Teachers - tell me about your unhinged parent experiences.

[NC28]

Purely for entertainment purposes , of course.

Inspired by the thread about the teacher who got an email from a kids mum because the staff didn’t buy her daughter flowers after the school show…what other unhinged, entitled or downright crazy things have parents moaned about at your school?

Parents are fucking lunatics at times, so I hope you all have WhatsApp groups with your colleagues to laugh at them in your spare time.

Wow 😯 I think you win 😂

but what does the child's weight have to do with the story?

they may as well have pointed out that the boy was black, or wearing shorts or likes to eat Macaroni cheese...

Parent who we refused to speak to by phone because he was so abusive, phoned a few times putting on a woman’s voice trying to pretend he was his wife.

My Mum was primary school teacher for years. was incredibly horrible to me so no one would accuse her of favouritism, as if you own child shouldn't be your favourite.

One parent would come in every afternoon and berate my Mum about her not challenging her son enough, not realising how highly intelligent her son is and that he is God's gift to any school. The child was average at best and not particularly well-behaved. The same parent also had a go at the Head when he suggested her younger son skip my Mum's class saying she didn't want her son to miss out on the best teacher in the school!

Another one was when a child had had a day off and when he retuned my Mum asked if he was feeling better and he just shrugged, my Mum requested to speak to his mother after school to explain that she needed to call or email if he was unwell, the Mother said 'he wasn't ill, he wanted to go Christmas shopping', she had actually given her child the choice between school and shopping and seemed to have no idea that that was not a valid reason for missing school. My Mum calmly told her that by law he really needs to be in school unless he is ill or has a prebooked absence and that the parents could be subject to truant fines if it continued. The parents was deeply upset and apologised profusely but it seem crazy that that parent didn't know he had to go to school.

When she trained in the early 90's, she did a placement in a very deprived area of Bristol. She said it was one of worst experiences of her life. When they were getting changed for PE she noticed one boy had odd looking bruises on his back, she pointed them out to the teacher who said the father beats him with electrical flex and there is nothing they can do (these days that would have to be reported). Another child had two left shoes and when asked the mother said 'Would you rather he had two left shoes or no shoes at all?'

I’m a secondary school Art teacher. I had a parent come into school one afternoon to “have a good look at me”. Her son (14 or 15) had told her he couldn’t concentrate in my lessons because I was ״too fit״, so she wanted to see for herself. On meeting me she demanded that I stop wearing makeup (I don’t wear makeup!) and put on “more suitable clothes” - I wear normal teacher clothes! It was mind boggling! And a huge confidence boost too hahaha!
Another time during parents’ evening, I had a meeting with a huge clan of a family, and by mistake I referred to them by the wrong name (it was a name that sounded the same but with the wrong first letter). They went nuts on me, yelling that they were nothing like that other family etc etc - and the other family just happened to be waiting outside the door, came storming in and started on the one I was with. Full on screaming and swearing and one of them threw a punch at the other! Turns out they were both travelling families that absolutely hated one another. I’d never seen anything like it!!

Totally agree - would love the 😂😂😂 back !

No push for this and get a prosecution then claim for your teeth via criminal compensation .

I’m a secondary school Art teacher. I had a parent come into school one afternoon to “have a good look at me”. Her son (14 or 15) had told her he couldn’t concentrate in my lessons because I was ״too fit״, so she wanted to see for herself. On meeting me she demanded that I stop wearing makeup (I don’t wear makeup!) and put on “more suitable clothes” - I wear normal teacher clothes! It was mind boggling! And a huge confidence boost too hahaha!

Love this 😂 you must be fit

I can believe it , they were fighting in Tesco carpark the other week and smashed eggs over a woman’s head . I got in my car and left asap

I was the crazy PFB parent once who asked her son's nursery key worker to sing both verses of Humpty Dumpty as her son had been having nightmares. It was true. DS was in the baby room so under 18 months and was sobbing his little heart out at home about poor Humpty Dumpty. Still, they must have thought I was crackers.

Yes, I made an appointment with the headteacher both to address this and the ongoing bullying.
He was fantastic and was shocked when I told him teacher made DD apologise for something that allegedly happened when she was sick at home.
He asked for the other parents and myself and husband for a meeting with him and they failed to attend. He was very hot on the bullying situation from then on and nipped it in the bud thankfully.

I'm now retired, but recall the days when parents would queue up to see conventionally attractive looking young teachers.

I was a HoD at a Scottish high school. One of my NQTs came up to me ashen-faced. An S3/Y10's mum had sent him a FB friend request, accompanied by a profile pic of her wearing a negligee...

We informed the depute/NQT supervisor and the NQT deleted the request. Poor lad spent the next lunchtime in the staffroom having gleeful colleagues asking him how it felt to be [pupil's] new daddy...

Not a school thing but there was a beautiful ironic moment on our local village facebook chat last year.

Someone posted CCTV of two young kid smashing up a car asking 'whose kid is this? hopefully we can sort it before having to go to the police'. A woman respond quickly with 'OMG thats MY Logan, where are you? I'll come down pay for the damage right away' (seemingly very reasonable).

At the same time someone else responded with something like 'God these hellions are everywhere now a days, where are their parents? clearly not raising them. Hope you get it sorted' and the mam then turned on that person 'who the fuck do you think you fucking are to question my parenting you stupid cunt. Wheres your fucking house and we'll come sort you out, you wanna hope me and my boys never find you or you'll never run your fucking mouth ever again'.

Literally 2 messages at opposite ends of the spectrum in less than 1 minute. Needless to say it then descended into lots of chatter of locals saying 'Gees, I wonder where he learned his bad attitude from' and 'Apple didn't fall far from that tree'.

Things parents have told my HT I should be sacked for over the course of my primary teaching career:

Refusing to have her son back in my classroom that week after he bit me, broke the skin and I had to have a tetanus - he was 9.

Showing the children Newsround - they were 11 and it was a lesson about different sources of news.

A child cutting her own hair during a cut and stick activity - she was 10.

Her child being excluded after he lunged at me with a pair of scissors and cut my deputy heads arm after he pushed me aside to stop the scissors connecting with my face. We were entirely unreasonable and he’s “got problems”. His main problem with a dislike of the word no.

We used to get them demanding that their kids be allowed out of class whenever they pleased because they'd just had a piercing done and it would be our fault if it got infected.

We’ve had that. Also they are “bored” because they can’t take part in PE. Maybe don’t pierce your 10 year olds nose the first week of term then?!?

Many years ago - when swearing at a teacher was still taken seriously - a father was called in about his son's language.

Give the man his due, he supported the school and told the son off at the meeting. The son duly returned to class and the depute thanked the father for his support.

"Nae bother, Mr [Depute]. He can be a right wee c*nt at times."

I judge how good a thread is by the number of interesting potential usernames I consider swapping to. So far I've got:

TinOfNits
Michaeldon'tlikethespikybits
FabulousNHSDiorTits

Very tame but confused me at the time… ate a McDonalds throughout our parents evening meeting. It was at 3.30pm, no food for her child just munched on nuggets from the bag while I spoke about her child’s progress that term…

Love it - may need to change my name to retiredtinofnits though!

Had a meeting (which turned into an exclusion meeting) with a senior pupil and her parents.

Kid had sworn at me after I had to remove her from class. The parents spoke a Slavic language, so there was an interpreter...who was so embarrassed that she wasn't translating everything that the mother said.

Couldn't have been a properly trained interpreter: I did Russian as part of my degree and had spent a term in the interpreting faculty at a Soviet college. I'm also half-eastern European on Dad's side. I don't speak his language fluently, but I know bits. Given that I knew the context of the situation, I could understand what the mother was saying and found myself intervening and translating into English for the depute when the interpreter omitted things.

I could see the parents beginning to get uneasy, but the penny didn't drop.

At the end, the mother declared that we were racists and picking on her child for being Eastern European...The interpreter didn't translate, so I did.

Depute to interpreter: "Oh, I won't have that! Not at this school!"

This was where I asked the interpreter to inform the parent that I was half Slav myself and that my maiden name was [something along the lines of] Pavlović.

Apart from the swearing, the child had previously been excluded for calling one of my colleagues a "black b*tch".

I'm sorry the reference to weight in my post has offended people. It's included to make the point that the mother wasn't doing the best by her child as she agreed to him being photographed and to the image bring published. The child was very recognisable because of his weight. Being black, wearing shorts or liking to eat macaroni cheese would not have been obvious distinguishing marks.

I've just remembered this one from about 20 yrs ago.

The Assistant Head/Senior Yr Head called in a mother to speak to her about her son's lack of effort.

"It's aa right, Mr Y - he doesnae need qualifications for what he wants tae be."

"Oh, that's interesting. What does he want to be?"

"A dentist."

Both these stories are hilarious - in the first one at least it was the boys mum who came in and not the Dad 😂 it’s obviously outrageous what the mum did/said though. You’d never get a mum - or a dad for that matter - telling a male teacher to change what he wears!

Re, fighting families - Honestly I’m surprised when families like that even come to parents evening 😂 I guess that’s a win of some sort if we ignore the brawl.

Oh, I just remembered a time I was definitely the batshit parent. So, I was a secondary school teacher, and my students had made these lovely handmade cards in art class for Teacher Appreciation Day. They were being sold to raise money for charity—wholesome stuff. I thought, perfect! I’ll buy one for my son’s reception teacher. Look at me, supporting the arts and being thoughtful.

So I grab a card, all proud of myself, and hand it to my then-4-year-old as we’re getting out of the car, he drops it. No biggie, I think, scooping it up off the pavement.

We get to the classroom, hand the card over, and the teacher is all smiles. Lovely! Warm fuzzies all around. And then he turns the card over and goes, “Oh… what’s that?”

Yep. The card had landed face down in a pile of dog poo. And I, in my clueless glory, had picked it up, handed it over like a heartfelt gift. To top it off, the teacher goes, “Oh no… I put my finger in it.”

Thankfully, he took it like a champ—probably laughed about it in the staff room for weeks.