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.

My wife is a Year 5 teacher and has just led a residential trip to France. 68 children came on the trip. Of those children, 6 had parents who came and stayed at a hotel down the road from the place where the kids stayed. A further 7 children had air tags in their bags. I wish I was making this up, I really do.

I’m a Reception teacher and if you know the early years curriculum, it’s different to the national curriculum - we don’t have subjects like science history etc but we do have understanding the world. I had a parent complain about me and say I wasn’t a proper teacher becuse I didn’t teach science. She was the only parent that didnt attend the welcome evening where I explained exactly where the NC subjects sit in early years.

The parent who complained I’d had 3 days off when I miscarried my baby - they knew why.

Blimey most of these unhinged parents are women, what does this say about us women I wonder! Some of these mums are bloody, deluded batshit crazy nutters.

A parent once told me she was related to the queen and would be bringing her to a meeting regarding our concerns about the safeguarding of her child. It was a tiny school in the arse hole of Birmingham. The Queen did not attend in the end, sadly.

This is hilarious 😂

I once had a complaint made as I had told s child off.
Apparently I needed to anticipate his not doing what he was told before he did, prevent it from happening and give the child space to express themselves

Apparently I was rubbish at adjusting for SEN as I couldn't do this.

I had one physically disabled child, a dyspraxic child and 4 children with autism in a group of 20. (I was the assistant). I was doing my best but I couldn't be everywhere at once!

Oh my god! I had no idea this was something that happened generally….it was so bizarre at the time. No air tags thankfully as it was so long ago but I was still gobsmacked that the parents felt the need to do that. Poor kids. Either you trust the school to take them on a trip or you don’t- and for the kids it’s supposed to give them a bit of (controlled) freedom and independence away from home. Poor buggers.

Oh my god that is awful for the poor kid

When I was supply teaching a Year 2 class, I’m at the door greeting children with the TA. One mum marches over demanding to know who I was, I politely told her that Mrs X wasn’t in today so I would be covering the class. She asked why Mrs X was off and when I said I had no idea she demanded that I find out. After explaining that I couldn’t leave a class of children to find out but the office staff may be able to help, she grabs her child and storms off shouting about not leaving her kid with some randomer. Crazy people!

I’ve had a few get pissed off that their child had lost their school jumper saying things like ‘it hasn’t got their name on it but it’s age 5-6’ as if it would stand out in my year one class. Then getting incredibly angry when it could not be found and telling me they would bill me for the cost

had one get really angry with me one morning for not opening the door 10 minutes before the bell because it was drizzling and her child was getting wet. Despite the fact that we were all in a morning meeting. She could see this and kept rapping angrily on the windows

had one parent come in tipsy on sports day with a 6 pack of beer for her refreshments. She attempted the hurdles and it didn’t end well. She had to be escorted off the premises.

I had another one tell me off for the fact their child had learnt the word twat. She said he used proper swear words at home like shit and fuck and therefore could only have learnt the word twat at school and could I please re consider who he sits next to as they are obviously a bad influence.

@IButtleSir what’s wrong with an airtag in a bag? my son has one since year 7 (takes train and bus to school). It saved us a lot of effort twice already when he forgot his bag on the train or the station.
We easily picked the bag up the next morning compared to having to start a big search.

Yes and there are lots of threads about that!

this isn’t one of them

Not insane behaviour but a really insane attitude. My mum (secondary school teacher) called home once about a new year 7. The mum said “just so you know, I view you and the school as the enemy”.

That I didn't tell them when I found out I was pregnant....

Not me my mum.

My mum was a teacher in a particularly rough area in South London in the 70s, and then later in a nicer part in 90s. In the 90s she had a particularly rude/full of attitude child but knew his rights, my dad says you can’t tell me what to do, my dad is going to show you whose the boss, you get the gist. Lots of hype around parents evening, head who had had a previous altercation with the parent decides he will sit in on the meeting. Well parents evening dad turns up and suddenly all the anger left! Everyone is shocked and then he says MrsTakeMe2Insanity’smum was my favourite teacher at school!

I don’t think that was the reason for the AirTag though. It was clearly to keep constant tabs on the kids, not their stuff.

At Parents’ Evening, one mum told me that her 9 year old son had a crush on me and thought I was pretty. Then she said “he told me that he saw you walking around the school naked”. I laughed at that because obviously it sounds ludicrous but when I looked at her she was sat deadly serious staring intently at me and said “well…were you?” 🤣 I literally had to convince her for about 5 minutes that I hadn’t wandered around the school naked. Just so ridiculous.

I approached another parent at drop off because her daughter had told me that when she didn’t get 10/10 for her spellings her mum would scream and shout at her, beat her up and lock her in the cellar. And apparently because she hadn’t got 10/10 for such a long time her mum had moved her bed into the cellar and she lived down there and it didn’t have any light in it. A number of members of staff were close to this girl's family or related to this girl’s family, and they all confirmed it was nonsense as the house didn’t even have a cellar, plus she was always telling these tall tales. Anyway, I spoke to the mum and told her what her daughter had said and her mum was very upset and was worried about the implications of her daughter saying it. She told me that her daughter kept lying and attention seeking and they didn’t know what to do about it. Then in the next breath she said that her daughter had said that I get really angry at her sometimes (wasn’t true) and that I threw a book at her head (not true) and had made her stand in the corner of the room facing the wall all afternoon (not true). I said that none of those things had happened and that I wouldn’t ever treat a child in that way and the mother’s angry response was “Are you calling her a liar?” 😩

99% of parents are great but that 1% blow your mind at times 🤣

Bonkers parent!

A friend worked in the Middle East as a pe teacher. They had some event where students were put into teams named after animals. One parent misunderstood and wanted to know where she could get a falcon for her son to bring into school with him, I mean she was prepared to do it just didn’t know the right route to go down 😂

What about unhinged teachers?

Had the most baffling parents evening once at my sons secondary school. DS was about 14. Met the teacher for the first time and she was saying he was under performing for x,y,z reason in this specific subject.

I agreed with her. Offered the support at home etc. She then states 'Studies show children being raised by single parents are easily distracted'. I ask her what this has to do with my son? She then answers by repeating her statement.

Again, I ask her why she is parroting this, and she looks at me like I have grown a second head and yet again repeats 'Studies show.....'

At this point I'm pissed off. I politely tell her my sons Dad and I had been together over 20yrs, and WHY DO YOU KEEP TELLING ME....

And she cut me off to repeat Studies have shown, single parents...blah, blah, blah

I got up and walked out. No idea to this day what was going through her mind. We had a completely normal conversation until that point🤔

School trip to London - parents were asked to provide a packed lunch and a snack for tea to have on coach on the way home. One boy had a really heavy backpack that he was struggling with and we discovered he had 5 water bottles inside and enough food for the whole class. He said his Mum was so worried about him not having enough to eat or drink apparently!

I then had a call whilst on the coach to London from school, as boy's Mum had called the school to ask if we could take out some of his water bottles from his backpack as she was now worried it was too heavy for him and was panicking that he would fall backwards when going up the tube escalator.

Thankfully the child survived the trip to London without suffering from dehydration, starvation or a major fall at Bank tube station!

Jesus Christ. They don’t sound well. That poor kid. 😧

One rather odious parent who complained about everything and anything once yelled at me that he was going to report the school to Ofcom. I told him to go ahead 😂

And? Yes, there's a minority of lunatics in most jobs and walks of life, I expect. Teaching is no exception. That's not what the thread is about though.

Whilst I generally agree with your message, I’m not sure why you feel the need to point out a child was over weight…