I’m a Teacher – Six of the Most Annoying Parenting Habits (Including No Discipline)

No one goes into teaching for an easy life, but there are signs that many are finding life in the classroom particularly tough at the moment. A YouGov survey of 1,000 teachers found that many feel children’s behaviour has deteriorated, with interruptions to learning every few minutes, while others report that pupils are struggling to concentrate and are keeping tasks they set to the shortest possible 10-minute intervals so that their class can focus.

The survey found that 75 per cent of teachers blamed parents and their lax discipline at home for the decline in classroom standards. Last week, the former head of Ofsted urged teachers to confront parents if their children misbehave – but teachers have many more complaints.

Here, i speaks with three teachers about their biggest annoyances regarding the parents of their students.

Incessant emails

A 2019 Ofsted report found that teachers were under enormous pressure to respond immediately to “incessant” emails from parents asking questions about their child’s education. At the time, Ofsted chief Amanda Spielman called for an end to the “instant response culture” – which sees teachers contacted at weekends, on bank holidays and late at night about issues ranging from homework, friendship issues and lost equipment.

However, some schools have adopted this method of communication. Simon, a secondary school and sixth form teacher in London, now has to send weekly emails to parents about the progress of his tutor group, which often leads to pointless dialogue.

“It takes a lot of time,” he admits. “I’ve even had emails during the summer break from parents worried about their child’s grades. Sometimes it’s better to resolve an issue over the phone or in person than to go back and forth all the time — especially when I have dozens of other students to look after as well.”

Frances, who teaches primary school-aged children from grades 1 to 6, often encounters parents who express panic about their child’s changeable behavior.

“I’ve had emails expressing concerns about birthday party plans, that their child wasn’t feeling well, what hobbies would suit them best,” she explains. “I can’t always answer these questions, I’m not a guru.

“Parents also have the power – they can use social media or Google reviews to criticize the school if they don’t think you’re being helpful enough.”

Give your kids unlimited access to social media

“Parents often choose to buy their kids their first smartphone when they’re in high school, so they can come home with it,” Simon says. “But there’s no discussion about what they do with the phone after that. There’s no clear boundaries, which means students feel the need to constantly check their phones. It makes it hard for them to focus.”

TikTok is the most problematic and disruptive app among his students, he says. “Kids I teach are obsessed with it. I’ve caught my 7th graders scrolling through the feed under their desks.

“When I raise the issue with parents, they have no idea of ​​the kind of content their child is consuming. We’ve had some really damaging stuff like Andrew Tate-style misogyny, particularly among boys.

“During my years as a teacher, I have noticed that girls have lower self-esteem. When we talk about bullying, apps like Instagram and Snapchat are often mentioned.”

Amelia, also a high school teacher, agrees that social media is the main cause of classroom disruptions.

“For some parents, it’s much easier to give your kids a phone or an app to keep them occupied,” she explains. “It’s really hard to keep kids focused on tasks if they’re not paying attention. If parents encourage this at home, it’s even harder to get kids to stop at school.”

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Sending sick children

Primary school teacher Frances wants parents to consider the risk of infection when sending their child to school with a sneezing, runny nose.

“It’s like we haven’t learned anything from Covid,” she says. “If one kid gets sick, it can wipe out the whole class — and if I get sick, it can really put me behind. I understand that it can be hard to find last-minute childcare when your child is sick, but one day of having a cold can put me out of work for a week.”

They don’t learn social skills

Simon finds it frustrating when parents show virtually no interest in their children – something he has unfortunately experienced all too often.

“A student I was teaching was really struggling to sit and was disruptive,” he recalls. “It turned out she had an aggressive urinary tract infection, which meant she was in a lot of pain. Her parents didn’t even notice.”

“I think a lot of parents don’t understand their kids and the world they live in now,” Amelia adds. “A lot of parents want their kids to get good grades but don’t want to put in the time to invest in the kids themselves. I think they think they don’t have any problems and will just learn linearly until they get the highest grades. Some parents are happy to stay out of the way and just let the kids fend for themselves, while others are in school all the time – both of which can be very annoying.”

Four years into the pandemic, she notices that her students are still more isolated – a problem she recognizes in parents who don’t interact with their children.

“Covid has definitely limited social responsibility and degraded community,” she says. “Students are much harder to get to work and will actively seek out their own space rather than trying to interact socially.”

“Parents need to set values ​​and priorities at home,” Simon agrees. “They need to model how to talk to each other and to people in public. They need to give children time to ask questions and be socially curious.”

It’s something that younger children would benefit from too, says Frances: “Parents should organise play dates with their child’s peers so they can actually socialise.”

Always take your child’s side

Behavioural problems are to be expected when working in large schools, but the real frustration arises when nothing is done about them at home, Simon argues.

“It’s so annoying when you have a meeting with a parent about a badly behaved child, the child denies it, and then the parents go along with it,” he says. “It’s almost like they’re giving them a green light to keep misbehaving. Parents don’t seem to understand that we’re not just calling them into meetings.”

He says vaping is causing major problems at his school, but some parents aren’t taking responsibility to stop their kids from doing it

He recalls an incident from last year when he discovered that a group of eighth-grade girls had started a “vape club,” where they would try out different flavors of vape in the girls’ bathrooms after school.

“I told their parents, and one of them said she would rather do that than smoke,” he recalled. “It makes it harder for us to discipline them.”

“If parents don’t care, then the kids won’t either,” Amelia says. “Too many times I’ve had students be rude and ignore what I’m saying. I’ve heard stories of schools where men won’t wear ties to class because there’s a risk of a student grabbing them. It’s a horrible culture.”

Seeing school as a service

Amelia believes that all the problems teachers have with parents are due to the lack of respect people in general have for the profession.

“We could make more money doing other jobs, but we choose to work with students,” she says. “Parents see schools more as a service than a collaborative process. There seems to be a strong tactic where parents want to intimidate schools into making changes that are right for them and not their child. We want parents to work with us. Be involved and spread respect for our role.”