I will never forget the first parent who called for my head. Oliver had plagiarized most of his Year 9 History assignment and, of course, I’d found him out. Now clearly Oliver made a mistake but we all know that life is not that simple. Somehow the issue was clearly my fault and the father was very keen to let me know of how I ruined his son’s life. In fact, the ruining of his life was so big that the father informed me that it was his mission to ruin mine. This started with a storm into my office, plenty of accusations, swearing and threatening and only escalated from there. The father demanded that I face the sack immediately, that I be deregistered and that I issue a grovelling apology to his perfect child. As a very young teacher this was clearly a rattling experience. I genuinely thought that my teaching career had only lasted 4 months and that all the years of hard-work and study had come to nothing. The father met with the principal, who thankfully backed me, and retreated. No apology from him for his behaviour but thankfully I never saw him again.
One thing they definitely do not prepare you for at university is dealing with parents. Parents come in all sorts of forms and over the course of my career I have found the vast majority of them simply lovely. There are so many parents out there who are so grateful for everything you do and are willing to listen, support and help out in any way that they can. For example, at a school I taught in Canberra I had the pleasure of coaching an Under 13 Cricket team. Now pleasure might sound like a sarcastic term when talking about coaching 13’s year old’s for long Summer Saturday mornings watching Cricket. However, these parents were amazing! They would have a roster of baking, whereby each week an assortment of baked goodies would arrive. Added to that, the Dad’s had a roster of scoring, umpiring, and warming up the next batters. So for a season, my “coaching” consisted of eating muffins, drinking coffee and chatting with the parents with the odd bit of cricket advice thrown in to the young lads! What a dream! At the time, I had a new born as well, so Saturday mornings became the great escape.
So let’s look at some of the types of parents that we may encounter;
The My Child is Perfect Parent: This parents believes that their child is incredibly gifted and needs to be extended. In fact, the reason they are misbehaving in your classroom is because you are not extending them enough and they are bored. I am definitely not saying this is never case, as often it can be, but managing that parent who believes their child is special is difficult. Often their demands can be exceptionally high and often unrealistic.
The Above You Parent: You know that parent that with the slightest issue goes straight over your head to the principal. Hopefully, your school has systems in place that prevent that happening, but they are out there. This is coupled with the parent who “knows” the people above you.
The Always There: Less so in my context, high school, but that parent that is always around. You look outside your window, they are there, you look left, there, you look up, there! I remember at a school I taught at we had a parent that would meet her Year 8 daughter at her locker every afternoon. The girl was lovely and mum had no reason to meet her other than being well and truly over-protective. Poor girl!
The 24 Hour parent: This is the one, that gets upset when they email you at 10pm and you have not replied by the morning (see previous blog post Turn it Off). This can also be added to with the parent who emails you during the day and then rings you at the end of the day to ask why you are yet to respond. Of course, informing them that you spent the day teaching their child is not good enough.
The Helicopter: The parent that writes the assignment the night before, the one who brings in lunch when Rachel has forgotten it, the one who writes the note to excuse them from something, the one who provides a reason for every tiny thing.
There are so many more! But that is not the point of the article.
I am sure you are developing your own good and not so good parent stories. I definitely have a few favourites and I could regale you with them for pages, but I’ll stick to two.
The first was Ben’s mum. I’ll never forget they day I emailed her to inform her that with a week to go before an assignment was due Ben wasn’t tracking very well with his progress. Well, apparently how dare I suggest that Ben was going to not do very well. Who did I think I was telling her that Ben was not focussing and what gave me the right to presuppose that Ben had not done any work yet (I had been continually checking Ben’s progress).
The second was George. I had planned with my Year 9 class (in an inner city school) to take them out for a reward lunch. There was a local pasta shop down the road which made a trip for lunch very easy. Unfortunately George in the lesson prior to us going thought it might be a good idea to write on the walls, the desks and the chairs. I didnt feel it a good idea to let George join the class on the reward lunch. Wrong! Upon returning to school George’s mum met me at the school gate to let me know what a terrible idea it was. Apparently asking George to clean up his mess was not the right course of action. I isolated him from his peers, put him up for public humiliation and now he was starving (George was allowed to go to the tuckshop to purchase lunch after he had cleaned up).
Hopefully the really difficult parent is rare. I have always found that through constant communication that most parents are very supportive. This communication for me includes regular emails of praise for students. This is not artificial but looking for the good and celebrating. I also regularly email parents with what the class is working on, when things are due and what is coming. Parents really appreciate being kept informed and it is also a great way to keep students on top of things. The more you can build a positive relationship with the families, the more manageable the hard times are.
So what do we do we it gets to the point that a parent is on the warpath? How do we handle “that parent”
Whilst every conflict with a parent is unique I did learn many years ago a strategy that I still employ to this day. Essentially it is a listening mindset. When the parent first enters, and after the pleasantries (or not so much), I simply ask them what brings them in today. This is where the listening starts. For however long it takes you listen to the parent. You nod, take notes, make the aha, mhmm noises, but you do not interject. The essence of what you are trying to do is two fold. Firstly this strategy ensures that parent feels listened to, validated and heard. However, and more importantly, what you are trying to ascertain is the core of the issue. What I have found is that often in these situations there are a number of minor issues that mask what is it at the core of the problem. If you can discern the key heart of the issue then the meeting becomes far more productive and beneficial for parent, student and yourself. By not addressing every aspect initially the conflict deescalates, and the meeting is invariably shorter. Remember, stay quiet, listen and get to the heart of the matter. Once the parent is finished it is good to ensure that they have by asking them if there is anything else prior to responding. Now is the time to thank them and affirm to them what you think the fundamental issue is. It is also a good tactic to ask if they are happy for you to now respond. Once you begin your response, you will find that quite quickly a parent will interject. This is where I find a level of assertiveness is needed (not something I posses in spades). I politely say to the parent something along the lines of “thankyou and I hear you, but I have given you the courtesy of listening to you so please extend to me same and then we can discuss afterwards”. It is amazing how many parents will sit back, realising that you have indeed being courteous and will feel slightly embarrassed. What this hands you back is control, whereby you can finish addressing the key matter at hand. Only very rarely has a parent interjected again, at which point I have stated that if we cant work together on this I will need to reschedule the meeting when I can get a colleague in to mediate. Hopefully by the time you have responded the parent will hear that you are all on the same page, want the best outcome for the child and are going to work together to achieve that.
As the meeting starts to draw to a close, make sure there are some plans moving forward. These plans should be things that you will do, the parent will do, and the student needs to put into place. The onus should never be on you to do everything. Teaching is a partnership.
One thing I am a big advocate of is the student being present at meetings. As much as you can push that try to make it happen. My view is that the three parties (home, student and parent) can work much more productively when everyone is hearing the same consistent message. Also, parents tend to be much calmer and rational when the student is present.
I once had a boss, that when we finished parent meetings would ask if we all walked out the door metaphorically holding hands and singing kumbaya. That was always the goal, for everyone to leave feeling validated, and hopefully whatever strategy you use you can make it happen too.
There are so many ways to respond to parents, and this is just a single method I often use for those really tricky ones. I would love for you to comment below and share your tried and true methods for the difficult parent.
For further discussion on dealing with stressful parents and all things teaching, join our Facebook group; Australian Early Career Teachers Association
Australian Early Career Teachers Association 