fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #6531 ]

[ SECRET POST #6531 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6531 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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06. [WARNING for discussion of JKR and related topics]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #933.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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03. https://i.imgur.com/7skmAf1.png

I work with young children and have for 15 years. I 100% believe that no child would be like that without neglect, abuse, or (rarer) some sort of mental disorder.

Can kids be little shits? Yeah sometimes, but not to the degree you seem to be saying.

You've never seen a case of lax/poor parenting that was awful (but didn't qualify as abuse/neglect under the law) that resulted in bad behavior from a kid?

Lax/poor parenting is neglect.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2024-11-22 23:29 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2024-11-23 06:06 (UTC) - Expand

I hope kids aren't as sadistic as the ones I went to school with back in the 90s. Maybe things are better in the present day.

You don't know what the kids who were sadistic to you at school were going through at home.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2024-11-23 06:15 (UTC) - Expand

There are characters like that, and my attitude toward them is to shrug and say that kids grow up. I don't care if anyone hates them, but I cut still-growing-up characters more slack because it's normal for people who were horrid brats in childhood to outgrow it.

Agreed - a lot of kids are bratty when they're young but grow up and mature and stop being that way. Heck, there were kids in my high school who were jerks all the way through but then when I ran into them at a reunion years later, they'd become quite nice people and I had a great time talking to and catching up with them. That's pretty typical.

I guess maybe some would defend a character like that? But it seems unlikely anyone would bother with the show/movie/book/comic. The thing is, that’s not realistic or entertaining. Kids aren’t really like that. And audiences of any kind of media are there to see progression. That’s the backbone of storytelling. Either a character moves the plot forward, they move forward, or they’re a waste of space and time.

Could be a villain role I guess, OP didn't say it had be the protagonist.

Dynamic characters make for good storytelling, agreed.

If you're up for watching a movie, I'd recommend The Children's Hour (1961).
The story is about how a child's lie can have major consequences; but it's not a 'and then she learns her lesson' - but goes to show how her lie ruins the lives of her two school teachers, while initially show to be an asshole.

those little Japanese boys in kaiju movies are thoroughly obnoxious, do they count?

I don't defend everything a child character does just because they're young, but I do hold them to different standards... Kids can be very cruel without understanding it, or without understanding the full consequences of choosing to do something hurtful. So yes, kids can make mistakes or be incredibly mean, but they lack the awareness of adults.

Exactly. Kids are still in the process of learning how to be people, they don't just spring forth from the womb with full adult empathy and emotional regulation. They have to learn those things.

I have honestly met kids like that irl. I was bullied by them.

Two girls spend and entire year bullying me and getting people to hate me all because I caused them to get a bad grade in a group project (I was a slacker). For the rest of the school year they made it their mission to : make my life hell, trip me in hallways, insult me to my face, steal from me, get other kids to despise me by spreading rumors, telling everyone about my crush on Sonic, walk up to me and tell me how "weird," I am.

They are the reason why I despise childrne

+1

Was also bullied as a child for no real good reason and had rumours spread about me. I wouldn't say I despise children but a certain subset of children/teenagers for sure.

This is the kind of thing that makes me wonder how people upthread who "worked with children for years" never run into a single version of the child bully you describe... because as a child, they sure existed and would not leave people alone until their attempted victims used physical violence to defend themselves.

Children can be sweet to adults while being assholes to other children out of sight of adults and it's super weird that some adults simply refuse to believe it.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2024-11-23 03:46 (UTC) - Expand

That’s awful that you went through that! I don’t think that fits the secret description though. They were awful to you but were they awful to everyone? Were they devoid of any and all redeeming qualities? Because that’s very, very rarely the case IRL.

Yeah and then they probably grew up. Sounds like you didn't.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2024-11-25 15:39 (UTC) - Expand

There's plenty of kids like that but TBH I don't blame the kids, I blame the adults in their lives. I went to a pretty average primary school, and there was certainly bullying (occasionally really violent) and little to nothing was ever done about it. Then I went to secondary school, and they had a really effective, simple, anti-bullying policy, which was basically separating bullies and their victims in class and providing appropriate supervision outside class. I'm not saying there was no bullying, but adults defusing it meant that the long-running awful stuff from primary school just didn't get going. But then we got a new principal who felt that having a bullying policy wasn't Christian because kids just shouldn't do that, totally undermined the whole thing, and my younger siblings' time there was very different to mine. So kids can be absolute shits, but it's the adults that let it happen and continue.

You ever seen Pinky, Elmyra, and the Brain?

So...DW Reed?

As an adult, I was terrorized and bullied by a child.

Not my child but a child someone I'm related to had this child.

Honestly, the child was not blameless but I have always been highly aware that the parents took on the bulk of the responsibility for their child's behavior.

Honestly, a shitty child who actively chooses to be cruel, harmful, selfish, and/or vindictive has a reason to act the ways they do.

IME it's a mix of the child being neglected on some level (parents did not give enough positive attention to child as well as not holding the child responsible and properly disciplining them when the child misbehaves), and the child projecting their pains onto people they know will not return the cruelty onto them (the child in question often bullied their sibling because the parents always blamed the sibling for any conflict between the two).

I have a lot of examples of the child doing cruel things or saying cruel things and the parents response was to downplay the event and/or blame the other person.

I completely get that there are manipulative and cruel children out there who get little sympathy from me, but IME the majority of my anger and frustration is towards the parents.

If the child sees that their actions are dismissed with excuses or shrugs, they will begin to consciously feel that they are above others and anyone who doesn't like them is simply a hater/jealous. Subconsciously, they will feel unlovable and actively do things to hurt people around them and feel shame that they are a bad person and they deserve to be abandoned by people who seemed to have cared about them.

I hope that this child grows up to confront their pains, but I don't know if they ever will.

TL;DR - shitty kids are real but to be realistic you have to be aware that they were not simply born evil but majority of the time, there are a lot of family/home life stuff going on that shapes the child's worldview and the way they choose to see others

D.W. Read exists.

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