35+ Teachers Describe Their Horrible Encounters With Nightmare Parents

Parents: they are supposed to guide and nurture their kids. Unfortunately, they often fail to do this, especially when it comes to allowing other adults to guide and nurture their kids. In some ways, school teachers provide more knowledge than parents will ever provide, but that doesn’t always do them any favors: after all, no matter how good a teacher is, they often have to deal with extremely ridiculous parents. Here are just a few examples of nightmare parents teachers have to deal with!

When a parent doesn’t understand the effort that goes into a skill, it really shows. If they ever ask a silly question like, “will my child rival Beethoven after a few piano classes”, you know it’s going to be a bad time.

Needless to say, parents who expect a teacher to take a new student to the level of a master in a short time frame are truly annoying. It takes a long time to become a master in anything! Seven years, if some studies are to be believed.

When you’re a teacher of young kids, you need to hold back a little, physically and intellectually. There’s nothing to be gained by rubbing your adulthood in a child’s face. Nothing meaningful, at any rate. This is definitely true in tug of war.

And yet, there are some parents out there that would legitimately get angry because you don’t utterly destroy some tiny kids in a physical contest. We assume their son was on the team with the adults.

One of the most annoying types of parents are the ones looking for ridiculous reasons why their kid isn’t doing well in some field or another. Maybe the coach doesn’t let them play as much, and it never occurs to the parent that their kid just isn’t that good.

Instead, they come up with extremely farfetched and, generally speaking, accusatory excuses aimed at the teacher. We imagine it’s hard to let something like that slide.

What’s worse than parents that make crazy demands? Parents that make a whole list of notarized demands! Seriously, who does that? And what difference doesn’t being notarized make? We don’t think the school has to actually agree to demands just because they are notarized.

Either way, having to make a bunch of silly accommodations for just one student, so the parents don’t throw a fit, is pretty crazy. Any teacher would be annoyed by something like that.

What sucks about complaining parents is how annoying they are, but what’s even more annoying than complaining parents is when a school caves into their demands for no good reason. Because when that happens, said parents feel justified.

Needless to say, this mean you can be forced to let kids retake tests over and over again, even though they really don’t deserve that luxury.

Some people are born with autism, and that’s just how it is. However, something that doesn’t make any sense would be accusing a teacher of giving a student autism. Yeah, that’s pretty crazy.

Dealing with a parent who is loud and obnoxious is one thing, but dealing with a parent who doesn’t acknowledge a child’s problems, and doesn’t care to take any responsibility for them, is far worse. At least, we’re certain many teachers feel that way.

Sometimes, it’s not one set of parents that is a nightmare, it’s just parents in general. If a teacher sat down and shared all of the crazy things they’ve heard, people probably wouldn’t even believe them, honestly.

Here are just a few examples of some of the absolutely ludicrous things teachers hear parents say from time to time. Honestly, what even is a free-range kid? Like, they live in the backyard? Do they eat the grass there?

It’s always amusing to hear other people tell you what is and isn’t your job. But it’s downright amazing how someone could walk up to a teacher, and say “teaching my kind isn’t your job.” Seriously, how many brain cells do you have to be missing to make that statement?

And the worst part is, that’s probably far from the most ridiculous thing many teachers hear. Ludicrous though it may be, it’s probably pretty tame compared to some of the other things on this list.

Misogyny is a terrible thing that is all too prevalent in what is supposed to be a modern society. But come on, it should at least be kept away from our children, right? Apparently not. The worst thing is that it’s the parents being misogynistic towards their own daughter.

Like, how low can you get? Talk about the opposite of support. We wouldn’t be surprised if a teacher felt the overwhelming urge to haul off and smack them.

Making kids do things they don’t want to do is a bad parenting strategy when it comes to hobbies. If they don’t like singing, they’ll never be good at it. But it’s even worse when the parent is delusional enough to think they are good on top of that.

On top of that, who makes an ultimatum this ridiculous over singing in a show? Is it worth the hassle of moving schools for two kids? Apparently, some parents feel that it is.

Having a student who is lazy is a bad thing. But having a student that is bored only because the work is too easy for their level of skill and knowledge is something else entirely. Somehow, there are parents out there that don’t get that.

In fact, they would go so far as to get upset at their child for being bored by the things that are beneath them. Something about that really doesn’t sound right to us.

If you to a math class, you expect them to teach math. If you go to a Spanish class, it stands to reason that they teach Spanish there. And yet, some parents would go so far as to demand their child not have to speak any of that while in Spanish class.

Honestly, we feel as though parents believe themselves to be far too important in public education. Help your kids with their homework, but stop demanding that the school not teach basic things.

A parent who can’t take responsibility for their terrible child is probably the most annoying kind as far as teachers are concerned. Imagine blaming a child’s bad behavior on a paper airplane from four years ago, instead of, you know, bad parenting.

Needless to say, there’s probably nothing more frustrating for teachers than knowing a kid could be well-behaved, if only their parents had any maturity themselves.

Parents demanding grades regardless of student performance is nothing new. But generally speaking, they come up with long winded excuses and reasons as to why a student should get that undeserved grade. Not this parent though, no sir.

Nah, he’s the kind of parent that just makes his demand and leaves it. No explanation, no nothing. This probably led to a cocked eyebrow from the teacher, but little more than that, we hope.

If you thought the President of the Board would want his child of all people to get a good education, think again. Naw, why would he want that when he can just fire anyone who doesn’t give his little angel a perfect grade that she doesn’t deserve?

That’s what some teachers have to deal with. Perhaps the most annoying parents in the whole world are actually the ones in positions of power.

Some parents have kids just to use them for their own ends. Have a kid, make him play football, hope he goes pro and pays for all of your stuff. It doesn’t matter how nonsensical this plan is. It’s just how some parents roll.

What’s worse is when the kid would much rather spend their life pursuing something else, but the parent never lets them do that. For teachers who really care about their students, such a situation must be maddening.

Imagine a parent who brings a child to school, and that child doesn’t speak English. But he doesn’t want you to cut her any slack in English class, she should be held to the same standard as all the students who do speak English.

On the other hand, he feels that his daughter should be exempt from math because she doesn’t know it. What makes one of these subjects different from the other when the girl has no experience in either of them? Frankly, we have no idea.

When people don’t know how something works and they admit it, that’s fine. Everyone is ignorant of something. But when someone doesn’t know how something works and they try to tell everyone that they do, they are supremely annoying.

This is especially true for teachers, who are just doing things by the book. Never tell teachers how to do their job unless you are also a teacher. Otherwise, you probably sound like an idiot.

Some parents are the kind that feel they have no responsibility regarding their child when said child is at school. Anything they do is the problem of the school if it happens during the school day. Needless to say, it’s a bad parenting strategy.

In our opinion, the school should send back a bunch of homework, claiming that ‘whenever he’s not at school, he’s not our problem.’ That would be poetic justice in our eyes.

There are times when people make connections between two things that aren’t related. Maybe you get bitten by a bug at night, but that doesn’t mean a bug bit you because it was nighttime. This is something the parent in this story should probably acknowledge.

Really, maybe the reason his child starts misbehaving when her hair gets long is because she knows her father will find an excuse to cut it against her will?

It must be truly frustrating for teachers to be constantly belittled by parents, even though they really do care about the kids in question. Most teachers go into teaching because they want to help kids learn. It’s certainly not for the money.

So parents who don’t give them the benefit of the doubt are probably extremely grating on their nerves. We wouldn’t blame them for snapping at such parents, but they would probably never do that.

Imagine parents that are actually displeased with good performance. Parents that have so little faith in you that they question how you could possibly make good grades in a subject. Such parents really do exist.

We can’t imagine how a teacher would react to such a thing. A parent that gets upset when their student does well? That must be immensely frustrating, for both the teacher and the student.

If your mom is using you primarily as a means to get her hands on drugs, you have a really bad mom. Imagine a parent more concerned with you as their weed conduit than as a student or even her own child. Pretty messed up.

Needless to say, we hope that the teachers called child protective services for something like this. We can’t think of too many other situations that would be as good a call as this one, all things considered.

When a coworker doesn’t like you, usually you know it. It’s preferable to know it because they are upfront about it, but there are some people out there that would rather be ‘subtle’ about it, though calling this situation subtle is a stretch.

It’s quite clear that whoever is giving these presents believes teaching to be a woman’s job, and no one else. Kind of silly, when you think about the history of education through all of human history.

Speaking of issues that would require the intervention of child protective services, you have this story right here. But instead of that, we’re going to focus on the ridiculous aspect of the parent.

If you believe the person taking care of your child is corrupting or abusing them somehow, why would you still be willing to leave your child with them? Doesn’t that make it obvious that you are just making stuff up?

We understand that some parents want to do everything they can for their child. But even that can be a little too much in many cases. For instance, it’s a bit much to think that you have to see your kid for every scrape and cut.

Kids get hurt sometimes. That’s just how it is. Rather than making each and every one of those a big fuss, it’s much better to let the kid mature a bit from their experiences. Failure to do so doesn’t help their growth any.

We’re not going to say that chores aren’t important, or that kids shouldn’t do chores. But there’s supposed to be a balance between work, school (which is work in and of itself), and play. You can’t just ask a teacher to hold off on homework because your kid had chores.

Well, we suppose you can ask if you want, but hopefully the teacher just looks at you like you’re crazy. After all, that’s not their problem!

You want a story that makes it clear how little some parents care for their kids? Imagine having a deaf child, and you, as her parents, don’t even learn sign language. Like, the number one way to communicate.

On top of something so heinous, you tell her that she needs to aim low for her future, because what could a deaf person do that really matters? Frankly, this kind of thing is actually disgusting. Some people shouldn’t be parents.

It must annoy teachers when a parent asks them to do specific things, such as give more homework. It’s the teacher’s prerogative as to how much homework to give. Why does the parent think they know better?

Besides, if the student never does any of the homework anyway, what difference does it make to give them more of it? Getting more of something you aren’t going to do is pretty pointless for everyone involved.

Lots of parents are the type to try and teach by throwing their kid in the water and watching them drown. “C’mon kid, if you want to live you’ll learn to swim!” These types of parents are the reason we have so many traumatized kids and young adults these days.

Not to mention, how can a kid be a better swimmer than all the other kids if he doesn’t know how to actually swim yet? How could anyone utter such a sentence and think it made sense?

A parent who complains about a kid actually learning is a parent that teachers probably want to strangle. You teach a kid how to read, and suddenly you’re ‘filling their head with ideas.’ Yeah, ideas like, you know, reading! Kind of important!

This is to say nothing about the fact that the kid in this story had such a terrible reading level in the first place. That’s an entirely different can of worms to open.

Far be it from us to criticize people for talking or writing in a certain way. Everyone has a different voice, after all. But writing in really archaic English, to the teachers of a school? Why? Who does that?

Moreover, is this really the right way to challenge the curriculum? Well, at least the parent writing the letter sounds smarter than most people, but at the same time, he also sounds remarkably more pretentious than all of them.

At the end of the day, there are many factors that can influence a child’s behavior. But there’s no denying that it’s the parents that most often have the strongest influence.

And of course, when your parents are the type to threaten the physical safety of the teachers, or the type using you to sell cigarettes to minors, well, it’s not hard to see where some of the serious problems come from.

In the old days, parents would scrutinize the child for getting a zero. These days, many parents instead accuse the teachers of doing something wrong if the kid doesn’t get a score. If they aren’t learning anything to actually write down, that’s one thing.

But if they just don’t do the work, there’s no legitimate defense for that. Plenty of ridiculous and invalid defenses, but no legitimate ones.

Parent-teacher night is probably the worst night of the whole school year for sane teachers. That’s when they have to deal with all of the crazies, not to mention the people who just really don’t know what they are talking about.

This story involves a set of such parents. That said we do have to agree with the husband here: it’s a little early to be asking about university, considering the situation at hand. Poor teacher had no choice but to poker face their way through this one.

Most of these stories have been about bad parents doing bad things, but being caring parents that worry too much is also something that frustrates teachers. It’s good to care, but bad to care so much that it gets in the way.

We call this helicopter parenting, and it stops kids from growing on their own, because they never get the chance to. Teachers and ourselves agree: back off a little bit! The kid won’t die if you leave them alone for an hour!

We are back at it again with parents who think their kids can do way more than they can actually. Look, it’s one thing to believe in your children, but it’s another to fanatically believe they can do things they very clearly cannot.

We’re just saying, try to foster a kid’s dreams towards things they are actually good at, not towards things that you want them to be good at.

What parent do teachers hate the most? Well, there’s probably no objective answer, but the parent who complains about kids having to actually learn things is probably pretty high on the list, we imagine.

“You’re making my kid think too hard!” Wow, what a terrible thing to happen at a location where mental learning and acuity is the whole point! Truly, there are parents out there that will never cease to amaze us.

A parent who believes their kid should know the answer to everything before ever actually learning about it: there really are parents like that out there. They’re crazy, ridiculous, and the butt of many jokes and memes.

Why didn’t the kid already know the answer? Well, maybe because he didn’t actually ask the question yet. That makes sense, doesn’t it? Apparently it doesn’t make quite enough sense for an unfortunately large number of parents out there.

At what point is a parent assuming way too much about a teacher’s role? About the time they assume a teacher is the one who is supposed to be potty training their kid, we imagine. That would make anyone speechless.

Why some parents think schools are supposed to teach their kids how to be basic humans, we have no idea. Did they learn this kind of stuff when they went to school? Surely not.

Some people just refuse to really do any work. It doesn’t matter how little you give them, or how much time you give them to do it. They just refuse. Moreover, they don’t deserve any pity.

Even if a parent has the gall to ask, they don’t deserve an extension. Really, nine weeks is plenty of time to do a report on a single chapter of a book! Kids these days, they just don’t have what it takes to do such simple stuff.

Here we are again with helicopter parents. Imagine having parents that feel the need to call or email you every single time you put a grade in the book. So in other words, nearly every day. Wow, that must be a super hassle.

Once again, it really doesn’t help a kid to have parents that try to do everything for them. It just deprives them of opportunities to grow on their own, which is a major part of becoming a capable human being.

Caring about your child is good. But caring about them so much you do their homework for them is a little much. Well, based on the way this story sounds, maybe the parent is actually just annoyed, and therefore, she does the homework for her kid.

One way or another, imagine learning your kid’s handwriting just so you could do their homework for them? Is that messed up or what? Let ’em cry, at least they’ll learn something!

Some nightmare parents are never even seen by teachers. You just know they are bad because their kids are bad. You know the parents don’t do their job properly because their kid is an obnoxious gremlin who is a danger to themselves and others.

In a way, those unseen, irresponsible parents may truly be the worst of all. After all, there’s nothing quite as annoying as an adult who forces problems of their own making onto you!

There have been a few stories on the list so far about parents who definitely need to have their children taken away from them. Seriously, what kind of parent leaves a bunch of kids that aren’t even teenagers alone for several days or more?

No babysitter, no nothing. Just some instructions on eating. Speaking of adults who shouldn’t be parents by any stretch of the imagination, individuals such as this one really come out on top.