15. The Bare Minimum
I once had a 15-year-old who was obviously very bright, but also lazy and defiant, and he refused to do any work. He wouldn’t do homework, he’d put nonsense answers on multiple-choice tests, and he’d fill easy questions with doodles. By the end of the semester, he had a 17. Getting anything below a 70 would usually set off all kinds of interventions, from a parent meeting to special-needs testing, depending on the student and the situation.
A 17 is so incredibly low that you almost never see it, especially not from a kid who could easily go to university if he put in even a little effort. I had tried everything: talking with him, finding work that might interest him, sending notes home, emailing the parent address on file, and more. Nothing worked. His response to everything was basically, “Whatever, man.”
I started wondering if the problem was me, so I checked with his other teachers, but no—he acted exactly the same in every class. And it was strange, because there weren’t any obvious warning signs: stable home life, involved parents on paper, decent income, no bad crowd. His evaluations all came back normal. He simply had no intention of doing any work.
As expected, when that 17 went home, his parents completely lost it. His mom was a doctor, his dad was a lawyer, and they seemed to expect him to succeed without much attention or involvement from them. So they came in deeply concerned and said, “Look, he’s very bright, this will ruin his chances at a good college, surely we can work something out.”
I said no, because that wouldn’t be fair to the other students. I had documented everything carefully—his behavior, my attempts to help, every note, email, phone call, and conversation with other teachers. I had done everything I could to reach him and to reach them. But the grade he had was the grade he earned.
I was only in my second year of teaching, so I naively thought that would be the end of it. It wasn’t. Of course they went to the principal, and we all ended up in a meeting. By the end, I was told to give him one test, and whatever he scored on that test would become his grade for the whole semester. He was bright, just unmotivated—so he got a 93.
It turned out he’d been doing this since 8th grade, because he knew his parents would rescue him. Another teacher told me they had the routine down perfectly, and the principals always gave in. I resigned the next day. Maybe it doesn’t sound like a huge deal, but that wasn’t what I signed up for, and there was no chance the pay was worth it.
16. Potty Problems
I work at a preschool. In our two-year-old rooms, there’s a rule that children can’t move up to the three-year-old room until they’re mostly potty trained. Most of the kids in there are two, with a few who recently turned three. But there’s one boy who is four. He still isn’t potty trained because, according to his mother, she doesn’t want to pressure him.
He should really be in pre-K. Instead, he’s been in the two-year-old class for a third year, far behind his peers both academically and emotionally, and his mother seems completely comfortable letting him fall behind through no fault of his own.
17. Don’t Worry, It’ll Be Great
We had one boy who showed many very clear signs of autism. He stimmed constantly, walked on his toes, had major sensory issues, and relied heavily on patterns and repetition. He was nonverbal, which is why his parents enrolled him in our school, since we specialized in disabilities and they hoped he would get speech therapy. During his first month there, the staff working with him brought his parents in for a meeting to discuss having him evaluated for autism—and that’s when everything went sideways.
His mother laughed and said, “No, he doesn’t have that, he’s just a late talker.” The parents insisted it was only a speech delay and refused to have him assessed. Because of that, he only qualified for minimal funding, which meant minimal therapy. The speech-language pathologist came every other week and worked with him for 15 minutes on PECS.
It was heartbreaking for me because I cared so much about this kid. He was such a character, and we got along really well. Not being able to get him the support he needed—to help him manage his sensory issues, express his wants and needs, and feel secure in the world—was incredibly frustrating. At one point, it pushed me so far that I ended up having a meltdown right alongside him.
Looking back, it’s darkly funny if you imagine me trying to hold him safely while he screamed and cried, and I was also crying right there with him. It was not a good day for anyone. Then, near the end of January, his mom specifically asked to meet with me. I was nervous, but when we sat down, she asked me to explain the whole autism concern in detail.
A week later, the parents agreed to have their son evaluated, and finally we were able to start getting him the support and therapy he needed.
18. Cheat The Right Way
I had a star athlete once who was being recruited by Ivy League schools, but he was failing my English class. Along with his generally poor academic performance, I also caught him cheating on a homework assignment, which he strongly denied. His mom scheduled a meeting with an administrator and spent most of it scolding me and accusing me of discriminating against student athletes.
Then she said her son would never cheat. To respond, I pulled out his homework and read one of his answers out loud: “I, as a 16-year-old girl...” His mom immediately turned on him and started yelling, “You can’t even cheat properly! What’s wrong with you? How are you going to get into college if you can’t cheat?”
19. The Library Helper
At the school where I worked, we had a library club where fifth graders came in to help out. Almost all of them were difficult in one way or another, but there was one boy in particular whose behavior was constantly reinforced by his mother. Mike was mean to other students. He picked on the girls, shoved classmates, and then lied straight to my face when I confronted him.
He also refused to do the work he was supposed to do, even though he knew exactly what was expected. He’d go straight to a computer without helping at all, or if he did anything, he’d shove books onto random shelves just to make it look like he was working. Eventually, he pushed the librarian too far and was removed from library club because of his behavior.
His mother was furious that her precious child was banned from what was supposed to be a student privilege, and the principal overruled the librarian’s decision. The principal said it was too harsh to remove Mike because it was like “firing” him. But in real life, if you act badly on purpose and refuse to do your job, you do get fired.
There was also a rule that if a student intentionally missed three scheduled library days, they were out of the club for the rest of the year. One afternoon, his mother called me and said she knew Mike was only allowed one more absence before being removed, but that he should be treated as an exception again.
She told me that Mike would be skipping library club on purpose that day to go watch a movie, but he still needed to stay in the club because she said so. Because, of course, teaching your child that the rules don’t apply to him could never possibly go wrong. I was incredibly angry, though honestly, with the kind of area I was working in, I wasn’t sure arguing with her would accomplish anything at all.
20. Try To Stand Out
I once had a student who was a heavyset redheaded kid, and honestly, he was unbelievably difficult. He would come into class screaming at the top of his lungs. He was constantly getting out of his seat and starting conflicts with other students. One time he nearly punched a kid who was sharpening his pencil because he said the other kid “looked at him funny.”
He refused to do any work, so he was failing every class. Once, he turned in a “research paper” that still had all the blue Wikipedia links in it. I obviously gave him a zero. After that, the other teachers and I quickly arranged a parent-teacher conference. We explained his behavior and our concerns about his grades. His mother sat there listening to one story after another about how disruptive her child was, and then responded with, “Well, I don’t want him to be a robot!”
She didn’t seem to care about anything we said. She just didn’t want him sitting in class and “acting like all the other kids.” I was very glad when I left that school.
21. A Balanced Breakfast
There was a parent of a child with serious behavior issues who sent him to school every day with a terrible breakfast: fast food, Starbucks, cupcakes, whatever. We had already spent a lot of time just trying to get her to feed him breakfast at all, because he refused to eat the school breakfast and was incredibly difficult when he was hungry.
We’re talking about the kind of behavior where he’d hide under his desk and scream all day. So for a while, we didn’t say anything, because at least he was arriving on time and eating something. But then the other students—who had previously been perfectly happy with the milk, cereal, and fruit the school served—started noticing this proud little kid eating pancakes or whatever special breakfast he had that day.
Before long, it turned into a full kindergarten breakfast protest, and it was miserable. When we asked the mother if she could please feed him before school, she said she didn’t have time unless we wanted him showing up late every day. We reminded her that the school offered a free, healthy breakfast, and maybe she could try encouraging him to eat the same meal as everyone else.
She told us, “I don’t want him eating that sugary, processed stuff.” He ate his McDonald’s in the classroom with an aide for the rest of the year.
22. They’re The Bad Guy
A few years ago, I had a couple come in to talk about their child’s behavior because he kept disrupting class. He would swear, make rude gestures at other students, and act inappropriately. Eventually, I’d had enough and called his parents in. The thing is, I have no idea what story he told them to make me sound like the villain, but his parents were incredibly difficult.
I was honestly shocked when his father had the nerve to call me a “neanderthal” because of whatever his son claimed I had done. His mother wasn’t much better—she called me a buffoon over the way I handled things. The consequence I gave their son stayed in place, but I still wonder what kind of parenting was happening there.
23. Swimming In The Deep
I used to teach swimming, and my least favorite type of parent was the one who passed their own fear of water down to their child. A parent would say something like, “Laura doesn’t like putting her face in the water,” and it would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once you tell a child that, especially if they’ve never actually tried it before, they start becoming afraid because their parent clearly is.
It’s really unfortunate. The most memorable parent I ever dealt with was one I only saw once while I was covering a lesson. A very shy little girl came in with her mom. The notes from her usual instructor said that if she spent more than 10 minutes of the 30-minute lesson in the water, that counted as a success. The first thing her mother said to me was, “She does not want a male instructor.”
So right away, I felt judged because of my gender. Not a great start. Then her mom gave me a long list of things her daughter supposedly didn’t like doing. Once I got in the water with her, it was obvious the girl was extremely scared. And really, that wasn’t her fault—her mother had basically taught her to be afraid.
It seemed clear that the regular instructor had been too hesitant to push back against the mom, so the girl had never really been challenged or taught properly. I decided to approach it differently. After some firm encouragement, within half an hour this little girl was putting her face in the water, swimming, and floating on her back by herself.
Her mom was amazed and asked if I could teach her every week. The lesson I took from it was that sometimes the parents are the biggest obstacle.
24. Old Drama Returns
I used to coach a high school varsity team. I had a very nice girl on the team who just didn’t have much athletic ability. After she didn’t get a starting position, her mom came up to me and said, “It’s really sad that Jenny isn’t playing. How can you hold it against her?”
I asked what she meant, because I had no idea why she thought I had something against her daughter.
She said, “Well, her dad’s brother dated you in middle school, and he broke up with you.” The funny part is, I have no idea who she was even talking about.
25. A Hierarchy Of Teachers
My mom was a preschool teacher, and every year she led a gingerbread house activity at a local school. One year, the classroom teacher kept interrupting and trying to take over the whole activity. After my mom asked her several times to stop stepping in, the teacher finally said, “You’re just a preschool teacher. What do you know?”
My mom was so upset by that comment that she never went back to do the annual activity again.
26. Disrupting The Class
I teach second grade in a low-income community. This year, one of my students had the most intense case of ADHD I’ve ever worked with. He was very bright, but he had an extremely hard time sitting still, staying quiet, or focusing for any length of time. He really was a kind kid at heart, but whenever he was corrected in class, he would become very rude and disrespectful. Because of that, he often couldn’t settle down enough to finish his work.
He was also very inappropriate when talking with other students. For about two weeks, his behavior was completely out of control, so I was writing notes in his planner and speaking with his mom every day about what was happening. After the disruptions and disrespect kept going, he told another student something extremely inappropriate and was removed from class for a day, and his mom had to come in for a meeting.
After one peaceful day, his mom came in insisting that the principal be at the meeting too. Then she told my principal she was upset because she supposedly had no idea why her son had been removed and claimed I had never contacted her about his behavior. The most unbelievable part came after we spent half an hour explaining once again why his behavior was inappropriate, disrespectful, and distracting to the other students.
She told us that she knew her son, and that she felt like we were really punishing her because he had to stay home with her that day.
27. Fumbling With Footwear
I worked in Japan as an English teacher at three different schools. The second one was in the greater Tokyo area, where I was briefly in charge of preschool. There was one boy who stood out as unusual. He was usually sweet and every now and then showed flashes of real brilliance, but something about him just seemed a little off. He would come to school wearing tall leather boots with laces all the way up.
The problem was that they were difficult for him to take off when needed, and they were a tripping hazard when we went to the park. We asked his mother if she could get him some inexpensive sneakers or Crocs instead, and she said she couldn’t. When we asked why, she said, word for word, “My husband wants him to be more fashionable than the other children.” She eventually did buy him Crocs, but by then it was pretty clear why the child seemed a little behind—his parents were immature themselves.
28. Keep Cutting Classes…
I’m a high school teacher, and I once had a class where several students seemed to think skipping class was the solution to everything. Not ready for a math test? Skip class. Nervous about an English presentation? Skip class. Just not in the mood for social studies? Skip class. They were doing this in all their subjects, so the teachers decided to come down especially hard on it.
No makeup tests, no extra chances for missed assignments. Most of them complained at first, but they adjusted pretty quickly. One boy, though, told his mother that he was the only student being affected by the new policy, and that it was unfair because he attended every class every day. According to him, all of his teachers had decided to target him, mark him absent even when he was there, and refuse to let him make up his work.
Apparently, we were all saying, “Everyone else may begin the test—except you, Student X. You’re just going to sit there and stare at the wall for ninety minutes because we randomly decided you can’t take it.” And his mother believed him. She really said she couldn’t imagine a teacher doing that—but since her son said it happened, she accepted that multiple teachers must be doing exactly that.
I’m a parent too, so I understand the instinct to trust your child. But at some point, you have to step back and ask whether what they’re claiming makes any sense at all.
29. She’s Learning So Well
I used to teach preschool, and we did evaluations every few months. One four-year-old girl, who was as sweet as could be, could only count to four. She struggled in other areas too, but counting was by far her biggest challenge. Her parents came to the evaluation and were thrilled that their daughter could count to four. We had to gently explain that she was actually far behind the other children.
Even some of the students with more serious learning challenges were ahead of her. She was clearly a bright child, so we asked her parents what they had been working on with her at home. The answer was nothing. They hadn’t been doing anything with her. They assumed she wouldn’t really start learning until teachers taught her at school. To their credit, once they understood the problem, they started working with her at home, and by the beginning of the next year she was ready to move up.
I’ve rarely felt so proud of parents for making a change, while also being so disappointed that it had taken that long.
30. Making The Grade
Every year, our orchestra students go on a tour of local elementary schools. Because they miss a full day of classes, the rule is that they must have at least a C in every subject to be allowed on the trip. One student had a D in my class. He had done very little work and had done poorly on most tests and quizzes, though he had at least a C in all his other classes.
On the day of the trip, he came into my room with one missing assignment completed, even though it was nowhere near enough to raise his grade high enough for him to go. He left my classroom in tears. I wasn’t swayed by that—but his mother definitely was. Less than five minutes later, I got a phone call from her, furious and telling me what an awful person I was, how I was the worst teacher ever, and so on.
Apparently, missing this one trip was going to ruin his whole year—maybe even his whole life—and I was a heartless monster for crushing his dreams. After yelling at me for twenty minutes, she called the principal and yelled at her too. The principal supported my decision. Since she still didn’t get the outcome she wanted, the mom became even angrier and took him home from school.
31. Chipping Away
There was a girl around nine years old with serious behavioral challenges. She had trouble handling even simple situations and would lose control very quickly. A lot of that came from the many traumatic things she had already been through in her short life. One day, she was trying to break down the office door to get to some other students who had locked themselves inside to protect themselves.
Her mother showed up and watched for a bit before saying, “She’s acting like this because the upstairs neighbors put a chip in her neck to track her, and it’s sending signals through her ears, which is why she’s always upset.” Long story short, the girl went to live with relatives while her mom was admitted for psychiatric care.
A few months later, her mom had returned and was caring for her daughter again. Things were pretty difficult for a while, but they seem to be finding their footing now. I’m constantly amazed by how resilient kids can be. Yes, this girl was acting out, but once I learned everything she had been through, it was incredible that she was functioning at all.
32. The Tutor’s Job
I used to tutor students from pre-K through college, and we were supposed to meet with parents once a month to talk about ways the student could strengthen the skills we were working on by practicing at home. I was working with a wonderful second-grader whose parents were having him evaluated for dyslexia and treated for ADHD.
At the time, I gave them what I thought was pretty standard advice: read with him every night before bed to reinforce what he was practicing twice a week at the center. The father’s response was incredibly frustrating: “Why would we need to work on reading with him? Isn’t that what we’re paying you to do?”
33. They’re Always Arguing
This student had a B- in my 7th-grade English class. He was a very sweet, shy kid who used a wheelchair. We had a conference, and his dad could not understand how his son was earning such a low grade. He claimed we were discriminating against him because he used a wheelchair, argued with me about subject-verb agreement in the student’s essay, and said I should be fired, along with all of his previous teachers going back to kindergarten.
There are two things many parents don’t understand. First, I’m not an expert on your child. You spend far more time with them than I do. But I am an expert on this age group. Parents may know 10 or 20 kids their child’s age. I teach around 150 a year, year after year. I know that most 12-year-olds lie, cheat, and at some point feel deeply ashamed.
Your child is not the exception. The second thing, and the one I most wish parents understood, is that how your child acts around peers is probably closest to who they really are. I’ve heard countless parents say, “But he doesn’t act like that at home.” That may be true. But if he acts that way around peers, that’s what most people are going to experience, because that’s where much of life happens.
If he’s lovely at home but rude in class, then for 99% of people, your child is probably going to come across as rude.
34. Knocking In Some Sense
One of my students was regularly hit by his dad at home if his grades weren’t good. He was also one of the weakest students in his grade, so his grades were often low. One day, his dad came in to pick him up and told us that if he ever misbehaved in class, we should feel free to hit him too.
The student was standing right there while his father said this, and he just laughed and nodded. It was heartbreaking.
35. Constant Disrespect
During my first year teaching, I worked at a very rough rural school, and one of my senior girls spent every class period sitting on top of her desk, turned away from me, talking to a friend while holding her middle finger up in my direction. I had a meeting with her, her mother, the guidance counselor, and the principal, and they all told me to give her makeup work.
I did, and a month later, when she still hadn’t completed any of it, I contacted her mother again. Her mother exploded at me. She called me a terrible teacher and threatened to hurt me. The school resource officers had to make sure she stayed away from me and my classroom, which was especially concerning because she actually worked on campus.
36. The Rich Kid
This family was extremely well-off. Their little girl wore Matilda Jane clothes every single day, and that brand is expensive. Most pieces cost around $40 to $60. She hardly ever wore the same outfit twice. In contrast, there was a little boy in my class whose dad was in and out of prison, and he usually wore dirty jeans and the same pair of boots.
His mom cut his hair herself, and it showed. But he had so much personality. All the kids wanted to play with him. He could get a little wild sometimes and occasionally said mildly inappropriate things, like swearing out loud, but I never would have described him as a “behavior problem.” Still, the wealthy mother went to my lead teacher and directly demanded that her daughter never have any contact with him because she thought he was a bad influence.
She didn’t want her daughter sitting near him, talking to him, or playing with him. When we refused, she started giving her daughter instructions instead. The girl would walk up to the boy and loudly announce to the whole class, “You need to leave so I can play.”
37. Lower Than Expected
During a parent-teacher conference, we were talking about how the parent’s son was struggling a lot academically and might need testing. Otherwise, he could end up being held back a grade. Her reaction was hard to forget. She stood up and started shouting, in a room full of other parents and teachers, that her son “...is not stupid” and that, according to her, he absolutely did not need testing.
It was very upsetting for both her and me. He’s now in 7th grade, can barely read, and has been held back twice.
38. She’s Good Enough, I Swear
The recreation department where I work runs a Junior Lifeguard program. We have different levels for younger kids and for kids with lower swimming ability. Today, I had a parent threaten to pull his daughter out of the program because she was placed in the lower group instead of the higher one. She’s a very sweet kid, but she just isn’t a strong swimmer.
If we moved her into the upper group, she’d be out in the open ocean while barely able to dog-paddle. We explained that it would be too dangerous and refused to move her, but he kept insisting. He was so embarrassed that his daughter was a weak swimmer that he was willing to put her safety at risk just so other people might think she was better than she is.
39. I Want A Horse
I come from a family of teachers, so I’ve heard plenty of stories about difficult parents. But the one that stands out most came from my mom, who taught P.E. and Health at a very small school in a farming town. She also coached girls’ softball in the fall and track in the spring. One of the wealthier mothers in town came up to my mom at a track meet and told her the kids didn’t have enough “fun” activities in P.E.
She suggested my mom talk to the school about horseback riding. At first, my mom thought she meant maybe arranging a trip somewhere nearby. It probably wasn’t likely, but it wasn’t completely impossible either. But no—the woman was actually talking about having a stable and an equestrian area built.
And of course, the school would also need horses. Her reasoning was that her daughter loved riding, so it made perfect sense for the school district to provide that. My mom ended the conversation pretty quickly and went back to the track meet.
40. My Perfect Angel
My aunt is a teacher, and I still remember her telling me about one of the strangest parent interactions she ever had. She taught around sixth or seventh grade. There was one student in her class who was doing very poorly, and even after multiple talks with him, he still refused to do his work or improve his grades. Eventually, my aunt had to call his mother in for a meeting.
She explained that she believed he was capable of doing much better, but that he simply wasn’t putting in the effort. The mother’s response was total denial. She wasn’t unstable or anything like that—she just refused to accept it. My aunt showed her the boy’s grades, but the mother tore the paper up and said it wasn’t true. Then she said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about—my son is perfect!” and stormed out of the school.
41. A Fish Out Of Water
I was a 22-year-old Asian woman teaching middle school in a district that was 99% Black. You could go 20 miles without seeing anyone who looked much like me. One parent told me I couldn’t possibly be a good influence on her child because I did my nails and hair in my free time. In that community, a lot of people assumed Asian women all worked in nail salons.
Oddly enough, those same stereotypes sometimes helped me with classroom management. My students were convinced I knew martial arts. Whenever I put on my “teacher face” because they were acting up, one of them would yell, “Oh no, teacher is about to kung-fu you!” I didn’t have too many behavior problems that year.
42. The New Hire
One year, we put out a call for a male Child Development Facilitator because we had a six-year-old student who was already 5 feet tall and around 150 pounds, with more developmental and behavioral challenges than seemed possible to list. One day, the child ripped the door off a bathroom stall, and a lot of the staff were afraid of him.
I was one of the few people willing to work with him, so I’d get called out of my classroom whenever a restraint or removal was needed, and I’m 5'2", so I wasn’t exactly built for that role. Eventually, we hired a man who was excellent. He learned quickly, stayed incredibly calm with the kids, and we worked really well together.
He lasted three weeks. That’s all. Then he quit because of pressure from parents and staff at other sites, simply because he was a man working with young children. I completely lost it that day and broke down in the manager’s office. Definitely not one of my finer career moments.
43. Some Suspicious Spanish
A student wrote a perfect sentence in Spanish on a test. The problem was that she had copied it word for word from a worksheet lying on the floor next to her. I asked her what the sentence meant, and she had no idea. So of course, I couldn’t give her credit for it. But her father was furious. He argued that she had memorized it and deserved full credit for writing a correct sentence.
I told him that if she had memorized it, that still counted as plagiarism. She was supposed to write an original sentence. The father was angry enough to make threats.
44. That’s Not Important
My mother-in-law told me about a boy in her sixth-grade class who had been moved along through the lower grades despite extremely poor reading scores. It had become obvious that his lack of reading comprehension was going to seriously interfere with his learning, so she scheduled a meeting with his parents to talk about it.
At one point, the boy’s mother said, “I don’t care if he can read, I just want him to be happy.” She couldn’t say what she was really thinking in that meeting, but later she told me, “Soon the only thing that will make this kid feel okay is sitting in his parents’ basement, because they’re teaching him that education doesn’t matter. Being able to read would help him become a happy adult, but his parents don’t even care enough to make that possible.”
Seriously, reading? It’s such a basic part of adult life that I can’t imagine managing without it. I can’t imagine not caring whether my own child could read.
45. It’s All About The Bowels
I worked as a daycare teacher, and one child in my class acted out almost every day. He’d take off his shoes and socks for no reason, put rocks in his pull-up, refuse to drink water when asked, and do all sorts of things just to challenge me and my co-teacher.
One day, we wrote about his behavior in his daily note home, and when his mom came to pick him up, she gave us the weakest excuse. She just shrugged and said, “Oh, it’s because he didn’t poop today.” Except he had. Twice. She was fixated on his bowel movements because he was potty training, and for some reason that seemed hugely important to her. So she blamed his behavior on the fact that he supposedly “didn’t poop” that day.
46. It’s Just Like Home
I teach at a private school in China, and many of the parents are extremely wealthy—we’re talking household staff, multiple homes, expensive sports cars, and that kind of lifestyle. A lot of the children are very spoiled. They have their own iPhones, iPads, cameras—the newest models, always. I’ve even seen students arrive at school with a servant carrying their backpack.
At the school gate, the servant, often an older woman, hands the bag to the child, who then walks in on their own. I’ve sometimes watched these children speak harshly to their servants, and I’ve seen the servants shrink back when it happens. One little girl in particular was used to giving orders at home, so she tried to do the same thing in class.
As you can imagine, that’s not a great way to make friends, especially when many of the other kids come from wealthy families too. Within a few days, they stopped wanting to play with her or even talk to her. Then her mother came to school and told the principal that if he didn’t make the other children include her daughter, she would have those children removed from the class.
47. Not Good Enough
At my very first parent-teacher conference, the mother of one of my students sat down and immediately wanted to know why her daughter had a B+ in my class. I explained that her daughter was doing well, worked hard, and had a great attitude. She replied, “Well, I can tell you this: I will not be happy if she doesn’t have an A by the end of the semester.”
I told her that aiming for an A was a great goal, and that her daughter could work toward it by studying more and continuing to put in strong effort. But I also said that if she ended up with a B or B+, she shouldn’t be too hard on her, because she really was a good student doing her best, and a B is still an above-average grade. The mother glared at me, shook her head, and said, “Oh no. I won’t be upset with her if she gets a B.”
At first I thought she was joking, so I laughed. She wasn’t joking. She was basically telling me to give her daughter an A, or there would be consequences. In the end, the student got the grade she earned that semester, which was a B.
48. A Nice Thing To Do
My daughter’s senior class voted a medically disabled girl prom queen. At first, I worried they might be making fun of her, but my daughter insisted they genuinely wanted her to win. Her family didn’t have much money, so the teachers pitched in and bought her a dress and shoes. The summer after graduation, I ran into the mother of another girl in the class.
This mother had spent years pushing her daughter to be popular. She bought her the best of everything, pushed her into becoming a cheerleader, and even tried to set her up with boys from school. She would actually go after them on her daughter’s behalf. She was also a little unhinged, so I usually tried to avoid her whenever I could. That day, I didn’t get the chance.
She immediately started complaining about the girl who had been voted prom queen. She went on and on about how her own daughter should have won, how the other students only voted for the other girl to keep her daughter from getting it, how unfair it was, and how angry she still was. Then she started talking about how awful it was that a girl in special education classes had been voted in, saying she didn’t really deserve to graduate.
She also brought up how poor the girl’s family was, saying the teachers had to buy her dress, as if being poor were something shameful. Eventually I had enough, and since I never liked her much to begin with, I decided to answer honestly. I told her I thought what the students did was kind. This might be the only truly special moment that girl ever gets, while her daughter will likely have many. And it was thoughtful of the teachers to make sure she was dressed just as beautifully as everyone else.
She was stunned. She had expected me to agree with her, but I was tired of listening to her talk—about pushing her daughter toward any boy willing to date her, sharing inappropriate details about her daughter’s private life with her friends, and launching into dramatic rants every time I saw her. These days, when we run into each other, she says hello and keeps walking. Thankfully.
49. Grades, Or Else!
I once had an extremely overbearing parent become aggressive and threatening after his daughter got a B on her progress report. It wasn’t even a final grade, so it really wasn’t something to get worked up over. Later, the student earned an A because she genuinely deserved it—not because her father tried to intimidate me. About a year later, I found out something terrible about him.
During a family trip back to their home country, he had been detained in connection with his wife’s death. They couldn’t prove he was responsible, so he was released, but everyone seemed to believe he had done it. Honestly, I wasn’t all that surprised.
50. The Healing Child?
I once had a parent waiting outside my classroom, clearly ready to confront me. She said, “Don’t you understand? My child is an indigo child.” Coming from a special education background, I had no idea what she meant. Indigo? As in the color? Had I missed something? Apparently not—she truly believed the universe spoke to him and told him when it was time to do his work.
She also explained that he was sensitive and a healer. When I mentioned that he had been punching and kicking other children on the playground, she quickly ended that part of the conversation. Eventually, he was taken out of school and homeschooled because, according to her, his life’s purpose was to challenge institutions, and public school was never going to suit him. But that still wasn’t the strangest part. She also wanted to place crystals around the classroom to clear away the negative energy she believed I was passing on to him.
I did not allow that. Instead, he ended up wearing a “special necklace” to protect himself from me.
