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.

What a fuss over nothing. She must be up the school complaining every five minutes if she thought it necessary to speak very firmly to the teacher about telling a child to take their cardigan off.
It doesn't do kids any favours in the long run if you give them the message that anything a teacher says can be overruled by getting their mum in to micromanage

Possibly not as unhinged as some of these... yesterday was graduation at the preschool where I work. We had a strict 2 adult per child policy, plus siblings, presuming this only applied to babies or toddlers. One family asked if they could bring Gran too and we said sorry no, we had to restrict numbers due to fire regulations. The parents were permitted to record as everyone gave consent in advance and we reminded the Mum of this. Despite this 5 family members turned up, parents, 2 grandparents and a young adult sibling. Ffs. I'm so annoyed.

So you sent your dd there too? Interesting.

It’s started! Sent out the letters for my trip, bearing in mind were taking one coach load but there are almost 200 in the year group and this was explained in the letter. One parent who wasn’t sent the offer letter emailed in as soon as they went out, must be on WhatsApp with someone who got it asking why their child wasn’t chosen! I let the head of year choose with a few exceptions.

'the girl was not pregnant '

😂

That's the best one on here, fucking dying

I hope you didn’t let the extra family members in!

Happened before computers too. Back in the early 60's Mum had to walk my sister and I to school, because it snowed and the buses weren't running. Got marked "late" and Mum was furious; it was the only time we'd ever been late. She said next time she'd keep us home.

@cramptramp someone else did! The grandparents came over to thank me after, they were so sweet. It was the Mum that was in the wrong, we should have left HER outside!!

I was hoping it was going to turn out to be a teacher!

Is the 'unnamed jumper' problem not solved by getting the kids to sniff them?
Something I thought was a Mumsnet myth until my daughters started primary and confirmed it works.

Online parents evenings can be very interesting !
One mum doing her appointment with me on her phone during a Pilates class (I kid you not !)
Another in her underwear doing her fake tan ‘I’m on a hen do tomorrow’
One parent who was clearly sat in the airing cupboard.
Another sat by their pool in a bikini whilst the child in question kept jumping in

I can confirm it’s not a myth. Many a jumper’s owner identified by sniffing 🤣

I had a parent stride over to me at the end of the day to demand that I 'finally do something about K who has pushed DD over again'. When I told her that K had been off all week, so had definitely not pushed her DD, she informed me that I must be lying, because she'd pinched her the day before as well!

It took headteacher involvement before Mum sorted of believed us - I think that when K returned to school the following week with a cast on her broken leg was when she finally acknowledged that her DD was telling fibs!

I had a parent ask me to sniff a jumper once. Said his name was not in it but it smells like him so could I please go and smell the jumpers. I said she was more than welcome to smell the lost property box but I would not.

Yes kids do check theirs. One kid once explained it to me and said it is the only one that doesn't smell. He said you can smell what other people smell like but never smell yourself so if you can't smell something it is yours!

If the mum hadn't said anything, then the child (and presumably other children in the class) would potentially have spent half the school year feeling uncomfortable, and for what?

What sort of weird and controlling personality disorder compels someone to waste their precious time trying to regulate another person's temperature for them, who is perfectly able to make that assessment for themselves, in fairly mild temperatures? You clearly identify with that personality type... do you often try to micromanage the people around you, over things that don't affect you at all? Do you find people getting frustrated with you, and not understanding why?

This isn’t unusual. Unfortunately. So many children don’t do anything they don’t want to do, with full support from parents.

I have a lot but one in particular always sticks out in my mind- it may not be the biggest or most dramatic or amusing but it will always baffle me.

I got a phone call from a boys dad, let’s call the boy Sam.
It went something like this:
Dad- “hi just wanted to let you know I’m really not happy with what happened to Sam yesterday and how it wasn’t dealt with properly.”
Me- (clueless) “Okay, can I just ask what it is you’re referring to?”
Dad- “he told me Peter punched him on the playground at lunch time and Peter didn’t get into any trouble.”
Me- “oh gosh, I wasn’t aware of this, do you know which member of lunch time staff dealt with it and I can get to the bottom of what’s gone on?”
Dad- “no teachers or staff knew about it, and I’m annoyed.”
Me- “so…Sam didn’t tell anyone?”
Dad- “no, you know what he’s like, he’s too proud, he wouldn’t have wanted to make a fuss. But I’m fuming to be honest with you that Peter has just got away with this, it’s not on, it’s disgusting that the school just allows children to go around punching other children, I can’t believe you’ve not punished Peter for this and spoken to his parents, he should be excluded, it’s not on and I’m really not happy , I might even go to the govenors abut this.”
Me- “I understand your frustration with the situation but can I just be clear, Sam didn’t tell an adult, so that will be why Peter hasn’t been reprimanded. We can’t action things if we don’t know about them. But now I’m aware, I will look into it.”
And then basically continued to rant on for ages about how furious he was that I/the school hadn’t dealt with this situation, whilst simultaneously acknowledging that he was fully aware we knew nothing about it!

@CaptainCallisto that is shocking!!!!

That explanation actually makes a lot of sense.

My Irish mother told me the other day (warm day, mid May) that she would get pneumonia if I left the car window open to get a bit of air. It was sweltering and I was trying to keep the car cool for the baby.

Coincidentally she's a retired teacher 😂.

@theproudgeekvery much NOT a myth but i wasn’t about to sniff every lost jumper 😂

One parent used to actually stalk her children at playtime to make sure they were only playing with ‘approved’ children, and encourage her children to blank those that she didn’t approve of.

caused so many rifts in the parents community.

That I need to keep an eye on their son after school while they go to the other key stage for their daughters parents evening.
It was parents evening.
I was meeting parents too.
she couldn’t wrap her head around the fact that she would need to collect her son as normal and take him with her.

Would love to know her criteria for "approved children"

I was a Faculty Head in a Scottish High. My faculty included the MFL department.

A couple of parents complained that their children's teacher had an accent. Why yes - they were French.