Teachers Are Opening Up About Their Worst Encounters With Wildly Entitled Parents, And YIKES
Teachers seem to possess a whole different level of patience. Not only do educators have to tackle everything from budget cuts to unruly students, but they also have to deal with parents — and for some reason, school seems to bring out the absolute worst in grown adults...
So, recently, when Redditor u/Waltgrace83 asked the r/Teachers community, "What’s the weirdest thing that, because you are a teacher, you were blamed for?" I couldn't believe the absolutely infuriating ways teachers are blamed for, well, everything. Without further ado, here are 16 unhinged parents who definitely deserve an "F":
1."I want to preface this by saying that I teach General Education and once had a parent send a strongly worded email because they felt I wasn't doing enough to encourage their 10-year-old child to chew — at lunch. I wasn't even responsible for the lunchroom."
"The email stated: 'My child isn't getting enough nutrition because he is chatty at school. As such, please check in with him every five minutes or so to observe that he is biting and chewing his food.'"
2."Maybe not so weird, but one of the fathers of my AP Comp Science students sent me a dissertation-length email letting me know that his son was failing because I wasn't doing enough to make the content interesting, relevant, or engaging. Mr. Dad Man was in the tech industry and believed the students should be learning to program AI drones or something like that."
"CollegeBoard sets the curriculum. I have very little wiggle room. Do I think it's a bit outdated? Yes, but I still have to prepare them for the exam. Also, his son failed because he played games during class and cheated on everything.
He shut up somewhat when I told him I worked in tech for years before teaching. I gave him the email address of his school board rep and told him to direct his curriculum-related complaints there."
3."During my stint at a rich preschool, I had a mom who was mad that mosquitoes were biting her child when we let the kids play outside."
"She thought bugs wouldn't be around because we had fake grass! It was too ridiculous.
I told her that bugs would be outside no matter what and that I could try extra bug spray, but we already gave the kids a spray-down before they went outside. She then complained to the admin, who shrugged it off and told her the same thing I did. But, they let her know that if she wanted her child to miss outside time, we could put them in another classroom while the others were outside.
She didn't like that suggestion and stopped complaining soon after."
4."I was chastised for not remembering the last article I read in The Wall Street Journal and the exact dollar amount of our national deficit — this was by a student's family member who was ranting about politics (I did not react)."
"This person looked at me and said, 'Wow. And you’re responsible for kids?'
I teach fifth-grade English. I stay relatively current on world events, but this felt like a bit much. I can’t know everything."
5."The weirdest thing I was blamed for, in my mind, was when two students fell in love. The young man was Black, and the girl was white — her parents were racist."
"The young man painted a banner to ask his crush to the senior prom and asked if he could hang it at the back of my classroom. I told him he could and then helped him put it up. The girl said 'yes' to his invitation, her parents said 'no,' and they all came to talk to ME because I was somehow responsible.
I managed to get through the difficult conversation with the bigoted mother and father without losing my cool, and the lovebirds attended prom together. Later, they gave me a picture of them, which is now in one of my photo albums."
6."A parent complained to my superintendent that I was teaching 'porn.' The superintendent came to my classroom furious, siding with the parent and screaming at me in front of students."
"The 'pornographic' book was Maya Angelou’s autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The students were high school juniors.
Only when the English department head and counselor (who used to teach English) backed me up and showed him it was in the textbook did he calm down, but he never apologized. I lost so much respect for him that day."
7."I was blamed for a student not going to the dentist."
"We have a dental program that’s partnered with the local pediatrician’s office. They’re always at school, and they’ll just randomly pull kids out of class for cleanings. It’s not a problem, but you never know when a student will get pulled. When they want someone, they’ll either call for them or come get them.
A student came to school one morning and told me he had a dentist's appointment that day, so I said, 'Okay, totally fine. When they’re ready for you, they’ll call or come get you.' Well, they never did (I guess they didn’t have time to see him that day or something).
His mom called me at 7:30 the next morning and chastised me for not allowing her kid to go to the dentist. He’d gone home and told her I refused to let him go.
What a little shit."
8."In my second year of teaching, I foolishly left a container of 'reward candy' on the table next to my whiteboard. Once, I caught a seventh-grade girl sneaking into my room and stealing candy from this container during my planning period."
"I thought I was doing the right thing by emailing her mom, letting her know what happened, and asking her to chat with her daughter about stealing.
The mom sent a nasty reply claiming that I was targeting her daughter because she was sure that other kids probably stole my candy, too, and I couldn't expect students not to steal candy the week before Halloween.
I stopped offering reward candy for a while after that."
9."A mother blamed me for marking her daughter absent from remote learning during the pandemic when she didn’t log in. The mom told me that I was messing up her daughter's absences. Not her attendance, her absences, mind you."
"I told her that her daughter was not logging in, and she shot back with, 'She said she did,' — when I knew for a fact she did not.
I once marked her absent because I noticed her mother was sleeping in the background of the video for the first five minutes of class, and when the girl saw her mom sleeping, she logged off. I showed her the logs. She still didn’t believe me. The kid was absent around 50 times during the full year of remote learning. Good times."
10."One of my students had a computer that wasn’t working, so the school’s IT person took it to work on it. A few days passed, and the student’s grandfather reached out to see if the computer was working yet."
"I told him that it was still with IT. He told me that if the computer wasn't working the next day, he would come to the school to complain and bring my name up.
Then he had the nerve to end with: 'I know it isn't your fault, but somebody has to take the fall for this.' Sir, it's a broken computer, and your grandson has a loaner. Chill out."
11."I had a parent email an administrator to tell her not to hire me back into the district I had taken a break from. The reason, you ask?"
"Two years prior, I told the mom during parent-teacher conferences that her child needed extra help reading, and I suggested she start working with her at home.
Why was that a problem!? Apparently, I 'made her child worse at reading because I told her to work at home and not just at school.'"
12."I got yelled at because a child lost her school tracksuit pants. This was at a dance concert, and the girl had stockings and shorts on underneath the pants, so she wasn't exposed/immodest."
"She had taken her pants off to put on a costume for her performance and didn't put them in her bag. So, being an item of school clothing — amongst 90 other dance students' school uniform clothing — they had been accidentally taken by someone else. Her mother yelled at me relentlessly because her child was not taking care of her own belongings.
At subsequent performances, I gave the students a speech at the start of the night, letting them know that they alone were responsible for their belongings, be that their phones, jewelry, or pants. Whenever I said 'pants,' most of the students would giggle, but I'd eyeball the girl who lost her pants, and she'd always look a bit uncomfortable. But, she never lost her pants again."
13."A parent blamed me for allowing other students to bully her son into cutting his hair and then 'punishing' him for it."
"In reality, the sixth-grade boy in question held up a pair of scissors and called out, 'Hey, who dares me to cut my hair!? Do you dare me to cut my hair!? Who dares me to cut my hair!? Do you dare me to cut my hair!?'
I attempted to redirect and said: 'Don't cut your hair. Please just work on your project.'
But he persisted and kept shouting. Finally, annoyed with the boy's behavior, another kid shrugged and said, 'Okay, sure.'
So the boy then cut a small snip of his own hair. I called him over to the door and had a brief discussion with him directly outside of the classroom about how he should make better choices. Then, I directed him back to his seat.
When he went home and retold the story to his mom, I had apparently sent him out of class and made him sit in the hall by himself. This was the alleged unjust punishment for being the victim of bullying."
14."I teach high school social studies and coach our first year cheerleading team. The parents of my social studies students have just about never been an issue, but the cheer moms are a damn piece of work. Unfortunately, the stereotype of bitter parents living vicariously through their children by forcing them into sports is very real — especially for a handful of girls on my team."
"I sent out an email to a few parents who were behind on payments just as a reminder that they were not fully paid off (the district doesn’t pay for any cheer items since we’re only an 'extracurricular' and not a 'real' athletic organization). I also let them know that team members who didn’t meet financial requirements would eventually be kicked off if they did not pay in full by the designated deadline.
A 'Karen' mom — who had previously threatened to have me fired because I said her daughter could not attend football games without an up-to-date physical — emailed back saying, 'If my daughter gets kicked off this team, that would be YOUR fault for bad communication because you should know that I prefer to be CALLED instead of emailed. I almost never check my email. If you need to let me know anything important, you need to call me. Better yet, you can even text me.'"
15."I had a mom mad at me once because her daughter needed to have a pilonidal cyst removed, and I failed to notify her that another student I taught also had a pilonidal cyst removed a few weeks prior."
"It all started when she emailed to let me know her kid would miss a few days of school for the surgery, and I responded with, 'Oh yeah, I know what you're talking about. Another student had that done recently. No worries, I'll help her catch up when she returns.'
Cue the mom freaking out that I didn't immediately inform everyone of this other child's medical info as if this were some sort of 'pilonidal cyst' outbreak we were concealing at the school."
16."As a second-grade teacher, I taught the class about the continents and oceans..."
"So, one day, a student goes home, and her grandma asks what she learned; the kid tells her we learned about six or seven continents.
Cut to my boss and I receiving a SCATHING email about the school needing to hire teachers who knew their material and would teach about ALL seven continents and recommending that I be fired.
They never stopped to think the kid might have forgotten one but immediately jumped to the conclusion that I sucked as a teacher and didn't know them all."
Which one of these troublesome parents did you think was the worst? Teachers, have you ever been blamed by an entitled parent? Let us know in the comments! (Or if you prefer to remain anonymous, you can answer using this Google Form).
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
