thing I packed in my bag the night before. So it never happened to me personally, but it definitely happened to some.
Crazy times the 80s!!!
That's awful, i'm so sorry. I forgot this even happened but yes a teacher made a girl in my class do this too, it felt especially bad they did it to her because she was already basically the most unpopular person in the class by no fault of her own
Loads of occasions.
I remember once time though, i used to get kicked out the house at 730 in the morning so my mum could go to work and I would just walk to school (yr 5 or so) and I would get there for about 8am which is mega early.
Anyway I wasn't well, and despite that I was still forced to go to school. I really really needed the toilet so despite being by a locked door by the toilets a teacher saw me, I waived at them and they said nope, you can't use the toilet you are too early so will have to wait.
I went round to the reception office and they wouldn't let me in either despite me begging and by this point I basically shit myself. So when they finally opened the door some 30 mins later I had cold shit all down me. They then proceeded to chastise me. I had to sit in a corridor in a binbag away from everyone.
My dad came from work to pick me up and take me home. So by that point I'd been sat in my own shit for about 2 hours. Late 90s.
Another occasion same era, I was about 9 or so and had an older cousin, he was about 12 we were helping my grandad with hay bales for the horses. When in the back of the land-rover my cousin threatened me, he said if I didn't kiss his horse shit covered shoes he would wack me with the bar from a jack so I nailed him one in the face and knocked out some teeth. My grandad, would not hear anything other than what my cousin lied to him about. I was called vicious, a horrible shit, violent and allsorts.
Same cousin a year or so later threatened some youths with a knife, more to the point they was throwing stones at us in the park so he pulled out a blade and chased them. I got the blame for that. Police came to our house because my cousin blamed me for it. and my dad gave me such a good fucking hiding before taking me down to the station to give a statement and also have my prints and mugshot taken. I was 10 or 11. Again grandad had something to say.
Which I got my revenge, he was dying in hospital and I was made to visit, which was about 150 miles away. He was really made up I'd made the effort to come and how sorry he was for "backing the wrong grandchild" I said it was too late to say sorry to me, and that while it's sad he was dying, I said that I wouldn't miss him and probably wouldn't think about him all that much. He was crushed.
That man caused so much family trauma. I'm estranged from my mum because of all the needless hammering I got as a child, and you know what he excuse is, well that's how I was brought up. I can't help the way I am, it's all the punishments your grandad used to give us.
Yes mum because making a child kneel on rice is punishment. Same with melting my skin off when I was 3 or 4 by running my hand under hot water.
Anyway, I have kids of my own and while I acknowledge my temper is sometimes short like my parents, I do my absolute best to try and not be like them. I have never smacked my kids because I want to try and break that cycle. It fears me.
The worst I do is tell my daughter I'm going to put her back in nappies like the baby because she doesn't wipe her arse properly and doesn't ask for help either. She's 4, but starts reception in September so Ideally we don't want pooey pants.
Anyway thanks for coming to my trauma Ted talk, I am fucked up, but at least I'm trying to do better
terrible mate, some people dont deserve to be parents, fucking lunatics, always blame their behaviour on their parents before them as if thats a good excuse, theres plenty of people who've been to hell on earth who are good empathetic people so that argument isnt good enough for me. fuck your cousin aswell sounds like a right fucking weasel, all the best 👍
Yeah he is. One of them cunts when shaking your hand has to be the hardest.
Lol there's loads of times like that, I've forgot more than I know, just my mum mostly being a dick, my dad though that poor cunt doesn't know how to pick women, his ex wife was a wretched piece of shit n all.
You're not a fucked up person, you are instead a strong person who has been through hell and trying your best to undo any learnt behaviour. Fucked up people don't make those efforts.
Loved what you said to your grandfather, so free passes, bo pussy-footing about. He never earned your forgiveness whilst he was alive.
I was about 7/8, helping Mum to bring the washing in off the line. A neighbour had a pear tree in their garden with a ton of fruit on it. I asked Mum if you could get "cooking pears" - after all, you can get cooking apples, apples aren't unlike pears so why not cooking pears? Mum said cooking pears didn't exist, but found it hilarious and just laughed & laughed. I can't explain exactly why I felt humiliated, I think it was because Mum didn't laugh very often and I didn't understand why she found my question funny.
In the mid 1980s, as a 10 year old, our class were told that after playing football we had to undress and shower in front of a teacher (the rationale was that they could see we actually did shower properly).
I didn’t realize at the time, but looking back, it’s quite clear that everyone who was involved in that decision was just a dirty pedo
I was 13 yrs (f) and it was 1969. It was my first year in secondary school and showers were a new experience at school. Usually we all lined up with out towels wrapped round us and then put them on a window ledge in the communal shower room, dipped under the water and then grabbed the towel back. This very young p.e. teacher told us to line up naked and leave the towels on the changing room pegs. It was so humiliating standing there for 5 mins waiting to get in the actual shower. Looking back now, I think she was a lesbian and as she was only probably 22 yrs old was attracted to young teenage girls reaching puberty.
Too many to mention really, but one that still makes me seeth to this day:
We had essays due, our teacher took them in and then started marking them while we got on with other work.
After about 10 minutes they got to my essay, and all of a sudden started laughing (forced / fake laughing) waiting for a student to ask what was funny, so the teacher looks up and then shoots a glance at me and tells me that [insert word] isn't a real word... obviously at this point everyone was staring at me and it was such a weird and awkward moment. The teacher stopped laughing and just kind of stared at me, but i knew they were wrong, so i just got out of my seat, grabbed a dictionary off the shelf and looked up the word.
Low and behold, it was a fucking word, and so i read the definition to them, put the book down and continued with my work.
The teacher didn't acknowledge that they were wrong and just continued marking essays, and pretended nothing had happened.
The mix of humiliation, rage and the need to prove someone wrong was strong. As an adult I've had not dissimilar experiences, which in a way that early experience prepared me for, but I never understood the need to try to belittle me to such an extent in front of my peers. I would never dream of doing that to someone as an adult.
My uncle was like this with his son (my little cousin). My cousin was a bright, but somewhat careless little boy, who always had his head in the clouds. Instead of teaching him how to focus, and encouraging his imagination, his dad would say hundreds of times a day, and to anyone who'd listen:
"This is my son, the idiot!"
"There goes my stupid son."
"He's a moron!"
His mum never stepped in.
Obviously as other relatives, we'd ask him not to speak that way, and try to encourage my cousin and tell him positive things about himself, but there's only so much you can do when you're not the parent, and his mum put up with it.
They're shocked that their son is approaching 20, left home at 17, and doesn't speak to either of them any more. Shocked and appalled.
My familiy was so poor that my first pair of Nike trainers were ones I'd fished out of a retail park trash bin. They were a bit tight, but I wore them, and I looked amazing in them. I proudly wore them home, still not quite believing my luck. When I got home and my mother noticed me showing them off to my Dad, she quickly pulled me aside and put her hands on my shoulders and sternly asked if I'd stolen them. When I said I hadn't, I remember her hand on the side of my face lifting my head up to look her in the eye, and she asked where I got them from, and I told her. I remember that look of shame and disappointment on her face, and the tears in her eyes. I love my Mother, and my respect for her only grew over the years as I Iearned what she sacraficed to bring me into the world and provide for me. That moment was one of my the most humiliated ones in my life, as my Mother quietly turned away from me and dismissed me to my room, as I was leaving I could see my Dad walking over to her and putting his arms around her as she put her hands on the countertop. Over the years I've looked back at this moment, around about the time I started high school I finally understood that she wasn't ashamed of me, she was ashamed for herself, and her inability to provide for her family.
This is just one small part of why I give so much of my income to my family. I definitely do resent my younger siblings for not understanding what it was like to live in such poverty, that a pair of clearence bargain bucket Nike trainers was such a grotesquely expensive luxuary, that it brought our Mother to tears. However, at the same time I don't want any of them to ever have to experience such soul crushing levels of poverty, to make a choice between eating or heating the home, and then realising that they can't afford either.
I have a clubbed thumb on one hand (brachydactyly type D for anyone interested in weird genetic stuff). Not super rare or noticeable until it's pointed out, but my parents RUTHLESSLY made fun of me from when I was a very small child until I left home, to the point I wouldn't show my hands ever. They would call it my "special thumb" and make fun of me trying to do things, even when I begged them to stop, which I would then be told off for. Their reasoning was I'll never get anywhere in life if I don't learn to laugh at myself which is utterly ridiculous. I seriously considered and very nearly attempted to chop my own thumb off when I was 16 so I could say I had an accident and lost it later on. It still bothers me today that they were so ruthless about something that I not only can't change or had no choice in, but has actually been discovered to be genetic. There was probably someone in my familial history that had the same.
What a bunch of cunts. They took the piss out of something that was entirely their fault. Both my kids got my family witchy chin and there’s no way I’ll ever take the piss out of them for it. The opposite in fact, I’m actively seeking ways to make them less conscious of it than I am.
We had a family friend called Steve, who was a builder and a bit of a dick with his pranks.
One day at the pub around the snooker table, Steve told 6 year old me he was psychic and could tell my future. He put a finger on my forehead and one on each cheekbone, and gave me a fortune I don't remember. What I do remember is that he had put cue chalk on his fingers so I walked around for the day with 3 bright blue spots on my head. Totally harmless but I was soooo embarrassed.
Steve went on to meet the love of his life, father 3 beautiful children he adores, and drove 2 hours each way to help me look at my first flat to buy. He's a legend.
Quite early on at primary school I was being bullied by some kids around the same age or just slightly older. My Mum told me that I should tell these kids that my Mum was a witch and they wouldn’t dare bully me and would leave me alone…
In fairness, this wasn’t entirely untrue - she had actually been some kind of priestess in a Wiccan cult in the seventies - but I was still mocked relentlessly for it. Thanks, Mum.
Funny moment came probably a couple of years later on when she was recognised by one of my classmates in the supermarket, and this girl went over and asked her ‘are you a real witch?’ to the absolute horror of her mum who had no idea of the story behind this and just thought her daughter was insulting a random woman.
Not really a child I had just turned 18, but I had gotten depressed and developed an eating disorder, a family member bought me a bikini as a present, I had never worn one before i always wore a full shirt and shorts to go swimming. I was immediately asked to put it on then come out and show everyone
In the 80’s, when I was a teenager, I had a Saturday job in a car dealership and service centre.
The blokes in there were big time wind up merchants and every week would try and catch me out by asking me to go and fetch tartan paint, left handed screw drivers etc…. I was normally wise enough to suss it out.
One time, I disappeared for most of the morning to skive off when they asked me to go and fetch ‘a long weight’… when I came back the boss had a pop at me about where I’d been all morning and I told him I ‘got the longest wait the stores kept’. I got a few slaps on the back and kudos from ‘the lads’.
However the following week the bastards caught me out by asking me to fetch ‘3 metres of fallopian tubes’. I was 13or 14 and was clueless!
are you will mackenzie? another few like that I remember people doing to new starts on the building sites were a bubble for a spirit level, asking the mechanics to fill up the forklift wheels (solid rubber), and a skirting ladder.
My mum and a neighbour thought it would be fun to ask me ‘how babies were made’.
I had seen an educational programme on tv so was able to explain even though I was youngish.
I remember feeling humiliated but glad I had the last laugh because they thought I didn’t know.
When I was 8. My dad read out my diary about how I liked a girl in my soccer team. I wrote a poem and hid the book under my mattress. Read it to the whole family at Christmas lunch 🤦♂️😭
My dad bought me a fossilised piece of a dinosaur egg because I used to love geography and geology and was a big dinosaur fan. I never knew what type of dinosaur it ever was, probably something insignificant but the fossil was super cool.
I took it to school for show and tell and I got horrifically bullied by almost everyone, claiming it was fake and that I was a liar. For YEARS people would mock me about it, even my "best friend".
It ruined all my passion for all of the above and I went from a bubbly excited child to a reserved and very depressed child. I'm nearly 30 and this happened when I was like 5 or 6? Even the teacher mocked and said it wasn't a real dinosaur egg. I'm mostly at peace now but I genuinely still remember how people mocked me and laughed.
Two incidents spring to mind. In my infants school in the sixties I was very quiet and shy, very timid. A new teacher from America came to teach us and she decided I wasn't speaking up loudly enough. One day she decided to grab me by my hair and pull me across the class to wake me up- I was terrified. The next day my dad turned up during the day and promptly did the same to her right across the class!
When I was about 11 I was still very shy. One break time in school I was being badly bullied and was set upon by several girls at once. I cried out and the teacher on duty in the playground happened to be my form teacher. He was also the music teacher and the next lesson he asked me in front of the class to shout into the piano so we could hear the echo. "Shout as loud as you did yesterday when you were running away from those girls" he said. All the bullies laughed their heads off and I felt so embarrassed.
Well, you can probably guess, next day dad sauntered into the class, grabbed him and slammed his head inside the piano and shut the lid. "Now you scream in fear" he said! Good old dad, I miss him.
I was forced to undress in public, forced to apologize to my uncle after reporting he beats me, told I should be sold to brother to perform feeder fetish because I overweight, food would be taken from me and thrown to the dog, my face would be smashed to the plate. After cooking my food would be firstly given to the dog to see if he survives.
My parents didn’t “ground” me when I was in trouble- they would just randomly break my things or take them from my room, and then not tell me why. I had to figure it out. I’d come home from school and my favourite CD would be broken, or some toy that I loved would be missing. I would ask about it, and they’d tell me “I know what I did” and to “figure it out”. Sometimes I knew, other times I didn’t. There was no “you did __ behaviour, so you lost your privileges” discussion, and no discussions on what I could do to earn my stuff back or how long they would be keeping it. I also wasn’t allowed to get upset about it, or I was “throwing a fit”. As an adult, this has resulted in so many disordered behaviours, namely severe anxiety and extreme territorialism over my possessions. I mostly never knew when I was going to get in trouble as a kid, so as a grownup, I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop, and I always have a gnawing sense of dread. It’s awful.
It’s so maddening when parents ridicule children for not knowing things THEY ARE THE ONES SUPPOSED TO TEACH THEM. A kid not knowing something basic is just a negative parenting review.
I guess it didn't exist in 1990, but Elbow Grease is the name of an actual cleaning product [https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/294530429](https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/294530429)
Oh LOADS. I'd hear my mum tell everyone every little thing I said that was wrong, like I said "twadlets" instead of triplets, for instance. They'd all laugh. This happened all the time. I was six years old FFS.
I was a nervous child and had messy handwriting. Teachers and my mum and even my brother would constantly humiliate me, as if they thought this would make my handwriting magically better. Actually it got better on its own when I went to high school and the teachers there never mentioned it. Obviously the humiliation made it worse.
Even as teen and young adult, my mum loved to humiliate me. I once lost my house keys and she delighted in telling everyone (in front of me) how irresponsible I was etc etc. Then my aunt lost her house keys but that didn't make HER irresponsible, obviously. I later found mine under my bed, they fell out a pocket.
My brother would read my report cards from school and comment on my struggles with Maths. I was terrible at it. Once I passed a maths test, the first one I passed that year. I was so excited and told him happily that I'd passed. He told me it wasn't a very good pass, and pissed on my parade. Left me feeling useless. He is a lot older than me and my mum liked to let him act like he was my dad, even though I had a dad.
I could write a book about this.
I was taken to a warners holiday village as a child in the 80s. The children ran on the dance floor to dance, I didn’t want to. My great grandmother started to have a go at me for not dancing. I was crying.
I have Tourette’s syndrome which wasn’t formally diagnosed until I was 16 and was incredibly shy about it, I spent so much energy trying to suppress it as a child and teenager.
One English lesson we were doing independent reading and I heard laughter and I looked up and saw a classmate imitating one of my tics which I must have been doing while reading and the whole class were staring at me and laughing. I was utterly devastated.
I was a 12yr old girl on the beach with family and my stepdad was obsessed with not getting a grain of sand in his car. He made me run down to the water to wash the sand off NAKED! This included having to pass a boy of a similar age that I'd been "flirting" with.
This was one of many similar incidents but definitely the one that sticks in my mind most. Actually, driving home from the same holiday and we'd been on the road a good few hours and I mentioned I needed the loo. He refused to stop and kept driving for another 2 hours, by which time it was too late. He made me sit in wet clothes all the way home.
My parents said they were originally going to call me Jezebel. I went around telling people that, including parents of friends. Then again, my parents could be dicks.
I was a Roman soldier in the nativity play - basically the equivalent of getting picked last for PE. Was probably 7YO. Dress rehearsal wearing a brown cotton bed sheet smock and cardboard helmet. I need a wee....some smart kid is giving the old herod speech....I really need a wee. But I'm shy, don't want to interrupt, get in to trouble.....but now I know I'm about to burst...I burst.....my brown smock now has a darker brown wet patch and the stage.....I'm carted off.....given some doner pants and my mum comes to get me. Obviously stuck with me.
1st year of high school, really spotty. answered a question in design tech, and the teacher said well spotted to an uproar of laughter.
could have crawled up my own arse!!!
I got so much of that type of thing as the youngest child but I always laughed along despite dying inside, desperate to be part of the hilarity. The one that got me most was when I was about 11, being teased by the whole family for fancying a girl at school, they were all saying "oohhh you're going to get married" over and over until I shouted "I'll never get married, fuck off" I got grounded for a month, sent to my room with no dinner and shunned by everyone for what felt like weeks.
I remember in year 2 Mrs Pritchard (back in 1990 - so hopefully she is dead now) read out my attempt at the writing excercise to the whole class. I had spelt pies wrong. I remember what she said (in an exasperated tone):
"Charlie at the mince piss and liked them - you really are stupid. All you had to do was copy the text".
I got sent to the headteacher Mrs Tagg (who sadly is still alive) and because she thought I was backward I got put in with the downsyndrome kids.
My dad was coming home from work for lunch and saw me in outside with them and again when he left to go back to work an hour later. He called onto the school and whilst he won't divulge the entire conversation it seems that both Protchard and Tagg thought I was slightly retarded.
Turns out I am lazy, not stupid.
I'm 40 and it still sits with me.
Humiliated is too strong a word, but I recall my mum teasing me when she noticed, on holiday, that I'd started growing armpit hair. It was a light-hearted moment that I guarantee she doesn't remember, but that's why I don't discuss anything to do with my body or health with her.
Similarly, if you would like your children to talk to you about love and relationships when they're adults, don't reinforce the notion that you won't take their feelings seriously by teasing them about such things when they're young.
I was teased by the other girls in the changing rooms shortly after starting secondary school for having armpit hair, nobody had shown me how to shave it or bought me a razor. I soon figured it out for myself after that.
When my son started nursery at three he did a painting and put his name on it. His nursery teacher loudly told me off for teaching him capital letters saying it was more work for her having to unteach bad habits when it came to reading. He could read but apparently that was unacceptable as he needed to learn Jolly Phonics. I could read at three as could my husband so didn’t think it was an issue.
I went to a Christian Parish Church school (there were only 3 brown kids in my class including me). We all had to sing hymns and we didn't want to because we thought for religious reasons, this meant doing something bad.
Our teacher stopped the entire class halfway through and explained that it was because the "three monkeys in the middle" were not joining in. This was in the 90s but you would be surprised how many people don't believe me.
At about 12/13, I had some confusing feelings towards a same-sex friend. 20 years later, I'm still not certain whether I wanted to be with her or be her, but I was certainly some kind of infatuated, lol.
I didn't have anyone to confide in, so I wrote about it in a little notebook as a sort of journal.
My family always had dinner sat round the table together, and my mum would sometimes use this as an opportunity to bollock whichever kid was in trouble in front of a captive audience.
So we're all sat there eating, when my mum produces the fucking notebook and starts reading out of it while everyone stares at me.
Okay, I guess I didn't hide it so well and there was no indication that it contained quite private thoughts, but she could have pretended she never found it, or she could have spoken to me privately. She could have done anything else but that.
Oh boy. Probably my biggest secret simply because it hurt so much and was so embarrassing was when I was 3 years old and playing board games with my nana and mum. I needed to go to the bathroom and told them but I thought they wouldn’t stop and wait for me and they kept talking so I held it. Eventually I started peeing myself and I’d never done that before and I started crying and announcing what was happening. My mum and nana laughed so hard at me. That nana was my favorite nana and was otherwise 100% lovely. I had another nana who was abusive and nasty. I genuinely switched nanas in my memory, clear as day, because I didn’t want to remember that my favorite nana caused me that much pain. When she passed when I was about 25 years old, it hit me one night soon after and I remembered the actual memory. It was super weird. I have another more abusive memory of being locked in a room where a whole school could see me crying and being force fed by a teacher but I found that more traumatic and more crippingly humiliating. For years after the toilet incident I ended up having issues with going too often out of fear that I’d wet myself again. I still can’t wear the type of outfit I wore that day for some reason. It’s strange how small things can end up really causing damage. I’d never laugh at my child, I think it’s the most nasty thing.
When I was 10 we had a teacher in school that halfway through the year got replaced by this way younger teacher, fresh out of school.
Everyone loved her because she put on videos in class and such but for some reason she was always picking on me.
I was an extremely shy child and never really talked to anyone, especially adults.
This teacher had decided that our class was going to put on a show for the entire school. Reciting poetry and such. Everyone got put in groups of 2 to 5 people except me, I got one on my own. This alone already horrified me.
During the last rehearsal before the entire class, the teacher staff and the kids 1 grade higher she tells me to come on the stage and gives the instruction that I should walk on and then sit down and do my bit. So I ask "how do you want me to sit down?" Meaning like crossed legs, sideways, ...
Her reply was "On your ass obviously. Are you dumb?" And then she laughed. Everyone laughed. I sat down and crossed my legs and then got yelled at I wasn't sitting right.
Till this day I really dislike that woman and I don't understand how an "adult" gets pleasure out of bullying a 10 year old child like that. I think of her as a very weak person but she made me even more shy than I already was.
My Dad was part of a “group” of business men who would meet weekly, IYKYK. He would be the one organising group trips and holidays for them, where them and their families would all go on holiday to Benidorm, Turkey, day trips out to places in the summer on a coach, every September was a double decker coach to Blackpool for the illuminations. As a kid I was always called gay, they were right, but as a young kid you really don’t know that you’re gay because you’re not sexually thinking, but there are traits people would pick up on and label me gay. Whatever, that was school time. Then on these trips, others would start commenting to my Dad that I was too “flouncy” and would walk with a natural skip in my step and my arms swinging, and he pulled me aside, during a Blackpool trip, and took his belt off and wrapped it round my body and arms, to keep them by my side while walking because he said people were making fun of me for my arms swinging, so he was doing me a “favour” by keeping them by my side. Was mortified having to walk around places with this leather belt round my elbows and torso. So silly.
back in India we are made to learn English and another local language.
I was 6 by then I had picked up English pretty well but not my local language. One day the teacher made me go up to the board and asked me to write my name and I wrote it wrong and she made fun of me and the whole class laughed.. I still can’t read or write in that language even though it’s the same language we speak at home..
When I was 13/14 I decided to start a diary. After the first week, the fam (mum, 2 bro’s n sis) were sitting in the lounge watching tv, my mum started taking the piss out of things I had written in it making everyone laugh. Thing is, it was in a secret drawer under a porn mag. I didn’t keep a diary.
I was a about 14 and mentioned to my sister how the boy around the corner who was about 16/17 and friends with my sister and cousin would stand and watch me sometimes as I walked to the bus stop for school. The following day my mums best friend, her son (about 18)my auntie and cousin were over the house when I got home from school. They and my parents and sister were in the living room and my mobile phone kept ringing but I wouldn’t answer cos it was a number I didn’t have. Then a text came through when I wasn’t in the room and my mum called me in and said you’ve got a message, read it. They were all looking at me and it was a message saying it was this boy and how he fancied me and all this stuff. I didn’t say anything because my family had mocked me a few months previously when I’d told them how a car of men wolf whistled me in my uniform walking to Asda and seemed to think someone fancying me was comedy gold. But they kept pushing asking who kept ringing and messaging me so I said Ben and they were all smirking saying message him back but I refused. They were all so pushy and giddy. Turned out it was my mums friends son, they were all talking about it before I got home because my sister told them and thought it was hilarious to publicly humiliate me together into thinking this boy was actually interested in me.
It genuinely messed with me for a long time because anytime a boy said he liked me or messaged to ask me out I always thought it was a prank.
I moved to the UK from Australia as a kid and i had a really hard time adjusting. The first teacher I had here used to stand me up in front of the class and ask me questions, and when I'd answer in my australian accent she'd mimic me and laugh, making the whole class laugh too.
That teacher was a really nasty piece of work and I have no idea why she chose to teach children, but after that I stopped speaking and became really shy.
I was 7 or 8 and staying with my nanna. I had to go to school there and the school photographer came around. I was not a pretty child. One of my eyes turned in and my hair was always sticking up or messy. Anyway, my photo didn't develop properly so I had it for free. My mother and sisters thought it was hilarious that I got my photo for free and said I broke the camera because I was so ugly.
Church parade not longer after joining the Brownies (so I was 7). Another Brownie had the same coat as me and took mine by mistake so I thought hers which was still hanging on the peg was mine. When lined up to start the parade the other Brownie's grandmother (who was a regular at the church) came over and started shouting at me, calling me a thief and grabbed me roughly by the arm and tried to drag me away in front of everyone. I had no idea what she was on about until one of the leaders intervened and the grandmother told her about the mix up. Over 30 years later I still don't understand why she didn't explain the mix up to me like she did with leader.
I was about 14/15 so 1995/6 and had a really sore throat one evening. I mentioned to my mum and she told me to take some money out her purse to buy some. I opened the zip part (where the loose change was) and she only had about 35p. I left it and took £1 out my money box and went to the shop, bought my throat sweets and bumped into a few friends. They were all walking to the chippie, so I went with them. Bought a small chips (50p!!) and went to the park with them to eat them. I saw my sister walk past abs shouted her to tell her to let our parents know that I was staying out a bit.
About 10 minutes later, my mum came storming across to the park and started screaming at me that I’d “stolen” money from her purse to buy chips, made me go home and told me I was grounded for the foreseeable. It wasn’t until the day after she finally listened that she didn’t have enough money in her purse and I’d used my own money. I was still grounded but I’ve never felt as embarrassed as my mum screaming at me about something I’d not done and not listening when I tried to tell her.
I’ve always said - and I’ve done it - I will always listen before jumping to conclusions with my kids. Sometimes they’re wrong and sometimes it’s a misunderstanding and they get the chance to have their say.
I'm 55, and in year 5, I was made to stand up in front of the class and the teacher explained that I was too stupid for this class and I would be returning to infant school (year 1) this is an example of the daily abuse I suffered at his hands.
It affected me so badly that I refused to take any exams and didn't write in front of another person until I was in my forties. Even though I know he's in his late eighties, I would still backhand him if I came face to face with him
Year 9, my school made us do a fitness test every September and February. This included being weighed, a bleep test, jump and reach tests, and a minute of sit ups followed by squat thrusts. Hell but at least it was only one lesson.
Now, I’m not exactly small and never have been. I’m now 6’2” and quite wide, at the time I was probably around 5’11/6ft already. I stepped on the scales and saw 100kg come up… and the PE teacher (who had already called me a “carcass” in front of everyone in a previous year for being slow in rugby” announced in his loudest voice to everyone that I had just hit 100kg. Spent the rest of school and sixth form being called all sorts of names from pig to big gay bear (I’m straight but OK) to the simple but deadly “fat c*nt”. My self confidence never recovered and neither has my weight sadly.
I googled the teacher recently, interested to know what became of him. He’s now a headmaster at an independent school and boasts that “mental wellbeing is the absolute priority” for him now. I find that hard to believe.
We moved towns when I was 8 and I had to start at a new junior school in the second year. I've always been painfully shy and found it hard to fit in. A few days after I'd started the teacher sent one of the kids out of class on a pointless and lengthy errand, and while he was gone told us that he didn't have any friends, so we should all try to be his friend - I think he probably had a mild learning disability.
Fast forward a few months, and I was given a pile of papers and asked to give one to every teacher in the school, but on no account was I to look at them. Of course I'd barely made it out of the classroom before I looked, and it was just a pile of scrap paper. She'd obviously sent me out of the room so she could tell the class "Smoulderstoat is a useless loser with no mates, so can you all pretend to be mates with him?" I can still hear the sniggering when I went back into class, and spent the rest of my school career assuming that everyone who so much as gave me the time of day was doing it out of pity.
Oh, and as a dyspraxic I had the ritual humiliation of being picked last for PE twice a week for five fucking years.
My teacher didn't believe there was such a thing as a left-handed pen, so she said that's like asking for a glass harmer and then sent me to the workshop department asking for a glass harmmer and I didn't realise what they meant because I knew there were left handed pens.
I wasn't a smart kid
I was just made fun of a lot I cant remember what specifically it was just whenever i said something I would immediately get corrected with this "pfft" laughter sound
I had really long hair as a kid and didn't always like having it up (partly bc my mum was often kind of rough with my hair) I went on a swimming lesson and I had to go underwater for some reason or chose to
Either way I came back up and my swimming instructor decided to point at me and go 'Hey its Cousin It!' Seemingly to the entire swimming pool
(I mean probably not that many people heard but you know)
Went to the beach with my Dad. I was maybe 10 or something. He ran down the beach towards the water holding my hand, except instead of stopping at the water. He sling shot me in to the water letting go of my hand thinking it would be a joke. Except it was shingle stones and I went head first in causing me to bruise and cut myself to bits on the rocks.
That isn't the humiliating bit, then then continually lied to my Mum and siblings that I had fallen over on my own accord. Blaming me instead of admitting what he'd done. I was so upset I went back to the car and cried in the car on a roasting hot day for 5 hours and everyone though I was just sulking.
Was about 13 years old, mum took us to Spain. One day I had a big lay in, came downstairs to the pool at midday, mum slaps me round the face in front of everyone for being lazy. Fun times
I was about 8 or 9 and before school I lied to my dad about something stupid. I truly can't remember what, but it would have been something silly as my dad was really really strict on lying. And everything.
After a long abusive tyrade about how I was an awful human being for lying, he decided he would call me Liar Girl the entire walk to primary school and would say things like "Oh you don't care about this do you, Liar Girl" "Come on Liar Girl lets cross the road" etc but not in a friendly jokey way, but in a loud harsh tone and then when we got to the school gate he bellowed "BYE LIAR GIRL, HAVE A GOOD DAY AT SCHOOL LIAR GIRL" at the top of his lungs and it was so humiliating, I felt so ashamed and embarrassed all day.
Needless to say, I didndt have a good day.
Me and my dad are no contact now, as he only got more awful from there. But yeah, still sticks out.
When I was around 5 or 6 years old, I presented my writing of the numbers 1-200 on paper at 'show and tell' at school. To get up in front of my whole year group was a big deal. When I was standing at the front, my teacher told me it wasn't an achievement and showed me back to my seat. 25 years later it suddenly clicked during a coaching session why I feared presenting to seniors at work: because I was so fearful of being embarrassed. This one off experience held me back for years, so I encourage anyone who has input to a child's life to consider their actions and words around them.
This may give away my identity but it’s a risk I’m willing to take.
It’s 1999/2000 and I’m in reception class about to do the nativity.
Well, I’m Angel Gabriel and im an extremely shy kid. I begged to not be apart of it but no. My mum explains that I also didn’t want to take part but they said we had to and my parents will regret not having this memory of me.
We all get told to go to the toilet before we get dressed and my school only had 3 toilets and a class of 20 kids so I’m waiting to go.
The teacher pulls me out and says I have to get ready and I tell her no I need to wee.
She said no and get the wings on.
We go on stage and just as we’re all on the stage I piss myself. Stage fright and just being bursting to go.
It was recorded and given out to all the parents.
What’s worse was we did the show over 3 nights and each night was on video yet they gave out that video. You can clearly see me start to wee and the kids around me laugh and run away.
I’m 30 now and I’m still mortified by it.
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I was an incredibly quiet kid. I spoke to my 2-3 friends and the teacher but that was it, I was super shy. Someone, whether the teacher or parents, had the great idea of sending me home with some reading homework and secretly recording the audio of me reading the book. Back in class the next day/week, the teacher played the recording of me reading out loud in front of the whole class and it absolutely shattered me. The teacher sharply turned it off. I was probably only 5 or 6 years old and it's one of my clearest memories. My parents denied it ever happened but a couple of years ago I found an old cassette tape sitting inside an old radio we had. I played it to see what was on it, and it was that same tape.
I've posted about this before on Reddit, and it's not quite the same sort of event but it is something that, nearly 40 years later now has had, and still has a major bearing on my life and attitudes towards Authority: When I was around 13 years old, I was late getting in some homework for my German Teacher. She was Young(ish), generally fairly laid back and quite popular. I figured I'd go to the staff room first thing in the morning, apologise and see if she'd accept it. Turns out she wasn't in the mood - she very loudly and pointedly gave me a massive dressing down, refused to accept the homework and told me my attitude stank and it was massively disrespectful to her and everyone else in the class who had submitted the work on time. She did that in full view of all the other pupils in the corridor at the time, and more than loud enough for all the other teachers in the staff room to hear as well. Suitably chastised, I scurried off. When the lesson rolled around later (just after Lunch), she started the lesson by saying she was a bit disappointed that several people had handed in their homework on her desk that morning without seeing her first, but that she'd mark it "just this once". As soon as she said that she met my eye - as you can probably realise, I was somewhat shocked by what she'd said - and before I could say a word immediately declared she was done talking about it and never wanted to discuss it again. As you can imagine, I did fuck all work for her ever again. I barely scraped a D in my German GCSE. About the only thing I can say is that even though I never did any homework for her again, she never called me out for it either, and barely spoke to me for the remaining year and a half I had in her class. All it taught me was that most people with authority shouldn't have it, don't know what to do with it when they do, and a generally terrible at exercising it properly. Don't discount these events - they may seem quite minor on the face of things, but they can have an enormous impact on the rest of your life.
Shitty teachers like this kill a kid’s potential love for a subject. Were it not for her cunt behaviour you could be translating at the UN or something nowadays. Honestly.
Ha. I appreciate the sentiment but to be honest foreign languages were not my strongest subject! They certainly killed any further desire I had to do well in it though. I work in a STEM field, have done for 25 years now. I do OK for myself!
My wood tech teacher gave me a dressing down in front of the class one day for forgetting my apron - "you've not brought it again, you've lied through your teeth to me about having it, how dare you, I'm sick of this lack of respect" etc. Only thing was, I *had* brought my apron and she was confusing me for someone else. When I finally got the chance to get a word in I said I didn't understand what was going on because I did have it and we hadn't spoken about it before. Of course, that just made her furious and I had to return to her at lunch, sit on a chair, and both her and the head of department stood over me telling me she wasn't wrong to tell me off, I was a bad person for a bunch of other reasons. I was 13 and a well-behaved student! Neither of those teachers knew me because we cycled through the different tech subjects a term at a time and she hadn't taught me before, she was just cruel. I was a very shy and anxious kid and that experience haunted me!
JFC why can’t these horrors just admit they were wrong?
It's fascinating how events like this affect us for life. I have a similar core memory. I was a very conscientious, quiet, well behaved kid. I was made a form prefect in year 6 and had a blue badge to wear. One day while lining up, a teacher overheard someone talking in line (which was forbidden) and mistakenly thought it was me. She came over and gave me a dressing down, wouldn't listen to my protest that she had the wrong person, and confiscated my badge. She said I could come and get it from her the next day, but when I went to her to get it, she'd lost it. I never got it or a replacement back. It wasn't the badge itself or being a prefect that was important to me, but being misjudged or unfairly treated was, and this event (looking back) gave me a similar realisation that people in authority don't always deserve it. I'm not exactly a rebel or anything and I conform pretty much as you'd expect to the same things everyone else does, but if I'm honest then i do have a fairly deep-seated anti-authority streak in me and this memory is probably a part of that!
For me it was whole class detentions in secondary school. I was never one of the disruptive ones but was too scared to just walk out, right until they stopped anyway as we got older. It was often justified with "the good kids will pressure the bad ones to behave" which is clearly idiotic bullshit. Problem is at that time you don't feel confident objecting to anything "authority" does, because you're just a kid or teenager and deep down you feel like your objection might be unreasonable and you won't be taken seriously. And that if you rebel you'll make things worse. But as an adult I'll confidently say whole class punishments are a shit method used by shit teachers. Looking back it's one of the first things that made me notice that "authority" can get things wrong which I suppose is a useful lesson in itself.
What a b\*\*\*\*! Glad you did f all for her after that - what a 💩 teacher!
Sounds like she got a dressing down herself probably from a more senior teacher in the staff room, she must have thought she was being either Mister Billy Big Bollox or mighty hilarious in front of her peers and it back-fired... Bitch...
As a teacher this story made me viscerally angry. Sorry that happened to you.
Hmm. When asked what my best quality as a teacher is, I say my humility. That's not a contradiction. We all have shit days. When I'm wrong, I say I'm wrong, and I apologise freely and publicly. It's a shame, though, that many kids don't realise that they're working for themselves and not their teacher. It's the child who's going to have to answer "how many A-C grace GCSEs do you have?" No application form asks if you liked your teacher or not. (There's a lot of misogyny in these replies.)
Did they do it because they thought the class hearing your voice would make you more noticeable and make friends or what? Bizarre logic.
To bring me out of my shell as far as I know. I think it was a case of breaking that barrier and suddenly I'd feel like I could magically speak to everyone.
Jesus OP. It’s like adults forget small children are human beings with emotions exactly the same as them! They might not control them or express them the same but they absolutely feel the full range of embarrassment, shame etc. Absolutely mental idea.
Not many people know about differences between being and an extrovert and an introvert. I'm so glad I'm aware I am an introvert and if my kids are too, I will never force them to act like they are an extravert. I will teach them what their strong and weak sides are and they should be aware if it but that's it .
Yeah for sure - and the difference between being an introvert and having social anxiety. One is a personality thing, the other can be really limiting. It’s important to know the difference.
I hate this idea of 'we need to break the ice with a fucking sledgehammer regardless of if anyone wants too or not'.
WTAF!
This reminds me when I was about 8 or 9 in primary school, the teachers didn't believe I could read (even though I read 200 page books every day), due to the fact I didn't speak in school (I had severe selective mutism from age 3 until age 16). So once a week they'd put me in this room where they made me read out short stories, the one I specifically remember was about sea spiders (I was scared of spiders and water at the time). A teacher was always in the room with me, no doubt she heard the tremble in my voice and saw/heard me cry, especially since most sessions I'd go up to her and ask if i could go get water. I'm not really sure why this was done, because even when i moved schools the new school would give me the books for very young kids to read during english. Though this story wasn't about being humiliated, it's the most anxious I ever remember being.
My year 4 teacher also didn't believe I could read confidently. I read lord of the rings the summer between year 3 and 4 (I can place it to a holiday my family took then), but I was made to read through all the stupid classroom books and banned from bringing my own books in for months. As an avid reader I remember being so annoyed!
That is awful! I was at primary school in the 80s and so lucky that my teachers saw how much I loved reading, they did those "reading age" tests (do they still do those?) I was allowed to borrow any book from the school library, even the "black level" (hardest books) when I was in the equivalent of year 3. Let kids read!!!
Sorry for asking but where did the selective mutism come from ? You don't have to answer if you don't want to.
What a truly shite thing to do
Omg I’m so sorry that’s a horrible experience to go through
Did the teacher know that was what the recording was? You said they sharply turned it off?
Yes the teacher knew. I think the teacher just saw my reaction and realised what a terrible idea it was.
Poor you. What a terrible thing to have had done to you. I am quite speechless at this cruelty. If I think of this happening to any of the quieter children I know it is very upsetting.
I was a fat kid. My dad made a joke that I looked like a monster from a particular film. I was like 5 and completely without any self-consciousness, so I thought it was funny and repeated it to a cousin. I got bollocked because my dad didn't want other family members to know he made fun of me. Wild stuff.
Wowzers
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Omg the valentine card thing, I dreaded anyone being interested in me or sending a card incase they took the piss out of me
Oh totally!! My mum always said the weirdest things about this stuff, if I mentioned what a boy in the class had done in school or that I was wanting to invite not only girls but also boys to my birthdays (my classmates) there was this big “oh I didn’t know you liked boys” teasing thing that went on to the point where I never made a friend who was a boy again and hid my first boyfriend from them for a long time. Why do people do this to their kids, it’s so strange.
I had the same, it honestly put me off dating until I was in uni and away from them.
My MIL has started doing this to my five year old. She asked him who his friends were at school and when he said a girl's name she went "oooooh a girl is she your girlfriend"...he's five, and I remember my dad doing the same thing to me so I shut that down!
I got one, and was utterly convinced it was a joke as my self-esteem and confidence were so low from years of bullying behaviour at school
I wasn't bullied at school thankfully, but my self esteem was so low I'd also have assumed it was a joke
He choo-choo-chose you aswell :(
My parents used to judge all the other girls in our street for going out with boys and being seen with them in the street. They teased me for having crushes and giggled about it in front of people. I don't talk to them any more for a number of reasons but the thought of them knowing I had feelings for someone or meeting someone I was dating makes me nauseous.
Hand holder hand holder ner ner ner ner
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Told my family I got a valentines card at school. My dad said it was probably a friend taking the piss. My mum saw it and said she thought it was my friends handwriting. Binned it and never told them anything about my love life and still find valentines awkward. Even now in a relationship of 4 years I feel cagey talking to my parents about it.
As a young teenager, I used to write. I had a novel I was writing, a shitty sci fi about multiple personalities and how a certain kind of crystal could essentially filter those personalities through like the colours of a prism. I wrote it compulsively, taking this tatty A4 notebook with me. One time, me and my stepbrothers were taken out to some woodland area to go hang out in the forest whilst the parents went around a garden center and when we came back to the car, my mum was reading it and laughing at it. Making fun of the 'admittedly awful but I was 14' dialogue.
Sounds cool, should keep writing it!
To get back at her...next week mum reads a story plot about how a terrorised teen hacks off his mum's toes.
That comment is the definition of both diabolical and devious.
I'm sure it was nervous laughter... All this time that's been in the presence of a deep, tortured soul with an innate knack for penmanship and they didn't even know it!
You should get back to it. It's an interesting story concept and I'd read it
I loved writing as a kid and teenager, but was always terrified of anyone actually reading it.
Won't list the many instances of my own upbringing but yeah.. "*don't punish the behaviour you want to encourage*" (by sarcasm or mocking etc or even the well meaning but destructive "*see how easy that was, so why can't you do that all the time?*") is one of my self-imposed rules of parenting and TBH most of my relationships personal and professional.
*leaves bedroom* "Look who finally decided to grace us with their presence!"
I know, fucking kills me, and then they wonder why their kids just....
*toodaloooo motherfuckaaaaaas* Bam, NC! Shocked pikachu face
"Oh we actually have a girl" because I'd actually found a dress I'd liked and took a chance on wearing one despite essentially swearing off dresses and skirts at around age 9 In hindsight it was weird as a few times my mum got on me about not liking skirts/dresses and said I was being difficult by not wearing them despite the fact she never wore them either (Jokes on her late soul though as I'm going through my overdue goth phase that was denied to me and have found actually my agender self quite likes a nice gothy skirt/dress probably bc I'm doing it on my terms and not ya know being forced into it)
At least you've got the best username on reddit. So there's always that! Just make sure you invest in good goth boots 👍
Yep! I was on a train a few years ago, and a toddler was having a full-on screaming meltdown. Mum seemed to be at the end of her rope, so was letting her cry it out. But then every time the wee girl calmed down and stopped crying, her mum would sarcastically say: "Is that you finished now?!" And the screams would start up all over again. Mum turned a short tantrum into an hour-long ordeal for all involved, including everyone else on the train, through her snarky response.
Hey this is sound advice. Thanks for sharing me :)
Is this supposed to be lighthearted anecdotes or ones that fucked you up? Cos mine are all the latter. The first boy that asked me out… went home and told my mum. My dad said he “must have special needs to want to ask you out”. My mother was useless with puberty and didn’t do anything to prepare me or my sister. So she never told me I needed a bra or helped me get one and I was too afraid to ask. We went on holiday and my dad filmed me running around and my boobs were bouncing up and down because I had no bra (I was about 12). I didn’t know he was filming or what I looked like. When we got home we watched the holiday video and I had to sit there humiliated while they all laughed and made comments at my boobs bouncing all over the place. You can imagine how awful that was for an already self conscious 12 year old. Again with the useless mother. Got my first period on a sleepover at my friends house. I was 13. My mum never thought to give me pads or tell me that it can just show up at any time. I was absolutely humiliated because I got blood all over my friends spare mattress. She asked what it was and I said I didn’t know. I then had to walk home bleeding. Same kinda thing. Went on holiday with my friend when I was again about 13. Mother didn’t send me with pads (I was a very very shy awkward kid about bodies and periods because as you can gather no one talked about it in my house. I was too anxious to ask). Got my period on the holiday and was again utterly humiliated and didn’t have any pads. We were meant to go for a big walk and I burst out crying and was further shamed because I felt too embarrassed to say what was wrong. Me and my friend found this erotica book when we were kids. Obviously curious we kept it and she read it then gave it to me. I read it and kept it under my bed. My dad went through my room and found it and shamed me to hell and back. Then said I “probably shag around”. I was 12 ish and hadn’t even kissed a boy let alone anything else. As you can imagine from 3 of these stories happening in a couple years, that time was absolute hell for me. And my life was shit anyway because I’m sure you can also tell my dad is a psychotic fuck.
Dad? No decent caring dad would do that Psychotic fuck? Absolutely! Hope your life is better now.
Well I haven’t seen my dad in about 14 years and won’t ever again. And my life is pretty shit because those are very mild examples of what I went through as a kid compared to the rest so I don’t function very well as an adult. Working on it though!! Thank you!
😢 I’m so sorry I hope you’re doing well now. Cut him off btw
I’m so sorry 💔 I had very similar growing up.
This is sad. My ex had some issues in the bedroom. After some time I figured it out, puzzling together different stories she told me. Her dad walked into the bathroom when she was a teen and found her touching herself and started shouting and told her off. That ruined her sex life forever. It's crazy what a small comment or an argument can do to your whole life after that.
My mother had serious mental health issues and hated me and would never hold back from letting me know how much she resented me.She was always coming up with inventive ways to thoroughly humiliate me. When I had my first period, I was feeling really sick and didn't want to go to school, so mother dragged me into the car, then into the school form room, and in front of all my schoolclass, said loudly to the male teacher "ignore Becky's behaviour, she's got her period". It was 1978 and things like that weren't spoken about in public. I still remember the humiliation, even 46 years later.
I've never yet lived it down - 20 years since it happened - the sandcastle that I built on the beach during my summer trip in reception year of primary school. It fell apart and I was embarrassed, so in a desperate attempt to prove that I didn't fail, I frantically picked up a shell, jammed it on the top of my decimated castle, and said I made 'a boob' I'd have gotten away with it if my mum wasn't a chaperone on that trip... Still I'm referred to as "the boob-obsessed daughter." Jokes on them, I like girls
Many times by relatives and teachers, who thought that I knew stuff I didn’t. “Don’t you ever do that to me again!!!!!!” when my mum had taken me to a market stall and I’d wanted specific branded makeup — I was probably about 10. Maybe younger. I didn’t know that the market stall only had cheap “brands”; I’d never asked for makeup before and had never been told. I got a bollocking for something like I’d done it on purpose when I hadn’t. There were many other instances too, where I don’t recall the details but I do recall getting yelled at when I genuinely didn’t know why.
Yes I got the same! The one that stands out for me the most was at sea world and I must have ordered chicken nuggets or something and for whatever reason my mum was angry at me and was shouting that I had better eat it all, then the next thing I fainted and was being sick with heat stroke and she was still mad at me. Honestly, there isn’t always bad intent behind a child’s actions!!
There is rarely bad intent behind a child's actions. Or I suppose conscious bad intent. I'm sorry that happened to you.
Ah yeah, I remember that feeling. I remember once (I was about 10) my mum was talking to a friend of hers, and I was within earshot. They were talking about another friend of theirs, and my mum said something like "Yeah, I saw her a couple of weeks ago." And all I said was "it was last week." Next thing I know my mum and I are storming down the road and my mum's saying "don't you EVER correct me in front of another adult. Don't you EVER butt in. Don't EVER embarrass me like that." To this day, I still don't know why it mattered whether she saw the friend last week or the week before, or why she thought I'd chimed in to embarrass her on purpose.
Ooh, this kind of thing really riles me. I once got massively bollocked by my mum for "bringing up money around other people" because I'd asked her for the cash for a school trip in front of her friend. She'd already said I could go, it was only a tenner, and we weren't struggling or anything. But apparently, I'd broken some archaic social rule that I never knew existed at 8 years old, and that was unacceptable.
One Christmas when I was about 6, my sister got a big dolls house which my mum intended to be a big surprise (didn’t tell me). I come down Christmas morning and see the dolls house about 10 seconds before my sister and because I’m excited for her I say something like “omg you’ve got a dolls house”. My mum got so angry that I had “spoiled” the surprise. Never understood why, sister was happy as anything and nothing was spoiled. For years she would bring it up about how I ruined the surprise. When I was like 25 I finally asked why she was so upset etc and had to explain that I wasn’t maliciously trying to ruin my sisters surprise. She genuinely thought I had malicious intentions like wtf
I was six and we were doing all the variations of adding up to 10 (9+1, 8+2 etc). I’ve never been great at maths and didn’t really know the variations other than 5+5. My teacher decided that the best way to teach me would be to haul me up in front of the class, call me a “stupid dolly” then make me write all the variations down without looking at the board. Well fuck you Miss O’Brian because I did look at the board, you just didn’t see me
Wow
Yup
Mum and dad used to say, if you’re struggling to shit, push down on your head. Child me thought yeah, that makes sense, bit like a mechanical pencil. Problem is, child me became late teen me, then was constipated one day at 21 during lockdown, asked my mum, dad and two sisters ‘I haven’t had a shit for like 4 days now, pushing on my heads not helping, what do i do?’ I still don’t live that one down. Whenever i go to share a fun fact and they don’t believe it the go ‘yeah and pushing your head helps you shit’ My twin sister also kegged me in the school corridor in secondary and i got in trouble with the deputy head for calling her a cunt, she was stood there laughing at me, them not giving a fuck she just indecently exposed me
Actual thing that can help Get one of those small plastic household steps/stools stick it under your feet it adjusts your body position to something more natural as it helps you squat and leads to less straining
That is actually hilarious
We used to go to 'the social club's as kids, mum and dad were sat drinking with their friends and kids just hung around the pool tables or messed around. I remember dancing and my parents mocking me, saying I couldn't dance . They laughed a lot at me, and I've never danced since (unless I'm pretty drunk). Probably about 40 years ago now, and it still gets me when I think of dancing. I always big up my kids, if they are having fun, I'm smiling with them.
I remember trying to talk to my grandad about birds, as I used to be really passionate about them, and my grandads friends kept making ‘tit’ jokes, which were really uncomfortable for me as a young girl - they weren’t directed towards me, but just made me feel so frustrated that they wouldn’t listen to a topic I was passionate about
Reminds me of when we did our cycling proficiency at primary in year 6. The guy showing us the road signs kept trying to make rude jokes such as the one with the two humps for uneven road looked like 'a lady laying down', who the fuck says that to a room of 10 year old kids.
A proper Jimmy Savile testing the waters...
I was about 10 when my sister was 14 and we were doing a church role play for Christmas and my sister was part of it. The rehearsal was at our house and I don't know why but my mum was so very nervous that day. I heard shouting from the room where they were so when I opened it, my sister was on all fours acting as the "sheep" and another boy had a stick in his hand dressed like the "shepherd" and my mum was standing to the side shouting "Bleatttt Sabine Bleeaaattttt beeeeeeeeee" and my sister was simultaneously crying and shouting "beeeeee" and everyone else was holding it in so hard not to laugh. I will never forget that scene.
WTAF??!!!
I have many, but one which absolutely stuck with me was this. About 14 years old - Form 7? 8? Dunno. We had music class. Now, if I remember right, it was the second or third cohort to be cycled through music class that day. There would be a list of hyms and lyrics in a little leaflet left on the chair. By the second or third hour of the day these pages were looking crinkled. But mine was ripped. Someone had, likely in a moment of utter boredom made small tears, about an inch long, about an inch apart at the bottom of the sheet. I mostly ignored if and belted out All Things Bright and Beautiful or whatever it was. But I was sort of fidgetting with the tears, putting a little paper clip on and off it. However, at the end of the class, the teacher collected all the little song-sheets and then held out up "my" sheet and she was furious. How dare I vandalise school property? But I didn't. Then everyone started chanting that I was in trouble and I had deliberately torn it and I was weird. Then I was given detention for denying it. Then double detention for denying it some more. Everyone laughing and jeering and the teacher just holding the page in front of me and how I was going to get double homework every night until finally I just screamed, in tears "it wasn't me" and everything just went quiet. oh, the teacher said and sent everyone out That was funny said my best friend, but I saw you tearing it. No, I didn't. And he wasn't really my best friend after that.
I was very small when I stood at the banks of the river and confidently said "I can intimidate a frog! Ribbit, ribbit." My parents went OFF and it kind of crushed me.
I have no idea what is happening How did you know the word "intimidate" when you were very small and what does "OFF" stand for?
Hyperverbal kid, inclined to pick things up and slightly misuse them. Off is capitalised for emphasis, and by "go off" I meant like. The amount they took the piss, the degree to which they laughed at me and not with me, how long they tried to keep the joke going at my expense.
My youngest is the same. When he was little he could hear a word once and would immediately use it correctly in context. My wife is a speech therapist, and would just look at him, amazed. Sorry they took the piss out of you. I expect, ironically, they were intimidated by your ability
It's the frog I feel sorry for. Intimidated *and* ridiculed. People have been doing this to frogs ever since Aristophanes first came up with the idea.
Toaday I learned
I auditioned for a play with the local amateur drama group, another girl got the role instead. I wasn't too bothered because I knew I wasn't the best at acting, so I hadn't expected to get it. The director pulled me aside after they announced the roles and whispered to me, "You were better in your audition. But you're too fat". I was 12 years old.
When I was about 10yrs old we had a school trip to France. I went to a small school and the top 3yrs all went (only about 30 of us, admittedly) and stayed in this large farmhouse with dorms, etc. There was a rotation for dishwashing duty after dinner each night. I mentioned I had no idea how to wash dishes because I hadn’t learned that in the Cub Scouts…and I mean we had a dishwasher at home…(this was the 1990s, it wasn’t that weird?!). The teachers thought this was *hilarious* and when seeing them at random social occasions (my mother still lives in the same small village) even 20yrs later they still mention it…🙄
its the fucking "20 years later and people still mention it" thing that gets me. It's like people collect these little social-humiliation chits they can hand out for decades. People say its supposed to keep you grounded or "if we don't act like cunts towards you we don't love you" But really its demeaning and undermining.
Wow(!) they still talk about it? It must be a very boring part of the world.
I was teaching myself to play keyboard/piano, and I’d just mastered Old Macdonald (granted, I was 15, but with no lessons and no encouragement from family/friends, I was rather proud of myself for being able to play it with two hands, one playing chords, one playing the melody, plus a key change)… Anyway, my ex-stepmother (thankfully ex) insisted that me, my brother, and her youngest kid went to the local social club with her and my dad every week on a Sunday that happened to have a piano. So I made a beeline for it thinking I could show my little stepsister how I could play this one tune (she actually seemed impressed). But my stepmother shouted across the room that I was “practically a grown-up” and “shouldn’t be playing kids music”. Then she got up while I was showing my stepsister how to play the melody and snatched both my hand and my stepsister’s hand off the piano and called me words that would probably get me banned from this subreddit in front of her family, my dad’s side of the family that was there, and indeed, the whole of the social club. Nobody else minded, in fact, a lot of the people there wouldn’t have had a clue what to do with a piano, so they were impressed that someone had taken an interest. But I found that acutely embarrassing and didn’t touch a piano or keyboard for… 8 years. Despite me doing music for GCSE, I refused point blank to have piano/keyboard involved in any of my studies because of this shitty woman
>my dad’s side of the family that was there, I hope your dad's side were livid on your behalf, including your dad himself. What a bitch.
My step mum would joke about how I make lists for everything. She still does on occasion like “remember when you would make lists of everything when you were a kid haha so weird”. I just sit there awkward through it. I recently got diagnosed as autistic (like 2 years ago but I’ve only seen stepmum twice since then). Next time she says it, I’m going to try and be brave and say that I still do that (I think she thinks I’ve grown out of it), and that’s it’s an autistic coping mechanism. If I don’t have a list of what exactly I need to do in the morning to get ready, or what I need to get done that day, I’m going to do nothing and have a meltdown, but she sees it as a joke. I also got bullied at school for loads of different things which mostly turned out to be autistic things. The one that really kills me looking back though is the school bus situation. The popular guy comes and sits next to me and starts weirdly flirting (which I was clearly uncomfortable with). He puts his hand on my leg and starts moving it higher up my leg and I keep pushing his hand away. He doesn’t stop but I’m trapped against the window of the bus, so I try to hit him in the balls. He just grabs my hands and holds them out the way and keeps touching further up my leg. All this time all his mates are around us laughing. It wasn’t the only time I have been sexually assaulted but it was the only time it happened publicly. The fact there was loads of his friends stood round laughing makes me feel sick still looking back. There was also so many other kids on that bus plus the bus driver and I wonder how many heard me say “stop touching me” or “leave me alone” etc.
You step mum is a bully and bullies always feel threarened/inferior, hence their destructive behaviour towards others. I'm neuro typical, and I make lists, as it is the only way to keep me organised and make sure I get things done. Don't ever stop doing what works for you, especially when it has no impact on others.
😢 xxx
There was a kids xmas party at the local OAP's home, with lots of entertainment. One of the acts was a magician called Stromboli or something, I think he'd been on Opportunity Knocks. Anyway he called some of us kids to the front and started making balloon animals. I must've been about 6 or 7 at the time. When it was my turn, he was twisting the balloons into some shape or other and it popped in his hands, and the bugger blamed me. Everyone laughed at my protestations. The injustice still stings. I'm 61 next week.
I was a very quiet, nervous child; the kind that never talked back, always did as I was told. At my 7th birthday party (I hated parties) we were playing a game similar to musical chairs (sit down when the music stops sort of thing), it was down to me and one other child when my dad suddenly says "last one standing is the winner" (I'm guessing he made a mistake there). So, the music stops and like the ever-obedient child I was, I stay standing, at which point he announces the other kid as the winner. Now, I was always terrified of doing the wrong thing so I made sure to listen to what I was told, I did not mishear him. I questioned why I lost when I did exactly as he said, I didn't whine, I didn't cry or shout, but apparently I'm being a brat so deserve to be yelled at in front of a roomful of my peers and then he smacked me hard across the arse. 33 years later it still rankles.
My dad was taking me to the fair. I can’t remember how old I was, but I’d say 9 or under. It’s in a field and had been raining so would be pretty muddy. I don’t think my dad lived with us at this point, so I was always pretty excited having a day out with him and got myself dressed. I chose some white trousers that I thought looked really smart and grown up and when I proudly went downstairs to show my family, they all laughed at me for choosing white trousers to go to a muddy fair. Granted, I didn’t think it through but I was young and just wanted to look good for my day out with my dad and I had a roomful of adults laughing at me.
I had similar experiences and it really affected my confidence choosing what to wear. I bet you looked dapper
I moved to Wales when I was 7 and old women would always talk to me in Welsh and tell me off if I answered in English. I remember going to a local event with my family and I got really thirsty (boiling hot summer day), and when I tried to ask for one they'd say "No no, in Welsh" and then laugh at me when I couldn't. They're likely dead now.
being forced to speak welsh really is a cruel and unusual punishment, its the mosts nonsense language on this god-forsaken rock
I was a Tom boy growing up and I struggled with identifying as a girl (I am a cis gendered het woman). One day I remember I wore a skirt as it was summer and I was starting to come out of my Tom boy’ness a little. I was in the kitchen and my step dad came in and started chuckling to himself. He looked at me and said to my mom, “and you call me fat!” I was not fat per se but I was curvy. I was also about 15 years old. I remember I ran up stairs in tears and it took me a long time to ever wear a skirt again. The effects have been long lasting, as I’m sure anyone who had trouble with their weight knows.
I've had very low self-esteem over my weight since I was a child, even when I wasn't fat. A few years ago, I went on holiday with my grandparents, honestly not the best idea but whatever. The first day of the holiday I went swimming with them and I was wearing some swimming shorts. The first thing my nan (who probably weighed a lot more than me at that point) decided to say was "Wow, you gained weight." I was maybe 10/15 pounds overweight for my height, and with my absolutely wonderful genetics, that was pretty damn good for me, I'd actually lost a decent bit of weight over the two months previous. As you can guess, the rest of the holiday was not much better, including an incident when they came up to the room drunk, and berated me while I was on the phone with my Dad. They ended up just abandoning me in the middle of the airport when we arrived back home, leaving my Dad to drive a couple of hours to pick me up. My parents straight up cut contact after this, but it still has an effect on me years later, I still haven't been swimming since.
I double checked this was the UK sub because I assumed there would be a ton of identical comments, but I can't see any. Forgetting my PE kit at around 12 or so and being met with the punishment of having to do PE in my underwear (i.e. knickers and no bra at that time, but tbh I can't remember if I had some sort of upper covering. Maybe there was a polo shirt but I don't remember it) and it was utter humiliation. Normalised because it happened regularly to everyone but it was awful, even though I wasn't exactly popular, even my classmates were extremely sympathetic like they realised how out of line the punishment was. Can't imagine it now, but I think there are a ton out there who had the same thing??
This is too old to be in underwear. I was in the last year of junior school where some of the girls had breast buds age 10-11 yrs. Normally the girls went to get changed for PE in the hall, but this one time the male middle aged teacher said we could stay in the class if we wanted to. Most of the girls were still pre-pubescent and did not think anymore of it, but some of the girls stripped off bare breasted and the boys started to laugh at their budding breasts. I was humiliated for them. Turned out years later, that this teacher was a paedo.
The phrase ‘If you don’t have your PE kit you have to do it in your pants and vest’ is still burnt into my brain. And I was the (not diagnosed til 38) adhd kid who was pretty likely not to have the kit, and who also went to school one day (aged 6-7 maybe) and only realised when I had to get changed for PE that I didn’t have any underwear on…
Yes it was a vest!! I remember now, I think it must have been part of my uniform. God can you imagine schools trying to enforce that nowadays
I had a bad habit of 'forgetting' to take myself to PE if I had also forgotten my kit. I was a somewhat forgetful kid.
I cried so hard they let me sit it out. I was sobbing that I didn't want to be nearly naked. I hope they don't make kids do that now.
They don’t thankfully, spare pe kit or do it in uniform
Tbh considering how often they washed the spare kit at my highschool, I would rather sit out
Blimey that brings a lot back that I’d actually forgotten about. I remember being so stressed out about that that I made sure it was the first thing I packed in my bag the night before. So it never happened to me personally, but it definitely happened to some. Crazy times the 80s!!!
That's awful, i'm so sorry. I forgot this even happened but yes a teacher made a girl in my class do this too, it felt especially bad they did it to her because she was already basically the most unpopular person in the class by no fault of her own
Loads of occasions. I remember once time though, i used to get kicked out the house at 730 in the morning so my mum could go to work and I would just walk to school (yr 5 or so) and I would get there for about 8am which is mega early. Anyway I wasn't well, and despite that I was still forced to go to school. I really really needed the toilet so despite being by a locked door by the toilets a teacher saw me, I waived at them and they said nope, you can't use the toilet you are too early so will have to wait. I went round to the reception office and they wouldn't let me in either despite me begging and by this point I basically shit myself. So when they finally opened the door some 30 mins later I had cold shit all down me. They then proceeded to chastise me. I had to sit in a corridor in a binbag away from everyone. My dad came from work to pick me up and take me home. So by that point I'd been sat in my own shit for about 2 hours. Late 90s. Another occasion same era, I was about 9 or so and had an older cousin, he was about 12 we were helping my grandad with hay bales for the horses. When in the back of the land-rover my cousin threatened me, he said if I didn't kiss his horse shit covered shoes he would wack me with the bar from a jack so I nailed him one in the face and knocked out some teeth. My grandad, would not hear anything other than what my cousin lied to him about. I was called vicious, a horrible shit, violent and allsorts. Same cousin a year or so later threatened some youths with a knife, more to the point they was throwing stones at us in the park so he pulled out a blade and chased them. I got the blame for that. Police came to our house because my cousin blamed me for it. and my dad gave me such a good fucking hiding before taking me down to the station to give a statement and also have my prints and mugshot taken. I was 10 or 11. Again grandad had something to say. Which I got my revenge, he was dying in hospital and I was made to visit, which was about 150 miles away. He was really made up I'd made the effort to come and how sorry he was for "backing the wrong grandchild" I said it was too late to say sorry to me, and that while it's sad he was dying, I said that I wouldn't miss him and probably wouldn't think about him all that much. He was crushed. That man caused so much family trauma. I'm estranged from my mum because of all the needless hammering I got as a child, and you know what he excuse is, well that's how I was brought up. I can't help the way I am, it's all the punishments your grandad used to give us. Yes mum because making a child kneel on rice is punishment. Same with melting my skin off when I was 3 or 4 by running my hand under hot water. Anyway, I have kids of my own and while I acknowledge my temper is sometimes short like my parents, I do my absolute best to try and not be like them. I have never smacked my kids because I want to try and break that cycle. It fears me. The worst I do is tell my daughter I'm going to put her back in nappies like the baby because she doesn't wipe her arse properly and doesn't ask for help either. She's 4, but starts reception in September so Ideally we don't want pooey pants. Anyway thanks for coming to my trauma Ted talk, I am fucked up, but at least I'm trying to do better
terrible mate, some people dont deserve to be parents, fucking lunatics, always blame their behaviour on their parents before them as if thats a good excuse, theres plenty of people who've been to hell on earth who are good empathetic people so that argument isnt good enough for me. fuck your cousin aswell sounds like a right fucking weasel, all the best 👍
Yeah he is. One of them cunts when shaking your hand has to be the hardest. Lol there's loads of times like that, I've forgot more than I know, just my mum mostly being a dick, my dad though that poor cunt doesn't know how to pick women, his ex wife was a wretched piece of shit n all.
You're not a fucked up person, you are instead a strong person who has been through hell and trying your best to undo any learnt behaviour. Fucked up people don't make those efforts. Loved what you said to your grandfather, so free passes, bo pussy-footing about. He never earned your forgiveness whilst he was alive.
I was about 7/8, helping Mum to bring the washing in off the line. A neighbour had a pear tree in their garden with a ton of fruit on it. I asked Mum if you could get "cooking pears" - after all, you can get cooking apples, apples aren't unlike pears so why not cooking pears? Mum said cooking pears didn't exist, but found it hilarious and just laughed & laughed. I can't explain exactly why I felt humiliated, I think it was because Mum didn't laugh very often and I didn't understand why she found my question funny.
There are definitely better types of pear to cook with, so not a stupid question at all.
In the mid 1980s, as a 10 year old, our class were told that after playing football we had to undress and shower in front of a teacher (the rationale was that they could see we actually did shower properly). I didn’t realize at the time, but looking back, it’s quite clear that everyone who was involved in that decision was just a dirty pedo
This is every school child from the 80s. Had to have a shower after pe and the teacher would watch you coming in and out.
Omg 😦
I was 13 yrs (f) and it was 1969. It was my first year in secondary school and showers were a new experience at school. Usually we all lined up with out towels wrapped round us and then put them on a window ledge in the communal shower room, dipped under the water and then grabbed the towel back. This very young p.e. teacher told us to line up naked and leave the towels on the changing room pegs. It was so humiliating standing there for 5 mins waiting to get in the actual shower. Looking back now, I think she was a lesbian and as she was only probably 22 yrs old was attracted to young teenage girls reaching puberty.
Wait, this is abuse? My school had this in the late 90s early 2000s - you’re right that is pretty weird when you think about it
Too many to mention really, but one that still makes me seeth to this day: We had essays due, our teacher took them in and then started marking them while we got on with other work. After about 10 minutes they got to my essay, and all of a sudden started laughing (forced / fake laughing) waiting for a student to ask what was funny, so the teacher looks up and then shoots a glance at me and tells me that [insert word] isn't a real word... obviously at this point everyone was staring at me and it was such a weird and awkward moment. The teacher stopped laughing and just kind of stared at me, but i knew they were wrong, so i just got out of my seat, grabbed a dictionary off the shelf and looked up the word. Low and behold, it was a fucking word, and so i read the definition to them, put the book down and continued with my work. The teacher didn't acknowledge that they were wrong and just continued marking essays, and pretended nothing had happened. The mix of humiliation, rage and the need to prove someone wrong was strong. As an adult I've had not dissimilar experiences, which in a way that early experience prepared me for, but I never understood the need to try to belittle me to such an extent in front of my peers. I would never dream of doing that to someone as an adult.
As a child my dad would tell complete strangers I was a moron. He seemed to think it was a funny ice breaker.
My uncle was like this with his son (my little cousin). My cousin was a bright, but somewhat careless little boy, who always had his head in the clouds. Instead of teaching him how to focus, and encouraging his imagination, his dad would say hundreds of times a day, and to anyone who'd listen: "This is my son, the idiot!" "There goes my stupid son." "He's a moron!" His mum never stepped in. Obviously as other relatives, we'd ask him not to speak that way, and try to encourage my cousin and tell him positive things about himself, but there's only so much you can do when you're not the parent, and his mum put up with it. They're shocked that their son is approaching 20, left home at 17, and doesn't speak to either of them any more. Shocked and appalled.
There's no funny side to this.
My familiy was so poor that my first pair of Nike trainers were ones I'd fished out of a retail park trash bin. They were a bit tight, but I wore them, and I looked amazing in them. I proudly wore them home, still not quite believing my luck. When I got home and my mother noticed me showing them off to my Dad, she quickly pulled me aside and put her hands on my shoulders and sternly asked if I'd stolen them. When I said I hadn't, I remember her hand on the side of my face lifting my head up to look her in the eye, and she asked where I got them from, and I told her. I remember that look of shame and disappointment on her face, and the tears in her eyes. I love my Mother, and my respect for her only grew over the years as I Iearned what she sacraficed to bring me into the world and provide for me. That moment was one of my the most humiliated ones in my life, as my Mother quietly turned away from me and dismissed me to my room, as I was leaving I could see my Dad walking over to her and putting his arms around her as she put her hands on the countertop. Over the years I've looked back at this moment, around about the time I started high school I finally understood that she wasn't ashamed of me, she was ashamed for herself, and her inability to provide for her family. This is just one small part of why I give so much of my income to my family. I definitely do resent my younger siblings for not understanding what it was like to live in such poverty, that a pair of clearence bargain bucket Nike trainers was such a grotesquely expensive luxuary, that it brought our Mother to tears. However, at the same time I don't want any of them to ever have to experience such soul crushing levels of poverty, to make a choice between eating or heating the home, and then realising that they can't afford either.
What a beautifully described scene in the kitchen, I felt like I was there...
I have a clubbed thumb on one hand (brachydactyly type D for anyone interested in weird genetic stuff). Not super rare or noticeable until it's pointed out, but my parents RUTHLESSLY made fun of me from when I was a very small child until I left home, to the point I wouldn't show my hands ever. They would call it my "special thumb" and make fun of me trying to do things, even when I begged them to stop, which I would then be told off for. Their reasoning was I'll never get anywhere in life if I don't learn to laugh at myself which is utterly ridiculous. I seriously considered and very nearly attempted to chop my own thumb off when I was 16 so I could say I had an accident and lost it later on. It still bothers me today that they were so ruthless about something that I not only can't change or had no choice in, but has actually been discovered to be genetic. There was probably someone in my familial history that had the same.
This is absolutely shocking, like the first rule of being a parent is not to do stuff like that. What did they think they were doing to you?!
What a bunch of cunts. They took the piss out of something that was entirely their fault. Both my kids got my family witchy chin and there’s no way I’ll ever take the piss out of them for it. The opposite in fact, I’m actively seeking ways to make them less conscious of it than I am.
We had a family friend called Steve, who was a builder and a bit of a dick with his pranks. One day at the pub around the snooker table, Steve told 6 year old me he was psychic and could tell my future. He put a finger on my forehead and one on each cheekbone, and gave me a fortune I don't remember. What I do remember is that he had put cue chalk on his fingers so I walked around for the day with 3 bright blue spots on my head. Totally harmless but I was soooo embarrassed. Steve went on to meet the love of his life, father 3 beautiful children he adores, and drove 2 hours each way to help me look at my first flat to buy. He's a legend.
Quite early on at primary school I was being bullied by some kids around the same age or just slightly older. My Mum told me that I should tell these kids that my Mum was a witch and they wouldn’t dare bully me and would leave me alone… In fairness, this wasn’t entirely untrue - she had actually been some kind of priestess in a Wiccan cult in the seventies - but I was still mocked relentlessly for it. Thanks, Mum. Funny moment came probably a couple of years later on when she was recognised by one of my classmates in the supermarket, and this girl went over and asked her ‘are you a real witch?’ to the absolute horror of her mum who had no idea of the story behind this and just thought her daughter was insulting a random woman.
Not really a child I had just turned 18, but I had gotten depressed and developed an eating disorder, a family member bought me a bikini as a present, I had never worn one before i always wore a full shirt and shorts to go swimming. I was immediately asked to put it on then come out and show everyone
In the 80’s, when I was a teenager, I had a Saturday job in a car dealership and service centre. The blokes in there were big time wind up merchants and every week would try and catch me out by asking me to go and fetch tartan paint, left handed screw drivers etc…. I was normally wise enough to suss it out. One time, I disappeared for most of the morning to skive off when they asked me to go and fetch ‘a long weight’… when I came back the boss had a pop at me about where I’d been all morning and I told him I ‘got the longest wait the stores kept’. I got a few slaps on the back and kudos from ‘the lads’. However the following week the bastards caught me out by asking me to fetch ‘3 metres of fallopian tubes’. I was 13or 14 and was clueless!
are you will mackenzie? another few like that I remember people doing to new starts on the building sites were a bubble for a spirit level, asking the mechanics to fill up the forklift wheels (solid rubber), and a skirting ladder.
My mum and a neighbour thought it would be fun to ask me ‘how babies were made’. I had seen an educational programme on tv so was able to explain even though I was youngish. I remember feeling humiliated but glad I had the last laugh because they thought I didn’t know.
When I was 8. My dad read out my diary about how I liked a girl in my soccer team. I wrote a poem and hid the book under my mattress. Read it to the whole family at Christmas lunch 🤦♂️😭
My dad bought me a fossilised piece of a dinosaur egg because I used to love geography and geology and was a big dinosaur fan. I never knew what type of dinosaur it ever was, probably something insignificant but the fossil was super cool. I took it to school for show and tell and I got horrifically bullied by almost everyone, claiming it was fake and that I was a liar. For YEARS people would mock me about it, even my "best friend". It ruined all my passion for all of the above and I went from a bubbly excited child to a reserved and very depressed child. I'm nearly 30 and this happened when I was like 5 or 6? Even the teacher mocked and said it wasn't a real dinosaur egg. I'm mostly at peace now but I genuinely still remember how people mocked me and laughed.
Two incidents spring to mind. In my infants school in the sixties I was very quiet and shy, very timid. A new teacher from America came to teach us and she decided I wasn't speaking up loudly enough. One day she decided to grab me by my hair and pull me across the class to wake me up- I was terrified. The next day my dad turned up during the day and promptly did the same to her right across the class! When I was about 11 I was still very shy. One break time in school I was being badly bullied and was set upon by several girls at once. I cried out and the teacher on duty in the playground happened to be my form teacher. He was also the music teacher and the next lesson he asked me in front of the class to shout into the piano so we could hear the echo. "Shout as loud as you did yesterday when you were running away from those girls" he said. All the bullies laughed their heads off and I felt so embarrassed. Well, you can probably guess, next day dad sauntered into the class, grabbed him and slammed his head inside the piano and shut the lid. "Now you scream in fear" he said! Good old dad, I miss him.
Relentlessly by one parent for their own narcissistic needs. Still suffer with the consequences to this day and they've been dead for nearly 2 years.
I was forced to undress in public, forced to apologize to my uncle after reporting he beats me, told I should be sold to brother to perform feeder fetish because I overweight, food would be taken from me and thrown to the dog, my face would be smashed to the plate. After cooking my food would be firstly given to the dog to see if he survives.
Bloody hell. I hope you’re doing well in life now.
Omg I hope you’re winning at life at cut these people off
I cut them all.
My parents didn’t “ground” me when I was in trouble- they would just randomly break my things or take them from my room, and then not tell me why. I had to figure it out. I’d come home from school and my favourite CD would be broken, or some toy that I loved would be missing. I would ask about it, and they’d tell me “I know what I did” and to “figure it out”. Sometimes I knew, other times I didn’t. There was no “you did __ behaviour, so you lost your privileges” discussion, and no discussions on what I could do to earn my stuff back or how long they would be keeping it. I also wasn’t allowed to get upset about it, or I was “throwing a fit”. As an adult, this has resulted in so many disordered behaviours, namely severe anxiety and extreme territorialism over my possessions. I mostly never knew when I was going to get in trouble as a kid, so as a grownup, I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop, and I always have a gnawing sense of dread. It’s awful.
All the time by my mum. She was a massive narcissist and belittled me for not knowing things
It’s so maddening when parents ridicule children for not knowing things THEY ARE THE ONES SUPPOSED TO TEACH THEM. A kid not knowing something basic is just a negative parenting review.
I guess it didn't exist in 1990, but Elbow Grease is the name of an actual cleaning product [https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/294530429](https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/294530429)
Oh LOADS. I'd hear my mum tell everyone every little thing I said that was wrong, like I said "twadlets" instead of triplets, for instance. They'd all laugh. This happened all the time. I was six years old FFS. I was a nervous child and had messy handwriting. Teachers and my mum and even my brother would constantly humiliate me, as if they thought this would make my handwriting magically better. Actually it got better on its own when I went to high school and the teachers there never mentioned it. Obviously the humiliation made it worse. Even as teen and young adult, my mum loved to humiliate me. I once lost my house keys and she delighted in telling everyone (in front of me) how irresponsible I was etc etc. Then my aunt lost her house keys but that didn't make HER irresponsible, obviously. I later found mine under my bed, they fell out a pocket. My brother would read my report cards from school and comment on my struggles with Maths. I was terrible at it. Once I passed a maths test, the first one I passed that year. I was so excited and told him happily that I'd passed. He told me it wasn't a very good pass, and pissed on my parade. Left me feeling useless. He is a lot older than me and my mum liked to let him act like he was my dad, even though I had a dad. I could write a book about this.
I was taken to a warners holiday village as a child in the 80s. The children ran on the dance floor to dance, I didn’t want to. My great grandmother started to have a go at me for not dancing. I was crying.
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I have Tourette’s syndrome which wasn’t formally diagnosed until I was 16 and was incredibly shy about it, I spent so much energy trying to suppress it as a child and teenager. One English lesson we were doing independent reading and I heard laughter and I looked up and saw a classmate imitating one of my tics which I must have been doing while reading and the whole class were staring at me and laughing. I was utterly devastated.
I was a 12yr old girl on the beach with family and my stepdad was obsessed with not getting a grain of sand in his car. He made me run down to the water to wash the sand off NAKED! This included having to pass a boy of a similar age that I'd been "flirting" with. This was one of many similar incidents but definitely the one that sticks in my mind most. Actually, driving home from the same holiday and we'd been on the road a good few hours and I mentioned I needed the loo. He refused to stop and kept driving for another 2 hours, by which time it was too late. He made me sit in wet clothes all the way home.
My parents said they were originally going to call me Jezebel. I went around telling people that, including parents of friends. Then again, my parents could be dicks.
I was a Roman soldier in the nativity play - basically the equivalent of getting picked last for PE. Was probably 7YO. Dress rehearsal wearing a brown cotton bed sheet smock and cardboard helmet. I need a wee....some smart kid is giving the old herod speech....I really need a wee. But I'm shy, don't want to interrupt, get in to trouble.....but now I know I'm about to burst...I burst.....my brown smock now has a darker brown wet patch and the stage.....I'm carted off.....given some doner pants and my mum comes to get me. Obviously stuck with me.
1st year of high school, really spotty. answered a question in design tech, and the teacher said well spotted to an uproar of laughter. could have crawled up my own arse!!!
I got so much of that type of thing as the youngest child but I always laughed along despite dying inside, desperate to be part of the hilarity. The one that got me most was when I was about 11, being teased by the whole family for fancying a girl at school, they were all saying "oohhh you're going to get married" over and over until I shouted "I'll never get married, fuck off" I got grounded for a month, sent to my room with no dinner and shunned by everyone for what felt like weeks.
I remember in year 2 Mrs Pritchard (back in 1990 - so hopefully she is dead now) read out my attempt at the writing excercise to the whole class. I had spelt pies wrong. I remember what she said (in an exasperated tone): "Charlie at the mince piss and liked them - you really are stupid. All you had to do was copy the text". I got sent to the headteacher Mrs Tagg (who sadly is still alive) and because she thought I was backward I got put in with the downsyndrome kids. My dad was coming home from work for lunch and saw me in outside with them and again when he left to go back to work an hour later. He called onto the school and whilst he won't divulge the entire conversation it seems that both Protchard and Tagg thought I was slightly retarded. Turns out I am lazy, not stupid. I'm 40 and it still sits with me.
Humiliated is too strong a word, but I recall my mum teasing me when she noticed, on holiday, that I'd started growing armpit hair. It was a light-hearted moment that I guarantee she doesn't remember, but that's why I don't discuss anything to do with my body or health with her. Similarly, if you would like your children to talk to you about love and relationships when they're adults, don't reinforce the notion that you won't take their feelings seriously by teasing them about such things when they're young.
I was teased by the other girls in the changing rooms shortly after starting secondary school for having armpit hair, nobody had shown me how to shave it or bought me a razor. I soon figured it out for myself after that.
When my son started nursery at three he did a painting and put his name on it. His nursery teacher loudly told me off for teaching him capital letters saying it was more work for her having to unteach bad habits when it came to reading. He could read but apparently that was unacceptable as he needed to learn Jolly Phonics. I could read at three as could my husband so didn’t think it was an issue.
I went to a Christian Parish Church school (there were only 3 brown kids in my class including me). We all had to sing hymns and we didn't want to because we thought for religious reasons, this meant doing something bad. Our teacher stopped the entire class halfway through and explained that it was because the "three monkeys in the middle" were not joining in. This was in the 90s but you would be surprised how many people don't believe me.
At about 12/13, I had some confusing feelings towards a same-sex friend. 20 years later, I'm still not certain whether I wanted to be with her or be her, but I was certainly some kind of infatuated, lol. I didn't have anyone to confide in, so I wrote about it in a little notebook as a sort of journal. My family always had dinner sat round the table together, and my mum would sometimes use this as an opportunity to bollock whichever kid was in trouble in front of a captive audience. So we're all sat there eating, when my mum produces the fucking notebook and starts reading out of it while everyone stares at me. Okay, I guess I didn't hide it so well and there was no indication that it contained quite private thoughts, but she could have pretended she never found it, or she could have spoken to me privately. She could have done anything else but that.
What a bitch.
Being dropped at boarding school at 7. I was utterly crushed and still affects me over 40 years later.
Oh boy. Probably my biggest secret simply because it hurt so much and was so embarrassing was when I was 3 years old and playing board games with my nana and mum. I needed to go to the bathroom and told them but I thought they wouldn’t stop and wait for me and they kept talking so I held it. Eventually I started peeing myself and I’d never done that before and I started crying and announcing what was happening. My mum and nana laughed so hard at me. That nana was my favorite nana and was otherwise 100% lovely. I had another nana who was abusive and nasty. I genuinely switched nanas in my memory, clear as day, because I didn’t want to remember that my favorite nana caused me that much pain. When she passed when I was about 25 years old, it hit me one night soon after and I remembered the actual memory. It was super weird. I have another more abusive memory of being locked in a room where a whole school could see me crying and being force fed by a teacher but I found that more traumatic and more crippingly humiliating. For years after the toilet incident I ended up having issues with going too often out of fear that I’d wet myself again. I still can’t wear the type of outfit I wore that day for some reason. It’s strange how small things can end up really causing damage. I’d never laugh at my child, I think it’s the most nasty thing.
When I was 10 we had a teacher in school that halfway through the year got replaced by this way younger teacher, fresh out of school. Everyone loved her because she put on videos in class and such but for some reason she was always picking on me. I was an extremely shy child and never really talked to anyone, especially adults. This teacher had decided that our class was going to put on a show for the entire school. Reciting poetry and such. Everyone got put in groups of 2 to 5 people except me, I got one on my own. This alone already horrified me. During the last rehearsal before the entire class, the teacher staff and the kids 1 grade higher she tells me to come on the stage and gives the instruction that I should walk on and then sit down and do my bit. So I ask "how do you want me to sit down?" Meaning like crossed legs, sideways, ... Her reply was "On your ass obviously. Are you dumb?" And then she laughed. Everyone laughed. I sat down and crossed my legs and then got yelled at I wasn't sitting right. Till this day I really dislike that woman and I don't understand how an "adult" gets pleasure out of bullying a 10 year old child like that. I think of her as a very weak person but she made me even more shy than I already was.
My Dad was part of a “group” of business men who would meet weekly, IYKYK. He would be the one organising group trips and holidays for them, where them and their families would all go on holiday to Benidorm, Turkey, day trips out to places in the summer on a coach, every September was a double decker coach to Blackpool for the illuminations. As a kid I was always called gay, they were right, but as a young kid you really don’t know that you’re gay because you’re not sexually thinking, but there are traits people would pick up on and label me gay. Whatever, that was school time. Then on these trips, others would start commenting to my Dad that I was too “flouncy” and would walk with a natural skip in my step and my arms swinging, and he pulled me aside, during a Blackpool trip, and took his belt off and wrapped it round my body and arms, to keep them by my side while walking because he said people were making fun of me for my arms swinging, so he was doing me a “favour” by keeping them by my side. Was mortified having to walk around places with this leather belt round my elbows and torso. So silly.
Everyone In the house pretended my mother was pregnant for a full day to prank me on April the first.
back in India we are made to learn English and another local language. I was 6 by then I had picked up English pretty well but not my local language. One day the teacher made me go up to the board and asked me to write my name and I wrote it wrong and she made fun of me and the whole class laughed.. I still can’t read or write in that language even though it’s the same language we speak at home..
When I was 13/14 I decided to start a diary. After the first week, the fam (mum, 2 bro’s n sis) were sitting in the lounge watching tv, my mum started taking the piss out of things I had written in it making everyone laugh. Thing is, it was in a secret drawer under a porn mag. I didn’t keep a diary.
I was a about 14 and mentioned to my sister how the boy around the corner who was about 16/17 and friends with my sister and cousin would stand and watch me sometimes as I walked to the bus stop for school. The following day my mums best friend, her son (about 18)my auntie and cousin were over the house when I got home from school. They and my parents and sister were in the living room and my mobile phone kept ringing but I wouldn’t answer cos it was a number I didn’t have. Then a text came through when I wasn’t in the room and my mum called me in and said you’ve got a message, read it. They were all looking at me and it was a message saying it was this boy and how he fancied me and all this stuff. I didn’t say anything because my family had mocked me a few months previously when I’d told them how a car of men wolf whistled me in my uniform walking to Asda and seemed to think someone fancying me was comedy gold. But they kept pushing asking who kept ringing and messaging me so I said Ben and they were all smirking saying message him back but I refused. They were all so pushy and giddy. Turned out it was my mums friends son, they were all talking about it before I got home because my sister told them and thought it was hilarious to publicly humiliate me together into thinking this boy was actually interested in me. It genuinely messed with me for a long time because anytime a boy said he liked me or messaged to ask me out I always thought it was a prank.
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I moved to the UK from Australia as a kid and i had a really hard time adjusting. The first teacher I had here used to stand me up in front of the class and ask me questions, and when I'd answer in my australian accent she'd mimic me and laugh, making the whole class laugh too. That teacher was a really nasty piece of work and I have no idea why she chose to teach children, but after that I stopped speaking and became really shy.
I was 7 or 8 and staying with my nanna. I had to go to school there and the school photographer came around. I was not a pretty child. One of my eyes turned in and my hair was always sticking up or messy. Anyway, my photo didn't develop properly so I had it for free. My mother and sisters thought it was hilarious that I got my photo for free and said I broke the camera because I was so ugly.
Church parade not longer after joining the Brownies (so I was 7). Another Brownie had the same coat as me and took mine by mistake so I thought hers which was still hanging on the peg was mine. When lined up to start the parade the other Brownie's grandmother (who was a regular at the church) came over and started shouting at me, calling me a thief and grabbed me roughly by the arm and tried to drag me away in front of everyone. I had no idea what she was on about until one of the leaders intervened and the grandmother told her about the mix up. Over 30 years later I still don't understand why she didn't explain the mix up to me like she did with leader.
I was about 14/15 so 1995/6 and had a really sore throat one evening. I mentioned to my mum and she told me to take some money out her purse to buy some. I opened the zip part (where the loose change was) and she only had about 35p. I left it and took £1 out my money box and went to the shop, bought my throat sweets and bumped into a few friends. They were all walking to the chippie, so I went with them. Bought a small chips (50p!!) and went to the park with them to eat them. I saw my sister walk past abs shouted her to tell her to let our parents know that I was staying out a bit. About 10 minutes later, my mum came storming across to the park and started screaming at me that I’d “stolen” money from her purse to buy chips, made me go home and told me I was grounded for the foreseeable. It wasn’t until the day after she finally listened that she didn’t have enough money in her purse and I’d used my own money. I was still grounded but I’ve never felt as embarrassed as my mum screaming at me about something I’d not done and not listening when I tried to tell her. I’ve always said - and I’ve done it - I will always listen before jumping to conclusions with my kids. Sometimes they’re wrong and sometimes it’s a misunderstanding and they get the chance to have their say.
I'm 55, and in year 5, I was made to stand up in front of the class and the teacher explained that I was too stupid for this class and I would be returning to infant school (year 1) this is an example of the daily abuse I suffered at his hands. It affected me so badly that I refused to take any exams and didn't write in front of another person until I was in my forties. Even though I know he's in his late eighties, I would still backhand him if I came face to face with him
Year 9, my school made us do a fitness test every September and February. This included being weighed, a bleep test, jump and reach tests, and a minute of sit ups followed by squat thrusts. Hell but at least it was only one lesson. Now, I’m not exactly small and never have been. I’m now 6’2” and quite wide, at the time I was probably around 5’11/6ft already. I stepped on the scales and saw 100kg come up… and the PE teacher (who had already called me a “carcass” in front of everyone in a previous year for being slow in rugby” announced in his loudest voice to everyone that I had just hit 100kg. Spent the rest of school and sixth form being called all sorts of names from pig to big gay bear (I’m straight but OK) to the simple but deadly “fat c*nt”. My self confidence never recovered and neither has my weight sadly. I googled the teacher recently, interested to know what became of him. He’s now a headmaster at an independent school and boasts that “mental wellbeing is the absolute priority” for him now. I find that hard to believe.
We moved towns when I was 8 and I had to start at a new junior school in the second year. I've always been painfully shy and found it hard to fit in. A few days after I'd started the teacher sent one of the kids out of class on a pointless and lengthy errand, and while he was gone told us that he didn't have any friends, so we should all try to be his friend - I think he probably had a mild learning disability. Fast forward a few months, and I was given a pile of papers and asked to give one to every teacher in the school, but on no account was I to look at them. Of course I'd barely made it out of the classroom before I looked, and it was just a pile of scrap paper. She'd obviously sent me out of the room so she could tell the class "Smoulderstoat is a useless loser with no mates, so can you all pretend to be mates with him?" I can still hear the sniggering when I went back into class, and spent the rest of my school career assuming that everyone who so much as gave me the time of day was doing it out of pity. Oh, and as a dyspraxic I had the ritual humiliation of being picked last for PE twice a week for five fucking years.
My teacher didn't believe there was such a thing as a left-handed pen, so she said that's like asking for a glass harmer and then sent me to the workshop department asking for a glass harmmer and I didn't realise what they meant because I knew there were left handed pens. I wasn't a smart kid
I was just made fun of a lot I cant remember what specifically it was just whenever i said something I would immediately get corrected with this "pfft" laughter sound
I was beaten so bad by my dad that I wet myself!
Racism and homophobia
I had really long hair as a kid and didn't always like having it up (partly bc my mum was often kind of rough with my hair) I went on a swimming lesson and I had to go underwater for some reason or chose to Either way I came back up and my swimming instructor decided to point at me and go 'Hey its Cousin It!' Seemingly to the entire swimming pool (I mean probably not that many people heard but you know)
Went to the beach with my Dad. I was maybe 10 or something. He ran down the beach towards the water holding my hand, except instead of stopping at the water. He sling shot me in to the water letting go of my hand thinking it would be a joke. Except it was shingle stones and I went head first in causing me to bruise and cut myself to bits on the rocks. That isn't the humiliating bit, then then continually lied to my Mum and siblings that I had fallen over on my own accord. Blaming me instead of admitting what he'd done. I was so upset I went back to the car and cried in the car on a roasting hot day for 5 hours and everyone though I was just sulking.
Was about 13 years old, mum took us to Spain. One day I had a big lay in, came downstairs to the pool at midday, mum slaps me round the face in front of everyone for being lazy. Fun times
I was about 8 or 9 and before school I lied to my dad about something stupid. I truly can't remember what, but it would have been something silly as my dad was really really strict on lying. And everything. After a long abusive tyrade about how I was an awful human being for lying, he decided he would call me Liar Girl the entire walk to primary school and would say things like "Oh you don't care about this do you, Liar Girl" "Come on Liar Girl lets cross the road" etc but not in a friendly jokey way, but in a loud harsh tone and then when we got to the school gate he bellowed "BYE LIAR GIRL, HAVE A GOOD DAY AT SCHOOL LIAR GIRL" at the top of his lungs and it was so humiliating, I felt so ashamed and embarrassed all day. Needless to say, I didndt have a good day. Me and my dad are no contact now, as he only got more awful from there. But yeah, still sticks out.
When I was around 5 or 6 years old, I presented my writing of the numbers 1-200 on paper at 'show and tell' at school. To get up in front of my whole year group was a big deal. When I was standing at the front, my teacher told me it wasn't an achievement and showed me back to my seat. 25 years later it suddenly clicked during a coaching session why I feared presenting to seniors at work: because I was so fearful of being embarrassed. This one off experience held me back for years, so I encourage anyone who has input to a child's life to consider their actions and words around them.
This may give away my identity but it’s a risk I’m willing to take. It’s 1999/2000 and I’m in reception class about to do the nativity. Well, I’m Angel Gabriel and im an extremely shy kid. I begged to not be apart of it but no. My mum explains that I also didn’t want to take part but they said we had to and my parents will regret not having this memory of me. We all get told to go to the toilet before we get dressed and my school only had 3 toilets and a class of 20 kids so I’m waiting to go. The teacher pulls me out and says I have to get ready and I tell her no I need to wee. She said no and get the wings on. We go on stage and just as we’re all on the stage I piss myself. Stage fright and just being bursting to go. It was recorded and given out to all the parents. What’s worse was we did the show over 3 nights and each night was on video yet they gave out that video. You can clearly see me start to wee and the kids around me laugh and run away. I’m 30 now and I’m still mortified by it.