“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” is one of the worst lies grownups tell children. Children threw stones at me when I was a child (though they fortunately never broke my bones).
But the many, many words they hurled hurt me deeply internally, rather than externally. I was bleeding inside from them, as much as I bled externally from the rocks.
Plenty of children feel the pain of words. We say, “children are cruel” and leave it at that, or we tell children to simply ignore cruel remarks.
Read more on themighty.com