Teaching

Teachers share stories of parents who think their misbehaving kids 'can do no wrong.'

Nothing messes up a kid worse than a parent who thinks they can do no wrong. Of course, it&#39;s important to love and support your child. But ignoring their bad behavior can turn a misbehaving kid into a complete monster. And the people left dealing with those monsters are most often their teachers, who don&#39;t get paid nearly enough for that. Someone recently asked teachers on Reddit: &quot;what is the worst case of &#39;my child can do no wrong&#39; you have seen?&quot; These 20 nightmare stories from teachers and educators show what happens when a parent refuses to admit their &quot;perfect&quot; kid could ever behave badly: 1.) From Rahness: I ws accused of slaming a door into a teenage student&#39;s face. It didnt happen the cctv showed it didnt happen The door had a fire safety feature meaning it could not be slammed. The mum still claimed her precious son would never lie - so me, cameras and physics must be wrong! 2.) Via Sinclairlim: One of my (child) patients spit on my face once when I asked him what got him into trouble at school. His mother was right besides him and she said nothing until I glared at her for like 5 seconds. After which she pretended to scold the child. 3.) Via MizterFinzter: Running onto a soccer field to scream at the referee about a call and getting banned from athletics for a year. That mother was a treat. 4.) Via inkishworks: I had a student in 5th grade. He had a history of misbehavior dating back to the first week of kindergarten. He would regularly shout insults at other students, threaten them, refused to do any work, and on several occasions, yelled at me and once threw a chair. One day, while we were taking a test, this student was talking. I quietly reminded him that it is against the rules to talk during a test, and that he needs to be quiet. He kept talking. I told him that this is his last warning, and that if he talks again he will need to go in the hall. He talked again. So I told him to go in the hall. He gets up, walks out, and on the way out says, &quot;You&#39;re autistic.&quot; to me. I wrote him a referral and contacted the parents, explaining the situation. They didn&#39;t pick up the phone, so I sent an e mail (oops) and I ended the e mail saying that I hope we can work together to help (student) be successful. I received a rage-filled e mail back saying that MY behavior is unacceptable, that I am targeting her son and am out to get him, and that I will be hearing from her lawyer. This woman is a cop. She went all the way to the district level to complain about me, and made up all kinds of lies about me and told the other parents. Oh and once, after a different incident where he physically assaulted another kid, he was suspended for a day. Mommy took him to Disney World. 5.) Via Jen-o-cide: &quot;We have this kind of meeting every year with his teachers, we know (son&#39;s name) can&#39;t do multiplication.&quot; He was a freshman in high school in pre-algebra. How he passed 3rd - 8th grade is beyond me besides teachers just passing him to get rid of him. These people had money, they had resources, they could&#39;ve gotten him tutoring YEARS ago to help him. Instead they preferred we just pass him and excuse his acting out because he refused and couldn&#39;t do the work because he didn&#39;t have the basic foundation. He couldn&#39;t do multiplication so he couldn&#39;t do division, and it all spiraled from there. They were so calm about it, like, &quot;What&#39;s the problem with that? So what?&quot; I was floored. 6.) Via VeggieSauce080: High school teacher here, and I happen to teach IB (international baccalaureate) classes. Basically, kind of like AP classes in the US but towards an internationally recognized diploma program instead. ANYWAY, my students had an assessment that they needed to submit for their diploma. We had been working on it for months, editing and revising, etc. This one student (we&#39;ll call him Mark), never submitted anything throughout all of these months. I had sent countless emails home and to his counselor with very little response. Mark assured me, however, that he would have it done before the final submission date. On the day of the final submission, however, I get an email from him informing me that he will not be coming to school because his dog broke both of its front paws and would need to be taken care of whilst his parents were at work. He attached a photo of a yorkie in leg braces because he said he knew I would be suspicious. Knowing that this was 100% BS, I googled &quot;yorkie in leg braces&quot; and lo and behold, it was the second photo that came up; belonged to some animal orthopedic website. Fortunately, his mother happened to be in the building that day for some other meeting and I was able to track her down. I explained the situation, showed her the email, and...her response?? &quot;OH MY GOODNESS, that does look like our dog!! I need to go right away and check on him!&quot; Lady...it&#39;s not your dog. 7.) alwaysearly37 says: I&#39;ve wanted to get this off my chest for a while now: Taught previously, but this is as a parent: Our son, who is 3, is in school. His classmate &quot;Winnie&quot; and her mom &quot;Louisa&quot; are the worst people you&#39;ve ever met. First, Winnie has a restrictive diet for no other reason than her parents want to try it. They will send a list of &quot;approved&quot; foods and quantities for her with the expectation that all leftovers are to be put in tupperware and given to Winnie to take home. The food is so odd and weird that we wouldn&#39;t eat it anyway, but that&#39;s the expectation. If Winnie is at a party, Winnie must win at least 50% of the games, even if there are 20 kids. Winnie must be served first. She must have extra time when playing with children and Winnie must not be, under any circumstances, told what notto do. The kids of this class have parties and Winnie was invited twice and then not. Her mother flew off the handle and sent a nasty letter to parents about how this was unjust and her Darling Winnifred was crying at being left out. Her daughter has no boundaries, is unruly, rude, difficult and eats what can only be described as pre-vomit. Her mother runs a small &quot;health consulting&quot; business and will constantly try the hard sell with you. It&#39;s intrusive, invasive and really tone deaf, but she won&#39;t stop continually begging for service. She&#39;s awful. Her daughter is awful and they&#39;re always at social events. 8.) Via inkishworks:  I also had a student in kindergarten who regularly punched other students, ran around the room, and refused to do work. His mother called for a conference, and the first thing she said was that his behavior was my fault. She had him switched out of my class. Thank god! 9.) Via CaptainWisconsin: I taught at a school in a mega-affluent community. Colossally wealthy families that lived in castles; very powerful and influential people. Most of the kids were lovely, but there were plenty of shits, and some were just downright unbelievable. It wasn&#39;t the kids&#39; fault, mind you - they were just spoiled to the point of being devoid of common sense and reality. One particular boy, who we&#39;ll call Francis, had basically given up on school. He knew he was set for life and put zero effort into anything. At one point, his grades were so poor that his parents - completely aloof and dependent upon Francis&#39; team of au pairs (Francis called his parents by their first names, mind you) - proposed buying passing grades so that Francis could move on to the next grade. The principal told me that during their meeting, dad pulled out the checkbook and asked for an amount. Looooots of Francis stories. 10.) Via The-Grass-Is-Dead: Not a teacher but I work on a college campus. Had a student that was arrested by campus police for committing a home invasion. The student kicked a door in, pointed a glock at the occupant&rsquo;s face (point-blank) and waited for his buddy to gather the occupant&rsquo;s PS4, controllers and games. They then left. Turns out, the gunman learned that the occupant egged his car a couple days before and this was his vengeance. Gunman&rsquo;s mother freaked out because her 19year old child had been arrested and held the belief that if her son&rsquo;s car had never been egged, he wouldn&rsquo;t have had to do that because her son was taught to command respect and was justified because he had been disrespected.Son got 3 years, lost his football scholarship and a decent chance to better his life. All very sad. 11.) Via little_cranberry5: My first year of teaching I taught early elementary, but had to teach a single grade 7 options class where I saw the students 2x a week for 40 minutes. I had one student who didn&rsquo;t hand in a project and marked him accordingly. Parent-teacher night came and mom shows up. She closes the door, spends 5 minutes addressing her sons marks and asking about whether he could still hand in the project to which I replied &ldquo;sure&rdquo;. She then spends 20 minutes telling me her son thinks I hate him and how everyone and I mean EVERYONE loves her son. She went on long rambling stories about former teachers, coaches... etc and how everyone really loves him and I just really need to spend some time with him so I would see how special he was. I finally told her I couldn&rsquo;t possibly hate her child because I barely knew who he was because I spend 98% of my time teaching on the opposite side of the school (not a smart thing to say, but the rambling stories, that we were 25 minutes into what was suppose to be a 10 minute interview, her passive aggressive nature and the fact that she was so high on her son was starting to irritate me.) I asked her what type of reasonable solution she wanted and she told me my personality was clearly the problem. She then got up to leave but returned to tell me that though she wasn&rsquo;t a teacher and wouldn&rsquo;t tell me how to do my job but... and spent 5 minutes telling me all the ways I&rsquo;m personally failing her child. Anyway, that was an important first year teacher moment. Never again would I let a parent treat me like that. 12.) From broncojoe1: Had a parent once refute video evidence of her child striking another child because &ldquo;that&rsquo;s not what her son said happened.&rdquo; 13.) From ayriana: I worked the school age room in a child care center, my youngest kiddo was 5 and 11-12 was supposed to be the max age in that room. The center director had a 14 year old who was bored at home, so she would bring her in and have her &quot;help&quot; but instead she ran a pack of mean girls who were constantly defying my instructions and picking on the younger kids, she&#39;d go in and out of the room whenever she felt like it and when I brought it up to the director as a problem she said, &quot;are you saying that MY child is the problem? I&#39;ve told her that she should be helping you and she tells me about how helpful she is and that she is constantly doing things for you. How can you complain about her?&quot; Uh, no. She&#39;s not doing those things at all. Your 14 year old is manipulating you, like 14 year olds do. 14.) Via impartofaunion: I was a TA in a kindergarten classroom and had reminded this little kid(5M) in April (over halfway through the school year) about our rule that we only have healthy snacks at snack time. He started whining and crying about how his mom lets him have cookies whenever he wants. Anyway, the teacher steps in and mentions that he has a delicious looking apple in his lunch bag. He then gets up, throws a chair and begins to flip tables and tear the class apart while telling the teacher his mom is going to bring a gun and shoot her. At this moment a threat has been issued so we bring in the principal. She gets there and begins an effort to talk the student down to no avail. He just keeps going on and on about how his mom has a gun and will shoot everyone at the school and if we call the police she is going to shoot them too. The mother is then called... No answer. Of course. So we send this kid with the principal and go about our day. After school is over the teacher, principal and I start putting together an email to the parent. The kid was in afterschool care so we couldn&#39;t have a chat after school. We just hit the major points of defiance and handling his anger in a more positive manner. I get to school the next day and the teacher shows me the response. The first line read &quot;Why didn&#39;t you just let him have the cookie?!&quot; and it went on to say that &quot;you as educators are not doing our job if her child is getting as angry as he is. It is our job to keep him from getting mad and we failed at it today.&quot; That day he came in and told us that mommy bought him a new Lego set... 15.) Via hannaaah126: Slightly different, but I once taught a child who was occasionally very disruptive. I had to ring the parents to tell them how this child had kicked, punched and then spat on a classmate after a football disagreement. The mum replied with &#39;I know he hits people and kicks people every now and again, that&#39;s just what he does... But my child would never spit at anyone, he&#39;s far too nice&#39;..... 16.) From profballs: I taught 6th grade at a private school. Since we&rsquo;re private we have a specific testing week every spring to assess our students. I sent home an informative sheet describing the rigid schedule we have and when our tests will be administered. Doors have to remain closed and no disruptions were allowed (a little harsh, but it&rsquo;s what we were told to do by administration). If anyone was late, I assured them they can make the test up, but they would have to wait in the office. This kid asked to go to the bathroom, obviously as a teacher I can&rsquo;t say no. I told him he had 5 minutes until the test and he will need to be quick. Needless to say, he was not back in time, so he was sent to the office until the testing time was finished. I received a L E N G T H Y email that begun with, &ldquo;What is your issue with my child?&rdquo; They never read my weekly newsletters and just believe whatever their child told them when they got home instead of asking the adult for their perspective. He&rsquo;s an only child with a single parent. He&rsquo;s everything to her. I get it, but was a real tough year. 17.) Via RamsesThePigeon: While I&#39;ve never been a traditional teacher, I did give swimming lessons for a short time while in high school. Most of my students (and their parents) were very appreciative of how I conducted my classes, but there was one woman who seemed utterly convinced that I was doing her child a disservice. The boy in question was afraid of putting his head beneath the water &ndash; which is a common-enough problem &ndash; so we had been slowly working through various ways of helping him overcome that fear. Unfortunately, every single time that his mother was nearby, she would scream about how I had &quot;no right&quot; to &quot;force&quot; her son to do anything, after which she would loudly address him as though nobody else was within earshot. &quot;Are you okay, honey?&quot; she&#39;d ask. &quot;You remember what Mommy said, okay? You do not listen to that man. You are perfect, and you do not let anyone tell you otherwise! Okay? Tell me that you hear me.&quot; The poor kid would mutter his acknowledgements, then sulk near the edge of the pool until his mother finally left. The good news is that the woman would almost always disappear not long after dropping off her son, leaving me to start undoing the damage. I&#39;d like to think that I still had a positive impact on the boy&#39;s life, but something tells me that someone had mistaken swimming lessons for a particularly wet babysitting service. 18.) Via i_smell_honey:  Not a teacher but I work at a school supply store and have asked this question a lot, my favorite one is about a teacher who taught 9th grade and a kid brought a pocket knife into my class and was showing it off, the resource officer (police officer in school) &quot;detained&quot; the child until his parents came where they claimed that &quot;the teacher planted the knife on him to get expell him to make the average gpa at the school higher&quot; I was told the student had failing grades 19.) Via maculber: Not a teacher, but I was a volunteer for a science camp back in high school. The science camp was broken into different age groups and then each week was a different topic. This particular week I had 4th-6th graders and we were doing a &lsquo;Physics is Fun&rsquo; course for the week. The class had about 20 kids, all were amazing except for a set of boy girl twins. They were so mean and hateful to each other, but when separated would uncontrollably sob and cry out for each other. The solution was to put them at the corner of a table, so close enough to each other but also a little more space to eliminate the terrible behavior. This works for three days, but on Wednesday we were learning about magnets. We had set a bunch of metal and metal looking objects on the table (things like paper clips, CDs, and coins) and had the kids try to pick up different things with magnet. The little boy decides to grab the CD, break it in half, and run it down his sisters arm, cause a gash that went down the length of her upper arm and even required stitches. I&rsquo;m obviously mortified, I get the medic on staff and things are being handled the best they could under the circumstances. When the parents came to pick the kids up, they unleashed all hell onto me and the staff, stating their children were angels and never acted this way at home. The parents were swearing, saying they were going to sue me, and told me their son would never do that and it must have been another student and that I&rsquo;m lying. That was my last day there, the camp coordinators apologized so much to me I almost felt guilty leaving, but I couldn&rsquo;t deal with those parents ever again. 20.) Via ohmysmeagol: The WORST was when I called a kid&#39;s parents because he was harassing several girls and exhibiting violent behavior towards other kids in class. Had a parent teacher conference about it with all of his teachers and the dean of students present, and in the end his dad said, &quot;I know he&#39;s doing this but you have to understand, it isn&#39;t him. It&#39;s the devil taking over his body.&quot; LOLLLL.All of these parents deserve detention, alongside their kids. And all of these teachers deserve a HUGE raise.

Nothing messes up a kid worse than a parent who thinks they can do no wrong. Of course, it&#39;s important to love and support your child. But ignoring their bad behavior can turn a misbehaving kid into a complete monster. And the people...