An open letter from an exhausted teacher

[TeacherAnonymous123]

Hi all, a new account made for this but a long time lurker and commenter.

I know that the vast majority of parents are supportive of schools and teachers, but after my day today I need to say something.

You are not your child's friend. You are their parent. We have been asked to tell a child to go to bed at a reasonable hour (by their mum) as when she asked, they were 'unpleasant' to her.

I am not paid to parent your child. I am not here to teach them how to tell the time at 13 years old, or tell a 15 year old to go to bed before 4am.

Please teach them boundaries and respect and how to act around people in authority. We are at breaking point and are struggling as it is.

I'll happily hear the other side of the situation, but please - parent your children.

I agree it is so much more complex than parents.

I agree op. Behaviour is exhausting and atrocious and it's makime want to quit but I agree with this poster.

Kids are also micromanaged to the nth degree these days. Play dates, a hobby every other night. It can be too much. There is no playing out and socialising with your street friends anymore.
The whole of society has changed.

100% OP. I work in pastoral support in a secondary school and, year on year, I feel I become more shocked by declining parenting and declining independence in kids. I also support and counsel staff as part of my role and what have noticed over the last couple of years is an increase in teachers leaving and citing the increasing amount and severity of pastoral support that they have to give day to day as a factor.

I reckon the majority of schools and colleges have spent a considerable sum on large digital clocks for public examinations over the last five years, as most children born since 2000 just haven't had exposure to analogue watches and clocks - we get the time from our computers and phones, smartwatches, Fitbits and Apple Watches nowadays. I first noticed that it was affecting teenagers of average ability around 2014.

Banging out £300+ per clock, 2-4 main rooms for exams, add in wiring/power supplies/installation, etc, is a fair amount, but it's necessary, especially as all watches have been banned in JCQ rules now due to the prevalence of smartwatches and their potential for misuse.

I agree but also can I say to some teachers. My child is mine. Not yours.

I read your post with interest. When our ds started at secondary school I was one of those parents like alot of the ones on here who have patted themselves on the back for how well they done.
I never thought our son would behave in the way he did at secondary school in later years. He came from a very loving home with care, boundaries, hobbies, etc.
He was bullied in the last three years of primary school but still very well behaved.
After two weeks in secondary him and a friend were called to a meeting with me and his friends mum about their behaviour. It transpired they had used their mobile phones at school in an out of hours event. I didn't know this was an issue as out of hours and pupils were roaming about the school. I sat in a room as a women in her forties with two teachers talking to me and my son and other boy and mum in such a confrontational and aggressive way I was shocked. My son and the other boy ended up in tears and a small incident was blown up by the teachers into something a lot bigger. It was handled very badly.
It was really strange but something about that meeting flipped something in my son and he changed.
We have discussed it now he is in his early twenties and he said he was bullied for three years in primary school, went into secondary school very nervous and after two weeks was shouted at and talked down to in front of me and he said he felt what's the point?!
Also he struggled with maths but the female teacher he had was very impatient so he began to feel worse about asking for help. He therefore would try and ask his classmate and get told off for talking.
He was struggling with his sexuality back then and one day in the same class he had a rainbow ribbon on his wrist and the same teacher ridiculed this by saying 'really'
In the last year of secondary school they discovered he had dyslexia but it was too late then. He had been branded a trouble maker and I feel very unfairly treated.
He struggled with his mental health and had self harmed but on one occasion in the summer when he felt hot and decided to take his jumper off he was advised it might be better not to show his arms. He was therefore made to feel ashamed.
Lots of things to say here but it was a faith school but not very caring and very focused on the students who were going to get those good grades which would make the school look better.
Sometimes parents like me try to have boundaries and aren't lazy about this but there can be a lot going on.
Last year I was in accident service as my child attempted suicide so when you parents and teachers moan about bad behaviour etc try to look back at little incidents you may have forgotten where you ridiculed that child or didn't help them because they weren't your A* student.

Agreed OP. Kids need boundaries and they need parents to put them in. It shows you care about their safety and wellbeing. A parent needs to think of themselves as a guide, a mentor, a teacher, so that their child is able to be a positive contribution to society once an adult and that in return society will be positive back.

(This is of course referring to children in general rather than specific individuals.)

You’ve clearly never been around middle class yummy mummies who do that pathetic ‘… kind hands Sebastian’ when their little precious is being an absolute horror and strangling some other poor kid…

Self-serving entitlement is just as insidious as ignorance.

Some parents are shit; some teachers and schools are shit. Twas ever thus.

@Brendabigbaps is right, expecting some children to tell the time on an analogue clock is the equivalent to expecting someone with dyslexia to just learn how to spell. It is on the primary curriculum and most children pick it up pretty easily but some never do. A lot of the secondary children I teach are embarrassed about it. Like with dyslexia, they are often very able children. It isn’t due to bad parenting.

I’m a parent of an extremely challenging teen who:

is addicted to her phone (and will literally steal it or any other device from any hiding place so she can be on it all night). I am physically harmed if I attempt to confiscate devices.

has sleep issues related to her autism and blindness so I am permanently exhausted, as is she.

is unable to tie shoe laces or fasten buttons properly because blindness.

swears like a navvy and insults me - and her eight-year-old sister - using the foulest and most offensive language.

hoards food in her pillow and duvet and NEVER uses a bin. Instead, she conceals food wrappers all around my house. Effectively, despite my best efforts, I live in a giant dustbin.

is chronologically 16 but emotionally and cognitively is about four so there is no chance of any shared responsibility. Everyone else is always to blame for every little thing that goes wrong in DD’s life.

is incapable of sharing, especially food; indeed, she is like a ferocious dog who resource guards every morsel of food that passes her lips. And she steals everyone else’s treats for good measure.

On the plus side:

we have no gaming devices so that’s not a distraction.

DD is, despite everything, focused on her very specific career pathway of museum curation after studying anthropology at university.

The thing that absolutely resonated about your post is that parenting starts before birth. You are so right. My DD1 is adopted and the cards were stacked against her even before she was born. And some of us here are practising extreme parenting every single day of our lives.

I’m a parent of an extremely challenging teen who:

is addicted to her phone (and will literally steal it or any other device from any hiding place so she can be on it all night). I am physically harmed if I attempt to confiscate devices.

has sleep issues related to her autism and blindness so I am permanently exhausted, as is she.

is unable to tie shoe laces or fasten buttons properly because blindness.

swears like a navvy and insults me - and her eight-year-old sister - using the foulest and most offensive language.

hoards food in her pillow and duvet and NEVER uses a bin. Instead, she conceals food wrappers all around my house. Effectively, despite my best efforts, I live in a giant dustbin.

is chronologically 16 but emotionally and cognitively is about four so there is no chance of any shared responsibility. Everyone else is always to blame for every little thing that goes wrong in DD’s life.

is incapable of sharing, especially food; indeed, she is like a ferocious dog who resource guards every morsel of food that passes her lips. And she steals everyone else’s treats for good measure.

On the plus side:

we have no gaming devices so that’s not a distraction.

DD is, despite everything, focused on her very specific career pathway of museum curation after studying anthropology at university.

The thing that absolutely resonated about your post is that parenting starts before birth. You are so right. My DD1 is adopted and the cards were stacked against her even before she was born. And some of us here are practising extreme parenting every single day of our lives.

Agree with this, I really hate people assuming that being skint is the same thing as being a bad parent. Many parents do their best to bring their children up to be decent members of society. It’s harder with little money still people manage to do it. There are probably plenty of wealthier parents whose children suffer from affluenza.

I was in primary school in the 80s and we were taught in school how to tell time.

We had these ink pads and clock stamps and we got to stamp clocks in our books and draw the hands on the clock and write the time underneath. Do schools not teach the time anymore?

My daughter had a catastrophic gall out with me at around age 11 because she though I should be her friend first, not tell her what to do. I think that society tells kids that parents are there to indulge their every whim and not actually parent. She got a shock when I categorically stated I will never be her friend until she has become a responsible adult at the very least. She was so angry at having boundaries, rules and conequences that she went to live with her disneydad and never came back. I had zero power to be able to bring her back.

Aside from that, I agree and that is why I'm choosing to home educate her little sister (whom she has met once) and we are going screen free with her. No Internet, no YouTube, no TV.

I treat them like alcohol, not suitable for kids.

@CombatLingerie some parents at my DC's school are quite proud of their year 1 or 2 offspring telling them to fuck off, sticking the middle finger up etc. They think it's cute and feisty. At the same time they wonder why their older kids are being suspended from school and getting into trouble. I'm not a delicate flower who faints at bad words but I wouldn't allow my 5 year old to walk off and tell me to go fuck myself either.

Absolutely bizarre statement and why do posters do this more and more where the end every post with a declaration of if you disagree then ‘you’re (insert something derogatory)’

I would argue with that if anything, posters asserting this nonsense are the ones that are just using lazy stereotypes. Of course it’s being loving and calm towards a child, that causes them to go off the rails and be obnoxious 🙄. Everyone I know parents their children in that way and all of us have the DC with high grades, good manners and the ones the teachers prefer or even use to act S some kind of influence on the disruptive children. Like another poster indicated, it is a lack of early intervention due to cuts in government funding and poverty that are the likely culprits.

But then op what’s unpleasant? You see people on here at their wits end with children who shout, scream and are violent towards parents after being ‘nice’ or ‘good’ in school. They literally get home exhausted, then take it out on their parents. That could be the case and they’re just looking for help

Bloody well stated.

I am not paid to parent your child. I am not here to teach them how to tell the time at 13 years old, or tell a 15 year old to go to bed before 4am.

Agree. But what are you paid for? Does what you do make sense to 13 and 15 year olds? If not, then that is probably why you are exhausted.

Mu husband's friend works as a private tutor to primary age upper-middle class children having taught a few years in a state school. He says the behaviour he observes among the privately tutored children is worse by a large mark. The kids often have zero respect to parents too. Money is good though

I used to work in Central London and would regularly walk past expensive restaurants around 8-9 pm. What made me sad was seeing so many couples having dinner at a posh restaurant and their young children playing on the phones at a time the children should have been in bed. I used to think that surely if the parents had some serious money to spend on a nice meal they should have made adequate provisions for their children.

I am a teacher. I see it both ways. Very often at our school, the teacher can not handle the child's behaviour and calls home /organises a meeting. So appeals to the parent for extra re-enforcement.

The OP is giving the opposite: parents asking for help.

Teenagers years are difficult. Life has got more difficult. I don't believe the rosy view of ye olden years. My supervisor at uni told us of a desk flying through a window on his first day in a secondary modern in the 70s. I remember the vodka in year 9 in my year 9 in the 90s. And the shit that cover teachers got.

But I can't help think that teaching and schools have been painted as shit for years (often by politicians). Who picks up on and acts on this - kids. My personal bug bear, but one of many contributory factors.

I think a mixture of child lead parenting and full daycare have produced parents that feel guilty and therefore want to be the Disney parent but they overcompensate and offer no discipline, structure or boundries.
Too many parents ignore their duty and assume as they have paid for childcare that it is up to those that look after their child Monday to Friday to get them out of nappies, learn to put on their coat, hold cutlery etc And once their child moves on to school it is the teachers job as after all they pay their taxes and therefore pay the teachers wage !

My late mum grew up in a house with no bathroom and didn't have a toothbrush. She slept in a cupboard. Extreme poverty. She always knew how to behave and had huge respect for teachers as like many working class people of her generation she saw education as the route out of poverty.

but the stats ‘do’ say that it is a factor so that is what is relevant to today not what happened in the past.

With as in "actively engaged with", or with as in "occupying the same room but only paying attention to the phone"?

I see a lot of parents out walking babies with one hand on the buggy and the other hand holding the phone. Babies give up trying to get the attention of a parent who is not absent but not present either. This kind of limbo is damaging.

Parents can be just as addicted to SM as teens can.