With parent-teacher conferences right around the corner, teachers are taking to social media to vent about one of their biggest frustrations: Being expected to "parent the parents."
Reddit user GingerMonique posted in r/Teachers, describing a staff meeting where the educators were asked to share their fears and anxieties around parent-teacher conferences. The top response, she says, is "how we are now expected to parent parents."
"It's not enough that parents have abdicated a ton of their role to us (teaching resilience, self-management, financial literacy, cooking and cleaning) but now we have to parent the parents?" she exclaims.
As examples, she cites parents who have never considered taking their children's video games away, or who complain that suspension doesn't work because their kids will just "sleep in and play Xbox."
The issue resonated with the forum's other teachers, many of whom were eager to provide their own parent-teacher horror stories.
Some revealed scary tales about parents unwilling to believe their special child could be deserving of any sort of consequence.
One teacher told a story about their decision to call the parents of four boys throwing paper around the room right then and there. "Moms were REAMING the kids and they were perfect for the rest of the year... except boy #4," they wrote. They claimed the boy was laughing and smirking, even bragging about the offense, until his mom got on the phone and he started crying. His mom fell for it and berated the teacher, saying "she doesn't appreciate me being hateful to her son for something I didn't personally see him do."
Another educator e-mailed a parent after their child threw a calculator at them during class: "Mom's response was that I was lying because she 'knew' her child was a good kid."
Other parents perhaps believed their child's behavior was flawed, but didn't see how that was their problem.
In fact, plenty of parents were convinced the teachers should be doing their parenting for them, or at least guiding them through it.
From these anecdotes, parents seem especially unwilling to step up and police video games.
In fact, some parents seem incapable of parenting at all.
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