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.

I'm imagining that boy being made a fuss of, being plied with cake and squash until his parents collected him.

Very ‘trendy lefty’ school in the early nineties in Cambridge (secondary).
Mum was at parents evening talking to me about her son’s behaviour ‘we’ve given up the C word together’ 😲. I had to pass that one through my brain a couple of times to check she meant what I thought she meant - she did!

I absolutely don’t feel sorry for kids. On a trip ( I was about 8) a kid was left at Drayton manor and as there was no mobile phones, they couldn’t let the coach know, we even went the 2 hours back to school without him

I once accompanied a day trip to London from Yorkshire with a group of 13/14 year olds, they were given a bit of free time to go where they wanted, some boys decided to see how many League 1 football grounds they could visit! When we got back onto the bus, fairly knackered after a 5.30am start, we checked they were all on board and set off. After about an hour it became clear that we had stowaways, a couple of boys from another school. From the Services we phoned their school who we panicking because they were missing from their coach and eventually arranged to meet the Head at the next but one Services to hand them back! Long before mobiles.

I can think of an instance, where a member of SLT was on gate duty at the end of the day, they intercepted a student with an amount of weed in their bag, duly confiscated it and handed it to the Head to be stored in the safe for handing over to the Police in time.
The following day when the child's parent was called in for a disciplinary meeting, along with the child, they accused the first member of staff of drug dealing because they'd passed it on to someone else!! 😯

sounds like she was losing her mind lol

I just remembered I was once one of those parents. My pfb was in reception and her teacher was someone I went to school with who had been a bit of a cow at school. (Only saying because this may have clouded my judgement) Dd comes home from school one day crying because it was sports day tomorrow and the teacher had told her she had to win, dd was worked up in case she lost. I was furious at the teacher putting this type of pressure on a four year old. I had a firm word the next day only to discover that the teacher had given a motivational but lighthearted speech to the whole class so clearly a misunderstanding . Lesson learnt, get both sides of the story before going in all guns a blazing.

😂😂😂

I am not a teacher but I do know a parent who complained to the school because she didn’t like the lyrics in the pop songs that they played while the children did music and movement.

I would say about 15-18 years ago was the start of things, but really snowballed last 10-12 years.
I'm now out of that career and on the other side as education consultant, and see the daily interactions between parents and educators. It's getting worse.

Another reference to a child being 'overweight'. Isn't this something teachers might avoid or does it suggest something about themselves?

Reverse of the coin, Teacher who told me in a rather bossy manner, Of course my 6 year old didn't like schooI, I did too many good things with him at home

Speaking as someone who was overweight as a child and who has had a lifelong struggle to stay fit, I'm assuming that the point being made by @Ibelievetheworldisburningtotheground is that the TA's own children were not well cared for?

In my case, my dad had been starved during WW2. God rest the man, he used to like to see his wee girl eating and would give me a side plate of his food when he came home from shift work. Mum had 3 bad miscarriages and used sweets as a way to keep me quiet when she was unwell.

It wasn't until a doctor tore a strip off Mum that she realised that I was in dire straits. I was taken to see her about my flat feet and knock knees. (I've seen photos of me at that time. I reckon that I was morbidly obese.)

Mum told me herself that she stammered "But I thought that it was just puppy fat?" and was told "There's no such thing as puppy fat!" This was back in the '60s. I wonder whether a doctor would be as direct now.

I had lost all the weight by the time I moved to secondary school. As an adult I've piled a lot on again through comfort eating. (Yes, I'm taking steps to address that. Current BMI is still at the bottom end of the obese range, however - 30.5%)

As a teacher I noticed more and more obese children in my job as a secondary school teacher. It really was a worry. (I'm now retired.) However, it was only reported if a child was underfed.

Nevertheless, I'd see girls who were much heavier than I was at their age and would wonder how they were going to cope as adults. I'm talking about older teenage girls who were most definitely in the obese range, not just carrying a bit of weight that they were going to lose in a growth spurt.

So yes - as an overweight adult, I do tend to notice overweight children because I understand the health dangers of being that size.

It is an observation that the mother wasn't looking after her own children properly. She was feeding the absolute crap most of the time, their snacks and lunch boxes were a disgrace, and they were already well on their way to obesity. It was really sad.

Yes teachers and school staff notice these things. It's part of the wider picture of how well or how poorly they are looking after their children in most cases. Very few children are obese for 'medical reasons'. It's mostly poor diet, too much food, too much junk food, and not enough movement. A significant portion of our overweight and obese students also not-so-mysteriously on our radar for other concerns.

The nail thing, I totally get. You wouldn't believe, as a teacher, the amount of parent meetings/emails that come in because their kid has been gouged by another child's dirty, long nail. It's a fair concern tbh.

A parent tearing strips off a teacher because their daughter had read a poem in front of the class and their daughter had dyslexia and…. Poor teacher trying calmly to explain to the parent that the activity had been to write the poem. However there was 10 minutes left at the end of the day and rather than immediately deciding to do usual like Heads Down Thumbs Up the teacher knowing that some of the children like talking and being over dramatic offered if any of them wanted to read their poems out. It was made clear that the activity had been to write them and that nobody had to read their poem out if they didn’t want to. The child had read her poem out by choice and had done so very clearly and articulately.

A parent in my dd’s class emailed the teacher saying her ds was really into dinosaurs at the moment, so could the teacher plan some lessons next week about dinosaurs. The ridiculous idea that lessons should revolve around her child was bad enough, but she had also clearly never heard of something called the National Curriculum.

What I am baffled about is the FOI request, I mean when you suspend kids is their height at that point recorded 😂

To be fair - I have had cause to do similar and 'casually mention' that the use of provocative lyrics in songs used for warm-up for 9-10 year old children was inappropriate to say the least!! (LMFAO)
This was in a time just after the Jimmy Saville scandal came to light and I was spending my working hours reading 100s of accounts of sexual misdemeanours!
(Nowadays there's more awareness/less tolerance about the sexualisation of children!)

Mother arrived to y11 parents' evening appointment with a takeaway for her son, because he'd been kept back for an hour's detention and would be starving otherwise because the evening didn't finish til 7pm.

When booking, she somehow hadn't realised she didn't have to spread her appointments out over three hours...

this has reminded about an acquaintance of mine who told the teacher ( juniors) that if he made all of the maths questions about football his son might show more interest

Not a teacher but I used to do a lot of school discos and my god those are interesting

I am very careful when I put a playlist together for a party whether it's for a kids party or anything else and although I don't tend to do mobile DJ work anymore, I do DJ at my pub as it's saved me a fortune and have, when requested, sorted out music for parties at the pub.

I was asked to DJ for a year 6 leavers party and was so careful, I had used a program to cut a section from a Little Mix song (school had asked the children to make a list of songs they loved and LM featured heavily).

Had a mum come over and complain because she thought I had played the Dua Lipa song New Rules. I hadn't, I played the very tame Kidz Bop one. She refused to believe me. Had to show the Headteacher my playlist which didn't contain the offending song.

At the same school, a teacher asked me to play Stormzy. He was confused when I said it wouldn't be appropriate as the lyrics in his choice are not suited for the age group.

Two parents dancing to a slower number, only for me to find out that they were both married to someone else when the wife smacked the other woman in the face.

Another one, I used to play a few old party/school disco classics as they went down well with the parents and teachers. Kids used to love watching their usually straight laced teacher doing Saturday Night or YMCA and they'd laugh and join in.

At one school, I received a lovely bunch of flowers and card from the school a few days after playing, with a note from the headteacher that a parent has complained about YMCA as it was a "gay song" and she didn't want her DS being fed "gay propaganda". The headteacher sent it with a comment on "thought you'd find this amusing" which I did.

Although I was once at disco for my DCs infants school, a CofE no less, where a DJ had clearly not checked his songs and the children were treated to a venue sweary rap song which he continued to play until a teacher pulled a plug from behind his set up. The complaints that time were plentiful.

I'm old enough to think that parents should not have the email addresses of teachers, if they have a complaint then it should be directed to a specific person, Head, member of SLT etc. who will deal with it, probably filing it in B-1N, if any of my old pupils are around!
Similarly at the end of the day in Primary schools parents should not be able to harangue their child's teacher with what is usually a load of trivia when all she/he wants is a pee and a cup of coffee!

The issue wasn’t that the lyrics were provocative, more that they were trashy nonsense.