Why is it that so many adults are so rude to children and young people?

I went in to Em's school yesterday (she had forgotten her lunch) and I was absolutely staggered by how obnoxious the women at the front desk were. Mumbling inaudible replies to questions from kids, ignoring requests for clarification, meeting politeness with sarcasm ...

It's not just in schools that this happens, either. (Though it does seem a more pronounced phenomenon there). I've noticed it in stores, for instance. Several times, the person behind the till has ignored Emily for a while, and attended to other (adult) customers, even though has been obvious that Emily was waiting to pay, item and money in hand.

I hated to leave Em at school once I'd handed her lunch over. She seemed so small and vulnerable. Sadly, she is still not liking school much. Things are a little better, but she still has that "oh no" feeling when she wakes up and realises it's a school day. It's such a contrast to how she felt about school last year, when she'd wake up excited about all the cool stuff that she was going to do at school that day. I'm still hoping that things Will magically come right for her over the next couple of weeks. But I'm reading everything I can find about homeschooling older children, just in case they don't.

Sophie's homeschooling continues to go well. Yesterday we read several books about owls, and then dissected an owl pellet. We are currently in the process of assembling what we are pretty sure is a vole skeleton. So the diningroom table is not, currently, a place where one would really wish to dine.

Stephen is as uncommunicative about school as ever. My mom said yesterday that I was just the same as a child - very seldom shared details about my day. She, like me, found this reticence frustrating and hard to deal with. However, Steve is being amazingly responsible about getting to bed at a decent hour, gets up, on his own, in good time for our 6.15 departure every single morning, and seems reasonably cheerful in general, so I am assuming that things are going fine for him.