Taking care of kids is rough. You not only have to corral one or a group of little beings that are just trying to figure life out, but you also have to deal with their parents. Now, a lot of parent's are normal and not a big deal. There are those, though, that are a special breed.These parents have their own... unique rules that you must follow to a T or their precious babies will just fall apart. The following caregivers have come face-to-face with the most absurd helicopter parents you could possibly meet.
That’s Going To Turn Into Jail Time Real Quick
“I was a babysitter for a wealthy family. They had a house nanny that lived with them but she also had to do all the chores, cooking, grocery shopping, etc, so they asked me to help occasionally to help the live-in nanny. I was in college, so I needed the money. They weren’t all ‘there’, I knew that before I started. The dad was a liver specialist doctor and mother was a child psychologist. The oldest boy was 11, the middle sister was 9, and youngest brother was 2. It was pretty easy money most of the time, but the oldest boy always did weird things. They also, told me to never deny the kids outright but use positive language with them only. Sure whatever. So, I caught this 11-year-old looking at adult websites and well, I couldn’t tell him to stop. So I just asked, ‘Do you think your parents will be okay with that?’ He stopped. But I caught him a lot more, the family computer was right in the open. I told the parents, but they didn’t seem to care. Fine. Well, then this boy asked if he could see my chest. I said no. He told his mother who has never used the word no to these children. Somehow I was in trouble for telling him no.
Skip ahead a bit, and this kid was slapping my butt now. I talked to the dad when he got home from work. He told me to allow him because he’s a straight (almost teen) male who is just expressing his feelings. So I tried to explain – to a doctor – why that was assault and at 11 years old, he might get away with it, but by 14 he might not be so lucky. I figured I’d have better luck with the child psychologist mother. NOPE! she basically agreed that he was healthy expressing his interest in women. I felt like I was the only sane person in the world.
They fired me because I was repressing their children. I hope the kids grow up okay. The other two children were sweet, but the oldest he was a troublemaker. Years later I heard they got a divorce because the youngest turned out to not be the husband’s child.”
Like Father Like Son
“I run an internship program for teens with disabilities. I had this student who was horribly spoiled. He’d lie about doing tasks, throw a tantrum if presented evidence that he didn’t do it, and then have his parents call my boss to yell at her because he was upset.
So I’m in a meeting to discuss his plans for next year with his parents, two of his other teachers, a guidance counselor, my boss, and myself. His parents are angry because his low grades in every class hurt his chances of getting into a vocational program he wants to be in.
So his physical education teacher explains that to pass his class, you need to show up, change, and participate. He skips at LEAST once a week. He gets back to school from my program, calls a parent, and they pick him up so he misses half the day.
When he does show up, he refuses to change into shorts, sneakers and a t-shirt – the required gym clothes. He wants to wear his work boots and jeans. He throws a fit if told to change. The father then tries to defend with his son is husky and doesn’t like to wear shorts. The gym teacher says that all the other students, even ones bigger than this kid, change.
He also said that he hasn’t been pushing the changing issue when he decides to show up, but the kid barely participates. They have to jog laps as a warm up. The kid walks them. The dad says, ‘Well he runs at home sometimes.’ The PE teacher says he can’t grade a students performance at home.
All his teachers say the same thing. If he doesn’t want to participate, he just refuses and throws a fit if pressed.
His dad flips out and throws a tantrum talking about how we all are against his kid and want him to fail so he can spend the rest of his life on welfare. He is adamant his son be put into an advanced auto mechanics class when we are trying to get him into the regular class (and to be honest he probably couldn’t even make the cut to do that one). Finally, his guidance counselor had enough of the dad’s tantrum and flat out says, ‘We are trying to do the best we can, but he can’t even do the minimum work required in modified classes.’
The mom apologizes but you can see the dad is still fuming. They agreed to have him ‘try out’ the regular class and if he excels put him in the advanced one.”
Just Keep Me On The Phone The Entire Day In Case Something Happens
“Things I had parents ask me to do while I taught include:
1) Call them when their child has homework. Not just in my class, but in general. Like, if he has math homework, I, the English teacher, need to call mom.
2) Call home if he speaks to a certain kid. At all. During the day. No idea how I’m supposed to know if they talk to this other kid.
3) Call home if he trades for other food at lunch. I didn’t even have lunch duty. I asked if it was an allergy concern (mind you these were middle school age kids, not little kids) and the mom said she just wanted to know.
4) Call home if their grade dropped below a 95%.
5) Hold an assembly because their son’s calculator had been stolen and his dad was convinced he could pick the culprit out of the crowd. No assembly held. The calculator was found at the bottom of the locker, under some papers.
But the best one of all was an email I received from a parent asking to ‘please excuse their daughter from reading.’ In an English class. I asked them why and they said they were trying to keep unhealthy ideas out of her head. I told them that she was required to read for class and I had observed her reading for fun several times and she seemed to enjoy it, but I would let them know if I saw her reading anything inappropriate.
Actually, now that I’m listing them out, I realize that there are too many. Parents are absurd.”
These Parent’s Need Help
“A mother wanted me to give her son an A, although he never participated voluntarily in class. Her argument was that he had the potential to deserve it.
Another student was diagnosed with ADHS. their parents wanted me to take him to play sports in the afternoon, in my free time, so he could ‘work off some of that energy’. Both parents were not employed at that time.
This other student failed the first test the class had, four weeks after the school year started. The father phoned me, complaining I should have contacted him before the test, alerting him to the possibility his son might fail. The child showed no signs of falling behind during lessons, he failed the test because he had not read the required material.
One boy in primary school had poor bladder control whenever he got excited and wet himself when he laughed very hard (I guess it was a medical issue, but the mother denied that and he was taken out of our school pretty quickly) and his mother requested me to keep him out of all situations were he might be tempted to laugh.
A mother wanted me to call her two weeks in advance whenever a written exam was announced. She wanted me to do this for all subjects, even those I didn’t teach, although the pupils were required to keep a calendar with the dates which the parents had to sign off every week.
I was also bitten by a ten-year-old boy who threw a full-blown tantrum in class. I bent over his table to be able to talk to him quietly, and he bit my face hard enough to leave a mark for days. I told him to leave the room and go down to the principal straight away. The parents wanted to sue me for neglecting him because a TEN-YEAR-OLD BOY can’t be trusted to walk down to the office ALL ALONE. I still regret I didn’t tell them they should be happy I didn’t bite the little bugger right back, but I ended my stint in teaching rather abruptly, so I didn’t want to risk it at that time.
A parent also wanted me to ban all sugary snacks because the daughter should never experience the taste of sugar, and a classmate could offer her a bite of the forbidden treat.”
This Isn’t Your Fault, But You Are Going To Hear About It Anyways!
“Back when I was a teacher, it was parent-teacher conference day and a parent comes in. Her son was pretty unremarkable, maybe B/C average kind of student and didn’t cause any problems in class.
The parent looks livid and ready to fight, I am not sure why, but they start cussing me out. ‘How DARE you let school out early because of a little snow you loser! My son had to sit out on the back deck for HOURS because he doesn’t have a key to the house and I was at work so no one could let him in.’
Mind you we let out early a few weeks prior because we were about to get slammed by the snowstorm of the century and anyone who didn’t know it was coming was an idiot.
I told her that I, a mere high school social studies teacher, didn’t have the authority to authorize early release and that she should take her issue up with the superintendent. She got super angry and was pretty certain that I had something to do with it, continued to cuss me out for five more minutes.
It was late. It was Valentine’s Day. I had a girlfriend I wanted to do things with. I wanted to go home. I was angry. I told the lady that maybe she should get her son a key to the house because leaving him outside in the cold for hours was probably worthy of a call to CPS.
She got even more livid, threatened to call CPS on me for doing that to her son and to tell the principal, school board, FBI, and president that I was mean to her. She at least told the principal because I got a ‘talking to’ about threatening to call CPS on a parent instead of just doing it.
To make things better my girlfriend was mad because I didn’t get home until 8 pm.”
The Water Needs To Be Blessed By A Rabbi, A Priest, Boiled For Two Hours And Then Cooled Over Alaskan Ice
“I am a camp counselor at an overnight camp. One kid’s mom called to tell us that her kid cannot drink water or take a shower because he was going to have a mental breakdown from the ‘minerals’ in the ‘contaminated water’. She said he could only be exposed to ‘pure water’, whatever that means. Long story short, she tried to sue us for unsanitary water conditions.”
A Little Deceiving, But It Works!
“I’ve worked at a large summer camp for the last four summers and I had been a camper for the eight previous summers. Four years ago, my friends and I were essentially counselors in training and two of my friends were given their own cabin of campers. When being told about the campers they were going to have, they were informed that the parents of one of the campers had sent the camp bottles upon bottles of sugary flavored water. Because this kid didn’t drink water. At all.
My friends had to constantly carry around multiple large bottles of this flavored water in their backpacks because the camper refused to drink any real water. And being counselors in training, my friends didn’t feel like they were in the place to actually try to do something about it so they had to suffer through carrying multiple liters of this campers ‘water’ for ten days around a very large camp.
The next summer, another of my friends had this camper in his cabin. The camper still wasn’t drinking water but my friend wasn’t having it. So for the next three weeks, he slowly diluted the flavored water every day until by the end he was giving the kid just water in the flavored bottles. And when he told the camper and the parents at the end of the summer they were all stunned and happy that finally, he was able to drink real water! Now the camper still comes to the camp every summer and from what I can tell he is drinking water. That friend who got him to drink water, by the way, won counselor of the year at the camp the following summer.”
It’s Okay, Those Extra Five Hours Are On Me…
“I was 12 years old at the time and was babysitting for a group of six kids between the ages of 4 and 8. The parents had all gone out on a date together. They were supposed to be home at 10 pm, it was a school night and I had to be up by 7 am. As did a few of the kids.
Anyhow, the night goes on and it passes 10 pm. Then 10:30. The kids are getting restless and tired. The visiting ones don’t have PJs or anything, but I tell them bedtime stories getting them ‘prepped’ for going home. 11 pm passes, and the kids are falling asleep. I’m calling their parents to ask if I should keep them awake since kids sometimes have trouble falling back to sleep and getting no answer from the cell.
It turns 12 am and the kids are all passed out on couches and the floor. I’m struggling to stay awake by picking up toys. My parents call me at this time asking why I’m not home, I don’t want to get in trouble so I say the group will be home any minute.
They didn’t get home until after 3 am. The dad was supposed to drive me home, and he was too inebriated. I thought my parents would be asleep at that time so I got in the car with him.
We didn’t crash, but he did veer off the road a few times. You could see the track marks through the yards of my neighborhood for a while. Needless to say, my parents didn’t let me watch those kids again.
Expecting a twelve-year-old to watch six kids until 3 am on a school night, and then driving her home in that state? Oh, and they didn’t pay me extra for the additional 5 hours I put in.”
It’s All Fun And Games Until Someone Drowns
“Way back when I was a teenager, I worked as a lifeguard/WSI during the summers. I had two kids in my swim lesson class (aged 8/9) who were the best of friends ever but would constantly fight and wrestle with each other (making it horribly unsafe for other swimmers).
They would then return to the pool in the afternoon/evenings with their parents for open swim. And continue their dangerous behavior (holding each other underwater, trying to jump on top of each other or on other swimmers, doing jackknives or cannonballs onto parents holding babies, etc).
It got so bad I would make them sit in a time-out at the base of my lifeguard chair. Every time they spoke or attempted to leave the 5-minute timer would reset. Their parents were clearly not interested in keeping them (or anyone else) safe.
Finally, after the fourth time-out, one of the mothers came to me and demanded I let the boys go back to ‘having fun’. I tried to explain to her that if they were going to continue to be unsafe they would be asked to leave. She, of course, had a fit and demanded to speak to my boss who listened to both her and my description of what had happened and told the women that he would be happy to refund their pool pass but if the behavior happened one more time they would be taken out and not allowed back the remainder of the summer.”
Please, Just Go Away
“I worked at a charter school and I had the dubious honor of organizing a ‘pizza party’ for 300 kids. Taking orders, ordering the pizza, making sure each kid had a slice, etc.
One set of parents emailed me complaining because their child had a gluten allergy. I asked the administration and got the green light to email them a copy of the menu and say, ‘Pick whatever you want, on the house.’ They could have had any dish they wanted and many of the dishes were gluten-free.
To put that into perspective, every other kid who attended the pizza party got one, single slice of pizza, valued at less than, at a buck. We were offering the kid up to $15 worth of food, pro bono, just to be nice.
The kids’ parents said they were offended because all the other kids were getting pizza, and their kid would be labeled as ‘different’. They sent me a link to a pizza place 30 minutes away that had ‘gluten-free’ pizzas, and demanded that we drive there to pick up this kid’s own pizza since the pizza place wouldn’t deliver that far. Luckily, the administration told them to shove off.
Some nerve.”
But I’m Rich?
“I worked at a very expensive summer academic camp that brought in lots of extremely elite teenagers from abroad. One kid got a mild sunburn, not blistering or anything, just a bit pink, and his mother called in having a total meltdown and demanded we call him an ambulance and he goes to the hospital. Maybe when you’re the 1% in Russia that makes sense, but it’s absolutely insane in the States. She wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Another mom from the same camp actually flew from Russia with her 16-year-old daughter and just decided she’d stay too, without telling staff. Parents were 100% NOT allowed to stay at camp, but she booked a hotel for the full 5-week program and showed up at camp every day. We told her constantly parents aren’t allowed in the dorms, but every day I’d run into her coming in and out of her daughter’s room, taking her away from class and activities.
Her poor daughter was almost certainly suffering from Munchausen by proxy.”
You Aren’t Having Enough Of My Kind Of Fun
“I worked at a summer camp for a month a couple years ago. In my bunk I had a kid come from France, the sweetest kid I’ve ever met. He looked like he was loving camp. Two weeks in, we get a call from his mom claiming her son isn’t getting enough time to do arts and crafts, which were his favorite. No problem. My supervisor arranges it so that I can take my bunk to the arts and crafts center more often.
Two days later, she complains he’s still not doing enough and pulls him out of camp. There is no possible way that she could have gotten a letter saying that even if she was staying in Canada (which she was), letters took at least 4-5 days to get to parents. She legit just ruined her kid’s summer who I spoke directly to IN FRENCH and he told me he was having the best time. I actually adored that kid he was one of the few not entitled little monsters I had in my bunk.”
This Is Totally Fine
“I babysat a lot when I was a teenager. Now, most parents I babysat for were awesome but one family in particular sticks out.
I started babysitting for this family who had a 4-year-old girl. She was really sweet and a joy to be around. Her mom not so much. Her mother was also terrified that her daughter was growing up too fast. Because of this, she would hinder her own daughter’s development in hopes of keeping her ‘baby’ a little bit longer.
I quit when she put her daughter back in diapers and expected me to change her. She didn’t even tell me about it, she thought I’d be totally ok with changing a 5-year-old’s dirty diaper. I quit as soon as she got back.”
My Daughter Is A STAR
“One mom threatened to yank her daughter out of the school if she were not given the vocal solo in ‘O Holy Night’ during the annual Christmas concert. The daughter had made clear to teaching staff and peers that she did not want to do the solo and that she didn’t have the appropriate voice for it. Still, her mom tried to force the faculty into submitting to her will so that her daughter ‘could have the recognition she deserved.'”
Did I Just Time Travel To The 50s?
“A set of parents wanted the camp to stop playing ‘contemporary’ music, which basically meant anything recorded since the big band era. The also wanted to keep boys and girls separated at all times, which obviously would have meant building an entire second camp. These demands were expressed to me, a first-year counselor, at drop off. I said I’d mention it to the director (but obviously never did), and they were satisfied.”
At Least It Will Help Keep Her Regular
“One girl was being toilet trained. The camp policy was that children being toilet trained were given chocolate chips. This girl’s mother didn’t want her daughter eating so much sugar so instead, she gave us a snack box of tiny hard raisins. We were supposed to give her one raisin every time she successfully went to potty. This was of course enormously successful.”
Someone’s In For A Difficult Adulthood
“This one kid told me he didn’t have to listen to me because I am a girl, so I told him to sit in the corner for 5 minutes and reflect on what he had said. When his parents came to pick him up, they asked that I don’t discipline their child as it is against their religion to take orders from women. Uh… pardon?”
You Can Never Be Too Safe
“A parent told me I needed to hold their six-year old’s hand when we were outside because he believed he would blow away if it was windy. I did not hold his hand. He did not blow away.”
(Points edited for clarity)