Hi! Thank you for sharing how you feel here

About the incident in infant school - when you say you reacted angrily, do you mean you hit the boy? Or yelled at him?

I think the way I'd handle a situation like that would be to hear both children out, try to get to the bottom of what had taken place, ask both how they felt in that situation (or tell them 'You probably felt like this.. right?' if they're too young to identify and name their emotions yet), explain to the boy that it's not OK to tease anyone because it hurts, and tell the other child it's understandable and completely OK s/he felt angry, but that it's not OK to hurt anyone even when we're angry - that the right thing to do, then, is to tell someone, an adult, that you're angry because x happened, and have that adult go over what happened with you and everyone else who was involved so that everyone can have their say, can share how they felt and decide what should be done about it - apologise for teasing/hitting. I'd also explain that apologising means you promise you're going to do everything in your power to make sure you never behave in the same way again.

I think it's completely wrong you got punished in that situation. I think children need to be taught how to deal with their emotions, not expect them to just know - how could they! But I think it's sadly very common that many adults haven't learned to deal with their emotions either, so are poor teachers in that sense I think this is especially true of so-called negative emotions like anger/rage, fear, sadness, etc. For instance, when I expressed anger as a child, my own mother, of all people, would flick me. That shut me up rather quickly, and I became a bit of a doormat..

The second example sounds quite horrifying. Why would she scream at you..? Weird!

I believe one of the goals of bringing children up should be to teach them that feeling is always OK, but that there's no need to react to an emotion, just feel it and release it - by talking, or if you're, let's say, too angry to discuss an issue rationally, go for a walk or something to cool off, to take the edge off your anger, and then talk about what has happened.