Why didn’t you teach my child not to pee on the floor?

One time a child peed all over the bathroom in the school. When we brought it up with the parent, they demanded to know why we didn’t teach them how to properly use the bathroom.

Please stop trying to teach my kid

I had a 14 year old student that was reading at a second grade level.

I had him read aloud out of a 3rd grade literature book to me, in private, because he couldn’t be trusted to read it on his own and then we answered the questions together and he had to write out the answers. The whole time he would complain or just refuse to even do it.

His father called and complained to the vice principal that I had been too hard on his son and was “trying to fill his head with ideas.”
Sorry for trying to teach your kid how to read.

Cash machines

Another parent caused a huge fuss with the district until ALL 4 of her children were tested and “qualified” for special ed services. I say “qualified” because they were all in fact not qualified. She wouldn’t take no for an answer though and even brought in a lawyer. The district finally gave in and tested them again and Lo and behold they “qualified” this time. I found out later that when you have a child in special ed, the parent can get a SSI check for them from the government. There were other run ins with this parent over several years. I always knew she was in the office because she was always yelling and she had a distinctive voice. It got to the point where I would start feeling panicky whenever I heard her come in.

Baptism by fire

I’m a swim instructor at a local summer community center camp. I once had to jump in to the deep end to save a new kid from drowning(he couldn’t swim, but I didn’t know because he was assigned to another teacher). His mom was upset at me for coming in to save him because “he has potential, he’s a much better swimmer than many of the other kids, and we just have to learn to teach him better.” Seriously lady. What the fuck.

A+ parenting

I had a mother complain that I didn’t give enough homework, even though I was giving her kid, after a special request, extra homework. The kid in question however, never did any of his homework.

“Home school”

I had a teacher who told us about how a father pulled his son out of school at a very young age because he didn’t want him going to school with black people (this was in Texas). When he finally let his son go back to school at a high school age, he could barely read or write.

And I should note that this happened less than a decade ago.

My kid has no future, basically

In recent memory; I have a deaf student and her parents don’t know sign language. Well, her mom knows a little and dad knows none. At back to school night dad kept talking about how she needs to set her sights lower for her career plans.

Most of the time I never hear from parents. 170 kids per year and 15 show up for back to school night type stuff. That’s the worst.

Bleak

The ones who come to parent-teacher conferences drunk.

Psycho mom

My friend’s mother is an absolute disaster, I shared a class with her last year and always felt bad for my teacher.

If my friend didn’t do well on a test/lab, or if she forgot to turn homework in, the second that the teacher put the score in, my friends mom would see it since she had made it so she got email alerts for every time grades went in. She wouldn’t just check every so often, oh no, she needed to get notified every time there was the slightest change.

If it was a bad grade, she would not even ask my friend about it, she would immediately call or email the teacher yelling at her about such a low score.

Faking child abuse

I once had a parent accuse me of inappropriately touching her son because he stole an origami book from my class. He admitted stealing the book. However, his mother could not come to terms with her son’s behavior. She repeatedly shouted, “My son is not a thief!”
The next day I get a phone call from my administrator. She tells me that the mother came in to report inappropriate touching of her son. Specifically, caressing his hands, head, and body at my desk in front of the whole class. Obviously, this was untrue. I asked the admin to get a statement from the child. Thankfully, his mother hadn’t corrupted him. The student wrote that I had never touched him.

Parents stealing their children’s medication

There once was this kid in my class who was kinda fucking up; he had quite the reputation for being “stupid” and was known to skip classes a lot, up to the point where he was required to bring a doctors note whenever he didn’t attend. This was no badass, mind you. He was tiny, nerdy, with a rather “dumb” look and… yeah, not a lucky child.

And then i met the mother. The mother (single parent) walked into the room, superpale, superconfused, had no idea who i was (she had asked for the date), asked the weirdest questions in the world and when she tried to leave, she didn’t find the exit (one room, one door). She was clearly on drugs. But which drugs?

So when i checked the boys files it turned out that he was not only in fact highly intelligent (i had a similar impression in class), but suffered from ADHD and was on a pretty crazy medication. I could never prove it, but i´m 99,9% sure that the mother was abusing his ritalin, thus not only fucking herself up, but robbing her son of the much-needed medication and therefore fucking him up as well. It really pissed me off to see someone not only be selfdestructive, but actually ruinging what could have been her own childs very successful school-career up to the point where almost the whole teachers-staff was convinced that this boy was a total dimwhit.

Parents against homework

I interned in an elementary school as part of a class last semester, and one of the girls in my class said that a parent of the teacher she was shadowing requested that their child not be required to do homework because she had to do chores instead.

Living vicariously through their children

For a while I worked as a horseback riding instructor teaching beginning lessons. Our students were usually aged 6-10. While the nervous parents could be annoying (but understandable), the worst were the parents that were reliving old riding careers through their children. One woman rode competitively when she was growing up and insisted that her seven year old son rode as well. He didn’t enjoy riding much and whispered to me that he would rather play baseball. He was also incredibly allergic to horses – his eyes would swell up, his nose would run, and he was miserable. After a few lessons and realizing the problem, we told the woman that we weren’t willing to make her child so uncomfortable.

Weirdos

We had a child whose parent worked in a nearby office building, and she wanted to be called every single time her little angel got a boo-boo. Apparently, our band-aids weren’t good enough and she needed to come put one on herself.

Oh, and she dressed her kid in flannel underclothes the entire time I was there, which was December-late April. The poor kid got so hot sometimes, yet she still insisted on making him wear them.

Batshit mothers

Toddler indicated his mum (mental health issues, possible drug abuse) hit him in the face. Called protective services, reported it. Come into work the next day and there are abusive messages left on the voicemail of our main office reception, accusing me of being a child molester and a predator. Then has the gall to try and get her son back into care with us, becuase whilst I oversee the place, I wouldn’t be working with him directly.

If you think the person running a Childcare centre is molesting children, why the fuck would you still feel safe putting your child there?

A mom who gave her male teacher the gift of lipstick…

I used to be an assistant teacher at a daycare…. I am a guy… this one parent made it very clear that this was not a mans workplace… she would give gifts at the end of the year… she would give me things like handbag holders and lipstick for Christmas presents at the end of the year with a smirk on her face (she wrote my name on them and made it clear it was no mistake)

Mother of the year

My mom teaches Special Ed PE. She had a girl student who the mom would use as a prostitute for money for cocaine.

Ummmm

My mom’s a teacher. 2nd grade. The school she teaches at uses MacBooks and iPads rather than windows devices. Actual e-mail she forwarded to me: “Dear Mrs. *******, I’m sending a WINDOWS laptop that I personally configured to school with my daughter. I will not have my daughter being taught to use an Apple product. I work for a major computer technician company, and I can personally attest to the fact that everything Apple makes is pure garbage. You’re hurting the students more than helping them, as every major company uses Windows software. I am also going to be filing a complaint with the school board. I know this is not your fault personally, but I know there is something you could do to stop it.”

W-O-W

My high school theatre director once worked with one of his students to get him to stop smoking weed and then the mother came up to the school all pissed off. She said he didn’t have the right to tell him to stop because if her son stopped, she wouldn’t know were to get her weed anymore.

Poor kid

I tutor young kids at a centre in a rich suburb. I want you to picture these pushy parents, and then collate them in one spot. BAM. You have my place of work. Now every week I would tutor this child, lets call him Colin, Colin was a good kid, sometimes a bit slow at doing work but we got through it.

About 2 hours after ever session his mum would call and complain. Telling us he had not done enough work or then the next week call and say we had overworked him and that he was overtired when he returned.

This all accumulated to the mother wanting to pull him out and on his last session, the owner had a chat to Colin and asked him if he liked it at tutoring, he responded that he loved it and it was the best part of his week.

I’ll never forget his sad little face as he left. Poor child.

So sad

A friend of mine is a math teacher and told me that he had parents come in and complain that their daughter’s grades were too high. They didn’t understand how she was doing so well when she wasn’t that smart.

Unfortunately, she was not popular at school nor at home. So terrible to be disliked at school and come home to that environment.

The parents who see me as an enemy

The ones who just don’t get it. I am human too. I want to see your child succeed, academically and socially. I too want them to be happy. I have studied to be a teacher. I have years of experience. Work with me, not against me. When I raise concerns it’s not to attack you or your child. It’s because I care and I want to help. A little trust goes a long way.

World’s worst father

My sister in law is a pre-school teacher. She had these adorable little twin girls in her class. They were very sweet but came from a bad home environment. They had pretty long blonde hair but they were always getting head lice. One day they came to school both crawling with lice, so the teachers had no choice but to call the father to come take them home and treat the lice. The father got angry, tried to argue that it was the school’s responsibility, but the teachers held firm. So the father came to school and took the little girls home. Twenty minutes later he returned, having shaved both the little girls’ beautiful hair right off, and left them there for the remainder of the school day.