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.

This has to be my favourite so far! Just amazing!

I had a set of parents who complained that I excluded their Y11 son because I was biased against tall students (I am 5 ft 2) and put in a FOI request to see if I had excluded anyone smaller than me. Luckily the one student who was smaller than me I had excluded. The fact that their son hit another student so hard he ended up in hospital was apparently not important.

Do you not like teachers? Genuinely curious.

Yeah, I guess that's why there's so few of them hanging in there by their fingertips.

I'm not a teacher but in primary school a mum stormed in and punched a teacher in the face at our school disco.

I had a lovely Year 10 bay in my form. His mother worked full time and had four boys at the school. She once emailed me at 6 am to tell me to make sure that he didn’t eat the banana she’d put in his packed lunch because it had ‘brown bits’! She then also texted his two best friends to ensure the message got to him. On another occasion she panicked because the Rugby kit he’d bought in that day wasn’t clean - she made him leave it at Reception, came in , took I home and washed and dried it and bought it back that afternoon!

My daughter was little and had 100% attendance, we then had snow and they closed the school for 2 days, few months later i received an email asking why my daughter didnt have 100% attendance coz she had missed 2 days of school and now had 98% attendance!!

Ooh, think I’ve found the mum that sent that email!

Sadly, not.

Why was it necessary to say the child was overweight?

I once had a parent pull a large machete out of his pants in a meeting about his sons poor attendance, just ever so casually!

That said, have you always been kind to your staff retired headteacher.

It's an annoying admin thing. Computer says 'no'.

A parent once complained to me that her son didn't have any manners.

"Do you not teach good manners at this school??"
Followed with "I know he doesn't have any manners because of how he behaves at home!"

She was genuinely annoyed with me about this. 🤦🏽‍♀️

The shocking thing is that none of this is surprising to those who work in schools - the abuse, the entitlement, the projection all take their toll on school staff. Society is broken beyond belief, parents are under tremendous pressure and schools / social services are operating in a shoestring budget that is untenable. Then there is that other elephant in the room teachers have to contend with: toxic leadership that drives you into the ground with 70 hour weeks and out-of-touch expectations that keep you spinning like a crazed hamster. I fear for the future of the nation.

Hahahahahahah

It's not so much unhinged but my boyfriend and I recently went to a church service and the vicar said to him 'I know you from somewhere', and he said, 'yes, I taught all 3 of your girls'. She replied. 'Oh God, I am so sorry', then crossed herself. We fell about laughing. She said 'yep all 3 were naughty, especially the last one!'

Wow hahahaha these are just brilliant 😂

Well, a lot of teachers are parents too...

A personal favourite of mine was the parent who complained bitterly that I went to the police after their daughter dropped a phone through an open window into my class, climbed through the window to get it and then attacked me. I was heavily pregnant and the girl tried to break my fingers. This was more than twenty years ago before schools routinely had policies about mobile phones.
according to Dad, I should have ignored all his daughter’s behaviour and instantly given her the phone back. Despite a behaviour referral order for the attack on me, the same girl attacked another teacher a few months later.

We had this once

I was at work and had arranged for my mate to pick up the kids (so I missed what happened and heard about it later)

The school had a bit of an odd layout and at the bottom of the school fields there was an old building (used to be the base for milk delivery's when a milkman was still a thing)

Anyway,they'd knocked the dairy building down and they'd found a ww2 bomb (bit hazy on the details) and where forced to evacuate the surrounding area

Because of the way the building was to the school,the police made the school go into lockdown,nobody could go in/come out

This one batshit/entitled (take your pick) parent refused to answer her phone/listen to the voicemail school left/read any WhatsApps etc and matched up to the school

Only to be informed that she couldn't take her ds as the police had said they where to stay in one place (in the school) until the lockdown was lifted/they'd removed the bomb-she couldn't go in (as police advice) but was more than welcome to stay in the playground

Entitled/batshit parent wasn't having that and punched the teacher in the face-the poor woman went flying,breaking her nose and two teeth

Fuck all happened with the police but they did ban her from the playground-to which she took the hump and complained to the governors and ofsted!

Not me but to a colleague who had to have time off due to her DH having a heart attack and emergency heart surgery. She shouldn’t have taken on new pupils knowing her husband was at risk of having a heart attack (she was a peripatetic music teacher). Child missed maybe 3 lessons and often forgot to come anyway, let alone practice!

Guilty!

A child asked me for a marker pen so I put my hand into the drawer and handed him a tampax.

I went to school one day wearing a brown shoe and a black shoe (it was dark when I dressed).

I spent an uncomfortable 10 minutes telling some parents that their son Steven was struggling with his work and misbehaving. They were mortified, shocked and upset. As the conversation progressed it became apparent that I wasn't talking about their son... "Oh THAT Steven! No he's fine and doing well."

During a staff meeting, a colleague whispered something hilarious to me and I got told off for laughing (echoes of my own school days!).

During my first OfSTED as a headteacher, the lead inspector mislaid her glasses, which were eventually found being worn by my administrator who thought they were hers!

My colleague put a dead lamb in the school wheelie bin (long story!).

I work in a primary school, minority of parents are nuts!

1. parent came in, he’d parked on double yellow lines outside school half on pavement, traffic warden issued ticket - parent wanted me to cancel the ticket & arrange for all parents to be allowed to park wherever they want from 9-9.30 and 3-3.30, we have over 500 children in school, can you imagine the carnage! When I refused he flipped, threatened to report me to the council or governors - I told him to go ahead!
2. a Dad told me he was a qualified teacher and knows everything, said he was so good he had started helping in an after school football club, hadn’t needed any formal training or QTS and was given a teaching post in a different school, same city! Guess what, he hadn’t!
3. Mum complained that a Reception boy was bullying her daughter because he told her she wasn’t a princess, demanded that in September, little boy should not be allowed to move up to Year 1.

Not particularly. Of course there are some exceptions but I find them an odd breed in general - typically very strait laced, like having rules + routine, want everything in writing. At work they’re usually difficult patients, I always say that no question is stupid but I’ve had some absolutely mad ones from teachers!