I’m researching for an article I’d like to write: “The X Meanest Things Adults Ever Did To Kids,” where X = however many headings I come up with. To be clear, I’m not writing about adults who committed crimes against children, such as abuse or murder, but just generalized meanness. Some examples of what I mean.
If you are aware of any other newsworthy instances of adults being mean to kids (and once again, this article is not about crimes against kids, just general meanness), please let me know here in this thread.
I knew a guy who hung himself. The place he chose to do this happened to be right where his 7 and 10 year old sons entered the house each day after school. His wife was at work at the time.
Yesterday my 8 year old daughter asked to use the computer to play IXL, an educational math game. My wife told her “This does not mean watching YouTube, IXL only. If I find you watching YouTube you will lose TV, tablet, and computer access for the WHOLE CHRISTMAS BREAK”, to which my obedient daughter quickly agreed.
Fast forward 30 minutes when my wife walks in on her watching YouTube, Consequences Ensue, and we are the MEANEST PEOPLE EVER.
IMHO, it’s when adults assume that a precocious or talented child must have “cheated” and could not have possibly achieved such-and-such a feat or aced an exam or written good poetry on their own, and therefore accuse them of cheating or plagiarism.
I nominate my 6th grade Reading teacher. Reading was a separate subject from English (I don’t know why; “English” meant grammar lessons) and mainly consisted of “read the assigned work from the Reading text and then be prepared to take a test consisting of questions about what happened in the story”.
The “reader” we used was a book from the Curriculum Foundation Series, Ventures or Cavalcades, one or the other, for 6th grade…
I would read the assigned short story in less than half the alloted time, then glance ahead in the book for other stuff to read. By October I’d read everything in that damn book. She’d give us the assignment and I’d reread it then when I was done I’d take out my Nancy Drew book or my Alan E. Nourse science fiction or whatever and read that until the end of the period.
GRAB “You can’t read this in here.” She takes my book out of my hand, closes it (without marking my place) and marches back to her desk with it. “Hey, that’s mine!” She says I can get it back at the end of the day, but won’t let me read my own damn books in her Reading class, in which I’ve read the damn reader cover to cover and have nothng to do for the rest of the year.
My grandfather gave my father (about ten at the time) a nifty new pair of green (!) leather cowboy boots…then forced the boy to ride horseback without using the stirrups, so the boots fell off…and wouldn’t let the boy go back to get them.
One Christmas, my grandfather and his brothers got my dad a comb and brush set as a gift. It was a joke about his touseled hair. Oh, wait, they got him seven comb and brush sets…and nothing else. For Christmas.
Deliberate cruelty. (My father never celebrated Christmas, and I don’t blame him.)
I remember a Reader’s Digest article from the 1990s. A girl suffered severe burns in a house fire, including burns that disfigured her face. When she returned to school, the teacher brought her to the front of the classroom and told all the students, “This is why you shouldn’t play with matches.”
There must be examples out there of parents who make no efforts to stop their children’s bullying of other children…some of them even encourage it or participate in the bullying themselves.
My mother took delight in being mean to me. When I was about 4, we were at my grandmother’s house; it was probably November-ish. I was in the next room, but heard her say they were going to get me a P-O-N-Y (spelling it out) for Christmas. She didn’t know that I was teaching myself to read and spell, and I was overcome with joy! I ran out, saying 'A pony? You’re getting me a pony?" My mother’s face contorted into sheer anger and rage (I knew that look well) and screamed at me something to the effect of ‘You think you’re so smart? just for your smartness you can forget a pony.’
I’m 56 and I still remember that disappointment… all because I knew how to spell.
My mother’s mother would play dead until my mom was screaming crying hysterically and then pop up and say it was just a joke. Oh, and “thought there might be something going on” when Mom was being molested, but didn’t say anything. My Mom wasn’t too fond of her either.
I appreciate the responses so far, but it appears I didn’t ask my question clearly enough in the OP. I’m not asking for personal anecdotes; I’m asking for events, documented in the news media, of adults doing mean things to children. In my examples posted in the OP, I describe an incident where a group of adults ate all of the town orphans’ food, and an incident where a politician lectured 4th graders about abortion.
I’m looking for things that are so mean (but again, not criminal) that they make the news. Mainly so I can have a cite for when I write about the event.
A quick Google search for “scientists experiment on children” brought out a lot of hits, not including actual intended torture, there was a LOT there. I added “own children” for some extra results.
Sorry. Normally I would post a bunch of details from these links, but I am deep in post-migraine hangover.