Had enough with excuses for bad behaviour

[Ribenaberry12]

I work in a secondary school and have done for a long time (20 odd years). I currently work in a pastoral support role and part of my job is contacting parents to let them know when their child has been placed in detention/isolation. I reckon that, in the last term, 9/10 parents have argued with me and/or tried to excuse their child’s behaviour. Even when the situation is 100% clear cut - think caught vaping or heard swearing. I’m getting sick of it and thinking about jacking it in.

I’m a patient person, I’m good at my job and my school is really good - we have lots of support strategies that we offer but I’m just sick of the lack of accountability from parents. Honestly, some of the excuses I’ve been given are unbelievable.

I used to phone parents and they’d apologise for their kid’s behaviour and we’d work together to support them and we’d make sure it didn’t happen again. The bond you’d get with kids and their families when the kids turned it around was fantastic and it was great to see their successes. Now I cannot remember the last time a parent admitted that their kid was in the wrong and didn’t argue the toss - sometimes aggressively, sometimes pinging off countless emails at all hours of the day and night. Sometimes personally attacking staff who have pulled their kids up. It’s so time consuming and draining. I see the teachers and SLT so drained by it too. It’s never been this bad.

AIBU?
YABU - it’s your job, suck it up
YANBU - there’s a lack of accountability and it sucks

So school emailed to say your child was late and to discuss this with your child, and you replied to say "we left the house late"? Late is late, they can't tell you to make sure you're not late, but what else do you expect them to do???

You only have to read some responses to some of the threads on here. They need their medication increasing??? Automatically.
no punishment, no consequences.
i wonder if it will be the same response if they grow up and kill someone?

A two day exclusion is incredibly mild for cannabis use! At all our local schools, drugs = permanent exclusion.

Our HT told me about getting involved in an argument with the parent of a girl caught dealing on site. Parent didn't think permanent exclusion was warranted, because the dope wasn't even that good anyway. Jesus wept.

True story - a child dropped litter on the floor and refused to pick it up when asked. Mum called school to complain her DC shouldn’t be picking rubbish up off the floor and that should be the teachers job… her DC is 4… I despair.

I’m not sure if maybe there’s something I’m not getting, because of my socioeconomic background. It’s my experience that young people go through a phrase of swearing when they talk a lot more than older adults do.

That's often true ... and? "I swear a lot" is the feeblest of excuses for swearing in class!

I swear a lot. I'm more than capable of not swearing in a formal situation. It's a skill that all we foul-mouthed people need: school's an excellent place to develop this skill.

AuntPru
I know, yes, it was more to let them know it wasn’t his fault- him and his brother were sitting in the car ready on both occasions- was that one of my other sons had to go to the toilet in one case, and in the other that the cat had run under the car! Was more to let them know he had nothing to do with it, nothing they can do I know, they have to warn but just so they don’t think he’s dawdling along, or went to the shop before school or something

It goes back further, I recall when 'entitlement ' became the buzzword in the early 2000s, they had to be taught their 'entitlement ' with no reference to their responsibilities and they're now the parents.

The motto of too many parents is Discipline is what other people's children need.

I had a brief chat with a pastoral lead yesterday and they said exactly the same as you, OP.

They also said they were sick and tired of going to work to be abused every day, by kids and by parents. Parents laughing when they hear their kids call teachers bitches, saying they use the same language at home. Parents ringing in over every negative point, questioning every thing, denying their kids ever do anything wrong.

So many parents just don't parent. I am having arguments with my child at the moment who say their 6-year-old peers are freely allowed onto 18+ games and social media, have unlimited access to tablets, questioning why I deny them access to social media until they're 13 and older games until much later.

The system is truly broken and I have no idea how we will steer it back on track.

One of the issues I think comes from this "every behaviour is communication". Now that may well work in most cases for little kids. It really does not apply to 15 year olds. Because they are often "communicating" that they just do not want to be there and they could not care less about maths or whatever.
So when a 6ft3 15 year old boys tells a teacher to go fuck herself and throws a chair, everyone is meant to try and figure out why he's behaving like that. And even when the school do want to punish, for some reason every punishment is deemed "awful" by the parents.
Does no one remember being a teenager? I was actually a pretty well behaved teenager but definitely had my silly moments. I remember with 3 friends taking all the loo roll out the cubicles and putting them in the bin at school. Why? No idea. It just seemed a funny idea at the time. I wasn't "communicating" that I was unhappy or whatever. I was being a stupid teenager. Looking back now I'm horrified at myself and just cannot understand why I thought it was funny. But the fact is at the time I did. We never got caught but if we had we should have rightly been punished. I never did anything else like that again at school (I was normally too scared of getting in trouble) but it goes to show that sometimes kids just do stupid/ badly behaved things that are nothing to do with "communicating" or their needs not being met etc etc.

I remember watching some video last year(?) about how even when some parents were shown a video of their child doing something wrong, they still denied it and still defended their child. It is a real problem and I wouldn't do your job under such circumstances.

A colleague's sister was headteacher in a primary school, she overheard a father telling his 3 year starting school for the first time, that he didn't have to do what the teachers told him and that if the teacher told him off to tell his Dad who would go and sort the teacher out. What chance do teachers have. No wonder so many people act so badly - there are no boundaries

My parents told me 'listen to your teacher and do what you're told' and I said the same to my children.

@Ribenaberry12
I hear ya! I work in a Primary School & it's exactly the same...when they're younger than 11yrs!! Always someone else's fault or a crap 'excuse' for the horrific rudeness, aggression, blatant disregard for the rules everyone else has to follow. It's exhausting, frustrating & soul destroying!!
I've worked in education for years & I'm no longer shocked to be told to f*ck off by a tiny human!! 🤦‍♀️