Teachers provide an invaluable service to the community. They spend their own hard-earned money buying supplies, inspiring the younger generation, and making sure that people are prepared for the challenges ahead. However, sometimes parents just got to come and ruin a good thing. These are stories of some of the worst parents encountered by teachers.
Took An Energy Pill
“I had a parent volunteer to assist with our after school program. She showed up to school one day high as a kite, walking barefoot in the snow in a bikini top, a new baby in her arms, and a backpack that was stuffed with random nonsense. She was removed from the property immediately. She sent me a message saying that she thought she took an energy pill and accidentally took ‘a crack rock’ She still wanted to help out after all of that. Yeah, no. This kid lives with her grandmother part-time but still lives with his mom too. I definitely worry about her home life.”
Tired Of Dealing With These People
“A parent told me and my coworkers that she didn’t believe black people could properly raise children.
All my coworkers in this meeting were black, and mothers.
It was my first year of teaching, and my fancy private college education courses never covered ‘dealing with racist morons,’ so I just slid under the table as far as I could until the meeting was ended by a coworker.”
On The Lam
“I teach in a grade school alternative leaning environment classroom with second through fifth graders. Unfortunately, I have had some terrible examples of parents. One time I had a fourth grader accused of stealing a sweatshirt hoodie from a kid in a regular classroom. You could tell by looking at him that the hoodie wasn’t his. He was a larger boy and the hoodie was skin tight on him.
I questioned him if it was his hoodie, he said it was. I asked where he got it at. He said the internet delivered it to him the day before. Yep, the whole ‘internet’ did. I finally ended my interrogation asking him if it was okay if I called his mom to verify that the internet sent him the sweatshirt, he agreed.
I wait until my break and I call the mom to ask her. She immediately starts telling me about how the police are after her boyfriend because he has a warrant for his arrest. All narcotics related. Okay, too much information and I try to steer the conversation back to the hoodie. That’s when she starts telling me about them being in the vehicle at that moment running and hiding from the police. Wait, what??! I think she even used the term ‘on the lam’ like it was am old crime movie.
It was the craziest conversation I ever was in that I didn’t want to be in. All I could think of is that I am a mandated reporter, and she didn’t need to be telling me all this stuff. Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out where she wants me to send her son after school that he will be safe because they are out running from the cops. Craziness.
She ended the conversation by letting me know that the sweatshirt wasn’t actually her sons, and he did steal it.”
Poor Kid
“I have had a student in my class for almost three years. It’s an elective, and she’s one of my returning veterans.
Of the time in my class I have spoken to her father four times. The only time he was sober was our first time meeting. Two times were at school events (a performance and parent-teacher conferences). He was asked to leave campus both times. Which he did so peacefully, or until he would get home and take it out on his daughter. Our last interaction was when he came to pick her up after practice hammered as could be. There was no way I could let my student get into the car with a very inebriated man.
I nearly expected him to blow up or get aggressive when I said her mother or someone else will have to give her a ride home. He basically gave me a ‘whatever’ and drove off. When I spoke to the student the following Monday, it turned out her father went home and threw her and her mother out of the house.
It was something that really messed with her. I recently spoke with her to see what I can do to help emotionally, financially, grades, or tutoring; basically anything to keep her head above water. The only thing she asked for was ‘to feel like my dad loves me.’ It broke my heart. I’m not one who normally cries but I took my lunch break in my car after that.”
Education Old School
“A parent lost his mind when we sent home an email about teaching where babies come from. The only reference to reproduction was ‘when two adults are in a relationship, they can choose to engage in consensual relations, which is typically how a baby is made.’
We all got a multi page email about how adults discussing ‘no pants’ time was abusive and he was reporting us to CPS because HIS child had never even thought about where babies come from and was too young (12 years old) to even consider friends of the opposite gender. It had random highlights and bolded words and all caps. We offered his kid an alternative, which he accepted. Then we got a similarly insane multipage, random highlights/bold/caps email about how humiliated his kid was to have been pulled from biology and we should be ashamed of ourselves for making a poor innocent child cry.”
She Was Crying In The Car
“We usually get parents to drive on field trips. So after meeting with my chaperones and giving them the directions and emergency info for each child they’d be driving (preassigned by me days earlier), I send the kids off with the correct parent to head to the parking lot and get going. Now one car only could fit two car seats (kindergarten), so I had assigned that parent his daughter and one other student. The other student was absent unexpectedly, and as I was preoccupied making sure everything else was in order, I just apologized, but remarked how fun it’ll be for just the two of them to go together. It was maybe a 15-minute drive.
Well, my aide and I finally leave the classroom to head out and as we’re walking to my car this Porsche comes peeling down the parking lot and turns sharply into a spot facing me on the sidewalk. It made us jump how sudden and aggressive it was. Sure enough this dad gets out and begins screaming at me as he’s quickly walking up to me, gets in my face, fists clenched and shaking at his side, saying how stupid of me to not know that child would be absent and how he can’t believe how upset I’ve made his daughter. He really went on and on about how dumb teachers are and was a terrible school we must have, and it was terrifying how angry he was. Literally thought he was going to grab and choke me his fists were clenched so tightly.
After about 45 seconds of him berating me, and my aide and I just standing there horrified, I went to speak to his daughter (watching her father scream at her teacher from the car) and she was sobbing. Honestly I think she was upset because she was afraid to be alone with him. I should have told him to calm down or else take his child home, but I was so scared that I asked another parent to move one of their students and car seats to his car.
The next day the wife came and apologized to me. I can’t imagine what he’s like in the privacy of their home. Not a great situation and I feel sorry for his wife and two daughters. It was clear through other instances (unrelated to me, but public situations) that he has anger and control problems.”
Took The Cash And Ran
“Last school year I temporarily taught junior high at a Catholic school which I was essentially forced to ‘resign’ from (I had a psychotic principal).
Aside from the principal, most of the parents were crazy helicopter parents who thought there was nothing wrong with their kids at all. With this being said, there was a husband and wife who made my life a living nightmare (and probably cost me my job).
Their daughter was a straight-A student, and very well-behaved, but she would go home, and tell her parents that my teaching was ‘ineffective,’ and wouldn’t prepare her for high school (it was my first official year as a teacher too). I guess the parents were secretly emailing the principal bald-faced lies about me. Some of the claims were I would ‘play on the computer’ during class, or I would purposely let students argue with each other to get a ‘rise,’ and other completely bizarre lies. They did this to get me fired.
My principal told me she didn’t necessarily believe them, but since they were the ‘backbone’ of donations for our school (AKA rich parents), she was going to be extremely strict on me, and micromanage every single thing I do with a strict observation which would probably terminate me, or she would give me the option to resign with a severance check(this happened right before our Christmas Break too).
I took the money, and ran.”
There’s A Reason This Kid Thought He Could Get Away With Anything
“Back in the early 2000s, I had graduated high school and was trying to decide what to do in life. Both my parents were in education, and I thought it might be the direction I wanted to go. My mom was good friends with the tech department manager in the district she taught at, and got me on as an aid under him. He wasn’t a teacher, but was in charge of the computer lab. Usually, the teachers would take the kids in and either the teacher or the librarian would teach a class in there, which was 80% drawing in some application or playing Oregon Trail. They wanted a more advanced class, so I started teaching a programming class to the fifth graders.
In one of the classes, I had a kid that would come in and look up adult videos every time he was in front of a computer. This was before we had decent firewalls and other safeguards on the internet. He was a pretty smart kid, but a straight up terrible person, and even as a fifth grader, had an inch on me (I’m 5’10). I tried my best to encourage him to work on learning some basic Java programming, but he was having none of it and wasn’t intimidated by me in any way. I was not given power to deal with him, and his teacher washed her hands of him. So when he came in, I would just power off his computer and unplug it. I would have him work on code on a sheet of paper.
Well… He went home, and told his parents that I was showing HIM adult videos, and that I had touched him. The parents instantly sided with the kid. Came into the class and screamed in my face, dragged me into a meeting with the principal, and even the superintendent. They tried to drag my name through the mud, and even filed a lawsuit against me and the school district. Their lawsuit fell flat, but I still had to deal with going to court, and all the aftermath.
In the end, nothing happened to them. Their son went on to middle school. I think the school district paid their lawyer fees, just to get them to go away, and that was it. Oh, and I was fired from being an aid.”
Her Mother Smoked Her Childhood Away
“One of my friends teaches first grade. She saw a couple of kids playing with something at recess one day and it caught her eye. When she walked closer to see what it was she noticed it was a crack pipe. She asked the girl where she found it and she said it was her mom’s. My friend said it wasn’t surprising, because the little girl always wore raggedy clothes and looked like she was from a poor family.
Anyway, long story short, the police got involved. Turns out the mom had a warrant out for her arrest. And literally a week earlier her dad was arrested for armed robbery.
As far as I know the little girl ended up in foster care, but I’m not sure on all the details though.”
Downhill From Here
“I went to a football game to support my students as well as to meet some other parents who didn’t get to see me on open house night.
‘Hi, could you make your class a little easier? We know X isn’t going to be anything when he grows up, so we want his senior year to be the best year of his life.’
He wasn’t even a party-goer kind of student. Like, dang, the next 70-ish years are just downhill?
And I ran into that a LOT.”
Albert Einstein Here
“I had a student (16 years old) refer to Albert Einstein as ‘That Jew’ in a formal presentation, so I brought him in after school to talk about his language and try to go over with him why it was inappropriate. I then had another instance with the kid where he was making extremely anti-Semitic jokes to other students. I know pulled the student and dad into a meeting with me, the principal, and the guidance counselor. The dad walked in and started screaming at me that I was pushing my liberal agenda on the students and if I didn’t shut up he would make sure no man would ever want me for a wife and I’d be stuck working for the rest of my life.
The police had to be called and the father removed from the building. It was only three weeks before the end of the school year and the security guard at the school switched their schedule to match mine as the dad would loiter around the school like 30 minutes before the school day started and make me super uncomfortable. I opted to leave the school for the next school year (I teach chemistry and physics so not super hard for me to find a job at another school) just so i didn’t have to risk seeing the family again”
Worst Types of Parents
I’ve only been a tutor for 2 years and have met some of the worst types of parents.
But the worst are parents who says “I’ll support whatever you want,” but their action does not align with what they say, and worst of all, “persuading” the kid to do whatever they think is best for them.
One of the kids said ‘I wanna be a doctor that’s why I am working hard in my biology among other things’ but a few months ago i met him and apparently he never took the path because his parents said “Go be an engineer cause people are in need of good engineers” and ‘You want to go to med school just cause your best friend is going.’
This has happened to me too, I wanted to go to culinary school but my parents forced me to go to engineering school. Talked to them after i graduated and they said they’ll support me this time. But nope. Started to think to ditch culinary and just work like a robot.
Or the abusive type of parents. Whenever the kid got bad scores they mock them, sometimes even hit them. It’s not helping the kid to grow, and they might be scared of the parents.
But please parents be kind to your own children and treat them like an actual human being. Also, the world needs more people who fulfill their dreams more than anything.”
Extremely Rude
“A parent accused my co-worker friend of drinking her breastmilk. The parent later made me get on my hands and knees to find her nonexistent breastmilk in our refrigerator. An older teacher whom the parent has some relationship with came in at that moment and gently reminded her (with the grace of the Queen of England) that the parent hadn’t brought any in that day, and we had been using the parent’s frozen supply, reiterating what we had said about 20 minutes earlier.
When the mom left, I called her a hag and my co-worker friend started crying. It was unbelievable. Our older co-worker told us the parent is friends with the owner of our school, and the parent has done far worse because she believes she has the run of the place.”
No Wonder This Kid Has So Many Issues
“A kindergartner routinely destroys the classroom and has fits of utter rage for no reason. He has kicked students, thrown projectiles (scissors, pencils, books) at the teacher and assistant, broken the door by locking himself in the classroom and beating the door with a broom handle, etc. The teacher assistant HAD TO HAVE XRAYS/TESTS because this kid kicked her hand.
He lives with his ‘aunts’ who aren’t related to him, and they claim to have adopted him but his legal guardian is his grandmother who lives in Florida (we are in South Carolina). According to the aunt, he is perfectly fine at home.
Kid comes to school covered in little cuts and claims his aunts beat him with coat hangers over the weekend. We are mandatory reporters, so we have to call CPS and they investigate. One of the aunts picked this kid up after one of his fits landed him in the office, and she proceeds to tell him in front of the staff that she hates him and the police are going to haul him off. Have to call CPS again. The kid is terrified to go home and will hide from staff during end of day to avoid going home with his aunts.
Aunts now harass the teacher in writing over our teacher/parent messaging app; in his behavioral meetings, called the admin staff racist, the grandmother (who lives in FL nowhere near us) screamed at the teacher via teleconference, and they are threatening to sue the district.”
Helicopter Parenting To The Max
“I work in student services at a pretty big university, we legally aren’t allowed to release information about our (adult) students to anyone except them without their written consent to do so. We get SO many helicopter parents calling up either on behalf of or without their child’s knowledge.
I think the worst I’ve ever encountered was a woman who had called regarding her son. We told her that we can’t tell her anything without his consent, so she said she’d get him to contact us. We get an email from not his student email address, feels a bit iffy so we probe a bit and ask them to confirm some things that only he would know regarding his studies. Turns out she had made a fake email account to get permission.
She then called multiple times in a row trying to get different operators to get a different answer, she had a friend call on her behalf and also had friends come in (she lived in a different country) and talk to us on her behalf. We could not tell her anything.
Eventually, we spoke to the student about it, and he sort of knew it was happening but didn’t know the extent. He gave us permission to talk to her regarding his finances and student Visa conditions, but we aren’t allowed to discuss grades or enrollments. She did not enjoy being told that, to say the least.
Honestly, if your kid has made it to University cut the strings.”
Sabotaging Her Kid
“I had an elementary student who was totally wayward. She refused to do most of her assignments, and bothered other children incessantly. She was very often in trouble in the cafeteria, and in extra classes like art and music. The mother would call the school often with complaints about our not treating the child correctly.
When her parents came in for a conference, the mother brought in a large stuffed binder overflowing with information, observations, and other evidence that she had compiled on her child.
The mother refused to be supportive of the school in any way, and said that she needed to be designated as learning disabled. She wanted her little girl labeled and to have an IEP [Individual Learning Plan], and to have extra help from a teacher’s aide.
She was angry that the child had been considered by the committee for the handicapped several years previously, but had not been identified then as needing extra help.
At the mother’s request the child was again referred to the committee for the handicapped. This entailed testing, and our psychologist spent quite a bit of time with her. She found that the little girl actually had normal abilities, but would usually disguise how much she could actually do academically.
When we finally had a committee meeting on the child our psychologist reluctantly agreed to have her labeled and given an IEP, but only with the condition that she also receive counseling. The mother was not happy with that condition.
At some point during the year I had received a document that I had filled out for several other children, as to whether the child was able to do regular classroom activities. I filled it out with the truthful information that the little girl had grave difficulties in school.
I did not fully realize the situation until a later chat with our psychologist. Apparently the family was receiving a sizable government check each month for having a child with great problems in school.
Our psychologist’s opinion was that the mother was deliberately sabotaging any chance the kid would have for success, in order to keep getting that monthly check. The official form that I had filled out was to determine whether the checks would continue.”