A teacher’s words can affect a child’s mental health in ways we cannot begin to imagine. A teacher may think they are simply correcting a child. But correction that uses harsh words, judgmental comments and destructive criticism can hurt children’s emotions long after the punishment is over.
I know this because even now as an adult, I still remember something a teacher said to me years ago. I was in junior secondary school when I introduced this game called FLAMES to some of my classmates. It was one of those silly games children played and I don’t even remember where I learned the game from.
FLAMES stood for Friends, Lovers, Enemies, Married, Engaged, and Secret Lovers. Basically, two people would pick random numbers, and depending on the number they picked, the game would tell you what you were to each other. So, of course, it was just supposed to be funny.
You know how children are. We were not thinking too much about it. We were just playing and having fun until two people got “secret lovers.” It was a boy and a girl, and they immediately started protesting. “He’s not my lover.” “She’s not my lover.” They were both angry about it. Somehow, one of them pushed the other onto one of those plastic chairs we had in the classroom, and the chair broke. At that point, the game was no longer funny.
We reported the whole thing to our form teacher, and we were called to the staff room. We were punished because, apparently, we had damaged school property. Honestly, I understood that part. A chair had been broken, and I was the one who had introduced the game in the first place.
When they asked, “Who started the game?” Everyone looked in my direction. That was when things became a lot more uncomfortable. Some of the teachers started saying things to me that, looking back now, had very little to do with the broken chair. They asked how I could be playing a game like that. How could I, of all people, be interested in lovers and relationships? They talked about how I was supposed to be focused on my books and how, “as fine and smart as I was,” they expected more from me.
The Words That Stayed With Me
There was one particular teacher who seemed to take it especially personally. She was my Social Studies teacher. She told me she thought I came from a good home and my parents had raised me well. She said she had always used me as an example to other students in the class, and she was disappointed in me.
Then she brought my elder sister into it. She talked about how my sister passed through the same school and never gave them any headache. She was serious. She was focused on her studies. She didn’t do things like this. And then there was me. Me, who was apparently smart enough to know better, but was now playing FLAMES and getting involved in all these “lovers” and “relationships.”
In fact, she said a lot of things that hurt me. Long after I left secondary school, I still remembered those words. Looking back now, I don’t remember the punishment nearly as much as I remember what she said to me. As a child, I didn’t really understand the weight of those words. I knew they hurt me, but I just thought I had done something wrong and my teacher was disappointed in me.
Are we correcting a child’s behaviour, or making the child feel ashamed?
I understand teachers have to correct children quite all right. Children sometimes need to be told when they have done something wrong so they learn boundaries. But there is a very thin line between correcting a child’s behaviour and making the child feel ashamed of themselves. It is so sad to see how normal it has become for some students to hear things like,
“Look at your classmate.”
“Your sister was never like this.”
“I expected better from you.”
“Are you not ashamed of yourself?”
“You are too dull.”
“What is wrong with you?”
Sometimes, these things are said in the guise of correction, but are we truly correcting the child’s behaviour, or are we making the child feel like there is something wrong with them?
Also Read: Reasons Why Mental Health Needs to Be Taught in Schools
How Harsh Words Affect A Child’s Mental Health
The World Health Organisation (WHO) considers things like ridicule, denigration, and rejection to be forms of psychological violence against children. According to them, experiences of violence can increase the risk of anxiety, depression, and other mental health problems.
A UNICEF publication on promoting and protecting mental health in schools explained how positive relationships with teachers can help children feel safe, seen, and supported. Those relationships can also support a child’s mental health overall and affect how involved children are in school activities.
Insulting, comparing, ridiculing or belittling a child in front of their classmates is not something they can simply laugh off or forget. After hearing those things over and over again, that child can start to believe that maybe the teacher is right. Maybe they really are not good enough, maybe they really are dull, difficult, or a disappointment.
These children are still trying to figure out who they are, and the words of an adult they look up to can easily become part of the way they see themselves. This is why adults need to be careful about how they speak to children, even as teachers, because a child’s mental health is shaped by the voices around them.
Nigeria already has policies that recognise the need to protect children from violence in schools, including emotional and psychological violence. The National Policy on Safety, Security, and Violence-Free Schools says a school should be an environment where children are valued, protected, and able to learn without fear.
There are also professional standards for teachers, like the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria, which has a Code of Conduct that sets expectations for how registered teachers should interact with students and handle the trust and authority that come with being a teacher. There is even a national disciplinary framework for investigating teacher misconduct and protecting learners.
So, on paper, we know that children deserve to be safe and respected in school. But in the ordinary Nigerian classroom, it’s an entirely different experience. What happens when a teacher says something hurtful to a child in front of everyone? What happens when comparison, insults, or humiliation are treated as normal ways of correcting students?
We have policies. We have professional standards. But what is written on paper is different from what happens in the classroom, and it is a child’s mental health that pays the price for that gap.
What then is the proper way to correct a child?
I don’t want this to sound like an attack on teachers because they are human too. They have to deal with large classrooms, heavy workloads, difficult students, pressure from parents and school management, and their own personal problems.
Research on Nigerian teachers has found that these are among the factors contributing to teaching stress. So yes, I understand teachers are bound to get frustrated and will sometimes lose their patience. At the same time, being frustrated is not an excuse. It will never justify using humiliation to discipline a child.
Indeed, withdrawing correction completely is not a solution either. But correction should be about helping a child do better, not making them feel bad. In other words, the correction should focus on the behaviour, not the child. That single shift protects a child’s mental health without letting bad behaviour slide.
Nigeria’s 2025 Managing Violence in Schools handbook also recommends positive discipline. It simply means correcting children in a way that helps them learn from their mistakes without feeling ashamed or disrespected. This is the model teachers should work with so they can protect a child’s mental health and emotional wellbeing.
Children will make mistakes, and no one can change that. Your responsibility as a teacher is to correct them within the classroom. Even when giving correction, there should be boundaries. A child can be told what they did was wrong without being made to feel that there is something wrong with who they are. Help children learn from their mistakes when you correct them.
This is the kind of discipline children need. One that teaches them better behaviour without taking away their sense of worth. Because a child’s mental health is not separate from their education. It is the ground everything else stands on.
And for the child who is still carrying words a teacher said years ago, know that those words do not define who you are. A child’s mental health is worth protecting.
Author: Happiness Uduak is a writer and counsellor in training who writes about mental health, healing and self-awareness.
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