Pedal a tricycle. Don't touch hot surfaces. Play nice with others. Swipe left to right. Of all the things pre-schoolers are taught by their parents, "haters gonna hate" doesn't generally come up.

Alas, like many people in the public eye, some kids take heat for doing nothing at all — or, in the case of three-year-old Prince George, for the way they smile in a picture online.

A 52-year-old British Council employee is in hot water this week for allegedly slamming the eldest son of Prince William and Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, for his "cheeky grin" and "white privilege" on Facebook.

According to the Sun, which first spotted the post, Angela Gibbins was serving as head of global estates at the "part taxpayer-funded council" when she commented on a photo of George that someone else had captioned, "I know he's only two years old, but Prince George already looks like a f--king d--khead."

"White privilege," Gibbins is said to have replied. "That cheeky grin is the innate knowledge he's royal, rich, advantaged and will never know *any* difficulties or hardships in life. Let's find photos of [three-year-old] Syrian refugee children and see if they look alike, eh?"

Gibbins reportedly left the controversial comments about Prince George under a cropped version of this photo, which was taken for a stamp sheet to mark the 90th birthday of Queen Elizabeth. (Ranald Mackechnie/Royal Mail/Getty Images)

Later in the thread, while defending her initial comments to other Facebook users, Gibbins allegedly wrote: "I don't believe the Royal Family have any place in a modern democracy, least of all when they live on public money. That's privilege and it needs to end."

As news of the Facebook post rips through U.K. social media circles, fans of the young prince and his family are taking to Twitter with insults for the British Council manager.

Gibbins appears to have set her own Twitter profile to private, however. Her tweets were not visible as of Tuesday evening, but a cached version of the page shows that @AngParrot was a public profile earlier in the day.

The British Council, which bills itself as "the United Kingdom's international organization for cultural relations and educational opportunities," released a statement on Tuesday morning to address the controversy.

"The British Council expects the highest standards of our staff and in accordance with our code of conduct we have started disciplinary procedures with the individual concerned," it reads. "This comment was made on a private social media account. It has absolutely no connection to the British Council and does not represent our views and values."