Teachers Describe Their Worst Encounters With Nightmare Parents

From Dont_Gild_Me:

"A couple of years back, there was a student who often wrote letters to her teachers thanking them for teaching her. The thing is, she always called them Mom/Dad, and always started the letters with 'Dear mother/father.'

At that time my teacher thought it was just the student joking around, until one day they found out that she had cut herself badly during school in her cubicle. From what she described, it wasn't just scratches, but deep cuts all over her arms and legs, and she was literally overflowing with blood. 

The teacher immediately called the ambulance and her parents, telling them to visit their daughter and help her. However, what the mother told her still disgusts her till this day.

She told the teacher to let her child die, and the earlier the better.

Sadly, she never really told us why and didn't know what happened to her after graduation as she didn't come back to visit the school. Now, she uses this story to teach us how lucky we are to have loving parents."

From sciencenerd86:

"I have stories from both ends of the spectrum. When I taught second grade I had a parent leave alone her eight-year-old (my student), her four-year-old and an infant for several days when she went on a trip about four hours away. No adults staying, checking in, etc. She told him not to leave the house when she left on Friday, so it wasn't until Monday when we called and no one answered (not unusual) or Tuesday's welfare check that anyone realized the situation. It was terrifying to think of what could have happened. Injuries, fire, what these poor children ate (especially the baby who probably wasn't on solids yet) just to name a few.

The other is a more regular occurrence. I now teach middle school to the most helicoptered children. I have students whose parents check our online grade book and daily webpages eight-to-10 times daily and email their student's teachers nearly daily to check up. These children are 13-years-old and aren't allowed to make any kind of mistake or learn from having any responsibility or self-advocacy skills. It's terrible to think what a disservice this will be as their children are forced into the 'real world' without their moms there to solve their problems."

From Shiska0423:

"So, I work at a preschool. There's this one mom who drives me up the f*cking wall. She doesn't work. She always posts pictures of her getting her nails done and stuff while her two boys (two and three) are sitting in pre-k so she can have 'her time.' And she will not pick them up until 6:30 PM, which is the latest they can get picked up. Whatever. They're not bad kids. So I don't mind having them here.

But one day, the older one, let's call him Sam, hit his face. I'm not sure exactly what he did, but it was bad. His nose looked awful, lots of blood. They call mom because his nose is definitely broken. She waits until 6:30 PM (this happened in the morning) to come pick him up. She couldn't come pick him up because she was having lunch with her husband (the kids' dad).

So then the mom supposedly sent a picture of Sam's nose (it was awful. Already purple swollen and looked very painful) to a doctor friend of hers who told her, 'It might be broken.' She took this to mean it wasn't broken.

Poor Sam was at school the next day. All of the teachers were pissed. It would have made me cry with how bad it was, much less a three-year-old. But he was a trooper. He played just fine with his friends.

Finally. At around four later that day, I saw her leaving with him. But yeah, parents can be awful."

From HoosierDoc:

"When I was a TA, I had to interpret for a mom who couldn't speak much English. Her child was a kindergartner and he had trouble with his bowel movements. Basically, he always pooped his pants. Aside from that, he also displayed some signs of possibly being in the spectrum. So we have mom come in and she comes in in pajamas. Whatever.

As we begin the conference, we asked her how he did at home with his homework. She said, 'I do it for him because he never stops crying about it. I know how to copy his handwriting.' We were all like 'WTF,' but moved on. Finally, we asked her how it was like potty training him, and she said, 'Potty train? I didn't potty train him. Isn't that something we just know how to do?'

Her lazy parenting skills killed me. Folks, don't be a lazy parent."

From vogdswagon26:

"My wife has been a preschool teacher for several years now, she has noticed a disturbing trend of parents refusing to punish their children and instead take their side in all situations.

There was one child in particular who would run away from the classroom and hide, disrespect the teachers, and on several occasions even struck teachers and staff. Whenever the mother was confronted with his behavior she would ask what they did to provoke the child and would blame all the child's problems on the teachers. She even went so far as to scream at one of the teachers in front of all the other parents and kids of the class. She yelled at her and said she is failing as an educator and doesn't know what she is doing. The next day her child bit a teacher.

This is the kind of thing that happens when parents are trying to be friends with their children, instead of being parents." 

From alwayslurkeduntilnow:

"I've got loads of stories... 

"1. 4 pm, during parents' evening, a mum got so drunk she could barely walk, leaving her poor daughter distraught with shame.

2. A dad attacks head teacher for putting a student on home-schooling for a week. The student had shot dead another student in his bedroom the previous week in 'an accident'.

3. Normal student with an awful mother. The mum thinks her child is stupid, naughty and basically horrible. She spends all parents' evening telling teachers how terrible her 12-year-old is."