From exploiting every sort of surveillance technique to throwing public tantrums that would rival those of a two-year-old, here are the most outrageous stories about overbearing parents. Parents: after reading these stories you might realize you’re not doing so bad after all. And kids: you might want to start counting your blessings...
1. A Peace Offering
Back when I was teaching, I gave a low test grade to a 55-year-old woman who was taking the course. I received a truly surprising visitor the next day. I can tell you that I was definitely not expecting her 80-year-old mother to come to my office with scones and tea to ask me if her daughter could retake the test. How can you say no to an old lady with a basket of scones?
2. Chronic Mama's Boy
I worked as a college ambassador during undergrad. Part of this meant I ended up at events with prospective students and their families to tell them about all of the great things we did. This was a fancy one where there was dinner served and we were each assigned to a different table with two or three families. I always try to talk to the kids to connect with them. But this kid, we'll call him Brad, was the toughest case I've ever had.
Every time I would talk to him, he would make eye contact with me, then look at his mom. She would answer every question I asked. "What's your favorite class? What are you looking forward to the most?" All were answered by mom. It was mortifying, and it only got worse.
Then (of course because Brad wasn't asking me any questions) she decided to start asking me questions about my college experience. This is when she told me of Brad's prospective life plans. He, too, was going to be a resident adviser in college. And she didn’t hesitate to tell me the rest: He was going to graduate in 3 years, attend med school (at Harvard), and marry his high school sweetheart.
I had a tough time watching poor Brad shrink into his clothes for the rest of the night.
3. Mum’s The Word!
Last year I was waiting in line at the airport, and behind me was a mother and teenage son. What I overheard was painful. The mother was describing the college essays she'd written for him because apparently, he'd been too "busy" going to a sporting event over the weekend.
"Yeah, I included all your extracurriculars in there... I think it was fair to say you are involved in music, I mean, you do like music! No don't worry, I made it sound like you wrote it!"
4. A Double Whammy
How about someone who's a helicopter parent and a teacher?
My sister-in-law is nuts. She has three daughters and a son and anything less than perfection is unacceptable. They all have to play a musical instrument, take tae-kwon-do, be members of the local swim team, take art classes, be in air cadets and play on at least one sports team. And have perfect grades.
Inclination and talent have nothing to do with it—none of them have the artistic ability of a yam. None of them will be allowed to date until they are seventeen. Yes, that includes the boy who is sixteen. And what makes it even worse is that my sister-in-law teaches at her kids’ school. There is no escape.
The best part is that she sends out a ten-page "family letter" every Christmas that details each aspect of her kids’ mapped-out little lives. She includes tidbits like “Amy has had some problems this year working on her attitude. We think a little focus on cooperation and some gratitude for what she has will make her a much better person."
That's a direct quote. I anticipate years of therapy for all of them.
5. Hoodwinked
I was working as an academic advisor for first-year students at a public university. I was meeting with a student (because his first semester hadn't gone so well) when my phone rang. I took the call...only to have the man on the other end identify himself as the student who was currently sitting in my office. I couldn't help but laugh out loud.
It was dad, posing as the student hoping to get his son's grades. The poor student was mortified as this was happening. I would have loved to hear the conversation that went down later.
6. You Can Say That Again (And Again)
I taught ESL (English as a Second Language) to a bunch of high schoolers who were brilliant and at an SAT level. There was one kid who was incredibly fluent and would write wonderful essays in my class. However, his mother wasn't satisfied. She forced him to write a 10,000 word essay every single day.
His mother had never learned a foreign language and didn't speak English, but she would (through her son and translators) give me an earful on how I was being too easy on the students since I wasn't demanding four hours of homework a night. This 14-year-old—who was fluent in two languages and ready to take the SATs in a language not his own—ended up getting worse at writing.
He would repeat things again and again just to get the word count. He would lie and make up stories, interjecting them in weird places. And this became a habit. He did miserably on his exams because he wouldn't take my advice to "stop writing when you've run out of things to say." More work does not necessarily mean better work.
7. Careful What You Wish For
I was teaching a chemistry lab in college and a parent emailed me after the first lab report with an annotated copy of the graded assignment, which I gave a B+. Apparently, little Johnny had never gotten a B grade before, so I was just being unfair. Long story short, she threatened to go to the prof and I said go ahead. It did NOT work out like she hoped.
When kids complain about their grades, the professor offers them a regrade, but goes over the report with a fine-toothed comb. The B+ got changed...to a C.
8. A Whole Lotta Hullabaloo
In university, I was hired as a student employee for the parent orientation. Some parents were not too worried about their kids ("Is the local bar still open? I'd love to duck out and get some nostalgia drinks.") Others were clearly interested, without being too overbearing ("I've got a few questions about class registration...") But there was one parent that I'll always remember...
Part of the "script" we had to recite asked parents if they wanted to take a tour of their student's future dormitory. When I got to this part of the script with one mom, she completely broke down, bawling about how she wasn't ready for her angel to go to college. This went on for several minutes and bordered on a full-on tantrum.
Mind you, this wasn't on move-in day, this was at an orientation two whole months before school actually started. I shudder to think how the actual move-in day went for that family.
9. I Don’t Feel So Well...
I'm a former teaching assistant and I once had a phone call at six in the morning before a 10 am class where I was expecting important homework to be submitted. The call was from my student's mother telling me that he was dreadfully sick with the flu and absolutely not able to get into class or to hand in his paper.
In fact, they were waiting for the emergency doctor right then. Mum should have done the call in private because, in the background, I could hear my student moaning, “I'm never drinking again!”
10. Taking It A Bit Too Far...
My mom called my therapist over five times a day for weeks. I was an adult, so the therapist couldn't even admit I was a patient, so my mom would leave messages for her or just talk her ear off. The office wound up changing their phone system because of her so that they could block her number.
My therapist told me that people like my mom are why she had to have a therapist. She showed me the message times. I could barely believe it. Some calls were over 45 minutes. Sometimes my mom would call to report that I had been moody, so if my therapist wanted to track my periods, she might want to start now.
My mom reported on every move I made. She would call to say I had eaten ice cream that day and was probably a binge eater. Sometimes she would call sobbing hysterically during an emotional breakdown over not being able to read my session notes.
...See why I was in therapy?
11. Surveillance And Sirens
This dad in my neighborhood had an older daughter who he caught sleeping with a guy when she was in high school. She was safe, used protection, and did all the right things, but he just couldn't stomach the idea of his daughter sleeping with anyone. His younger daughter was my age and when we became teenagers, he became paranoid to the extreme. It quickly got really messed up.
To ensure she didn’t get frisky in the 30 minutes between when she got out of class and when her dad got home, she was forced to go to her aunt's house immediately after school. At sporting events, she had to sit by her father. If she wanted to get something from the concession stands, she had to run there and back because he would come looking for her if she was gone for longer than five minutes.
I have no idea how she wasn't sobbing in despair because she had zero social life, thanks to her dad. But she got the last laugh: within a few years after moving out post-graduation, she had had three babies, all from three different men.
12. Like Mother, Like Daughter
I've taught middle school through college, so I’ve seen some things. I had one parent of a high school student who said she could not come to a particular meeting time, because she'd be in class. "Oh, what degree are you studying for?" I asked. "None, I take the same classes as my other daughter so I can make sure she works hard."
Apparently, she was registering as a student in all of her child's classes, going to the classes, all to make sure her child did her college work. I didn't say anything, but I would not have wanted to be that professor (or the kid).
13. Texts And Treachery
The other day, I told a lady at work about an interesting app that allows you to lock your child's phone anytime you want. That was a HUGE mistake. The only option this app gives them is to call the pre-set (parent’s) number. The lady who designed it was revolting against her kids who wouldn’t answer her calls or texts, so this app let her lock their phones until they checked in.
I didn’t know my coworker would immediately download the app...Now if her kids don't respond to her text/call within merely two minutes, she locks their screens. If her kids are on Reddit and see this, I would like to apologize: I just thought the app was interesting and was making small talk. I did not intend to ruin your teenage years!
14. Drive By Detection
My mother once drove to my workplace after school when I was 17 to check and make sure I was actually working. She then freaked out at me when I got home because she claimed I wasn't there, when in fact, she just didn't drive all the way into the parking lot because she didn’t want to be seen (she drives such a distinct car).
That was around her phase of thinking I was on hardcore drugs and sleeping with the entire male population of my town. I was an A+ student who worked every day after school and on weekends, so I must have been superwoman if she thought I'd have time for all of that.
15. Lending More Than A Helping Hand
In middle school, I knew a kid whose mother was not only an 8th-grade English teacher, but also the head of the entire English department. The kid was really nice and smart, but he also happened to be extremely dyslexic and had trouble with his English work.
I was in her class in the period before her son, and she would often have us watch movies in class when projects were due so that she could finish her son's project before the next class. Worst of all, when it came time for our middle school graduation ceremony, who do you think received the English award?
Try to imagine the sound of an entire auditorium of middle school kids sucking their teeth in unison.
16. Just Making Sure!
I'm the child of a helicopter parent, and I've been recognizing how bad it's gotten. My mom makes me send emails out to my teachers a few times per night, and I always get it done so I don't get grounded (again). Well, recently my ceramics teacher asked me why he always gets dual emails from my house. One from me, and one from my mom asking if I sent one to him.
It turns out, all of my teachers get two emails a night from my house. No wonder they all look at me funny...
17. Up And At ‘Em!
My roommate's mom was a helicopter parent, one I had to deal with too. One night my roommate hooked up with a girl at her place and slept over. The next morning, I was about to enter my class when I got a call from a random number. It was his mom.
She tells me that her son didn't answer the phone for his daily wake-up call. We’re 22 years old and he has a daily wake up call?! My jaw nearly hit the floor. She then demanded that I go and track him down to make sure he still alive. This was demanded, regardless of the fact that I had a class to attend at that moment.
It turns out, he left his cell phone in his truck just so he could have plausible deniability when she called. I’d say he was smart, if his plans didn’t implicate me so much...
18. Woah, Nelly!
I currently have a 6th-grade student whose stepmother emails me on a daily basis. He’s a good kid with an A in my class and no behavior problems. And yet, I’ve had 94 emails from his mother this year (last I checked). Typically they are unnecessary and I just want to ask her, "Do you ever talk to your son?!" He could clearly answer 95% of her questions!
Yet, she still sends me emails like, "What was the situation that caused Johnny to be marked tardy today?" and "There is an assignment in the gradebook marked with a 0/0. Please advise on how this will affect his grade."
Just to show you how bananas this woman is, I've checked her kid’s school profile. It shows that, since August, she has checked his grades 717 times. Holy heck. Your kid is 12, cut the cord and teach him personal responsibility.
(In the time it took me to finish this post and click “enter”, she logged on again...)
19. Twice To Make It Nice
Helicopter parents should go and live their own lives out to fulfill their goals instead of trying to do it vicariously through their children. In my case, one of the worst things my parents did was try to do my school projects for me because they thought they had better ideas. So either I'd let them do it but then secretly do my own, or I'd do one according to their criteria and then a totally different one to hand in. It quickly became a huge problem.
One time I had a science report to write: a research project with a presentation at the end. I did it on the ethics of cloning, but my parents didn't agree with my open-minded thoughts on cloning’s possible improvements to society. They thought the whole idea was blasphemous, so I had to make a version of the essay and PowerPoint that they would approve of.
As if that wasn’t enough, I also had to practice it in front of them until I got it down 100%. I don't know what made me most angry: the fact that their arguments were poorly worded and that I had to pretend they were my own, or the fact that it was so unfair to be stifled so thoroughly while my friends' parents were so incredibly chill.
Anyways, I did all the work for this project two times over, gave my own version to the teacher, and got the highest mark in my class. It didn’t take me long to realize I’m good enough on my own and my helicopter parents can suck it (drops mic).
20. Do-It-All Dad
My wife teaches middle school and had a parent come to the school three to four times per day to open up his child's locker. The child never even knew her combination since her dad was always there to open it. There’s more: He also came to the lunchroom to make sure she could open her juice box and snacks from her lunch.
The student was a 7th grader with no learning disabilities or physical limitations. I wonder what she’ll do when she gets to high school...
21. Serving Up Embarrassment
My parents are helicopter parents. In school, my stepmom had access to every assignment, due date, date the assignment was turned in, and grade I received. Needless to say, my teachers hated her. I was on a reduced-priced lunch and one day I couldn't eat because I ran out of money. Guess what happened that day at school?
Cue two crying lunch ladies and a burnt grilled cheese. I felt so bad.
22. Scale Mail
I once had the pleasure of working at a sleep-away summer camp. One time, I had a mother make an outrageous demand that I’ll never forget. She asked us to weigh both of her children and mail her the results. As if that wasn’t enough, she wanted it done twice per day!
23. The Cream Of The Crop
My high school was right beside a private elementary school and north of us, there was a little shopping center, where a lot of kids would hang out after school. There was one family that would go to Subway to get sandwiches every Wednesday, with their two kids that went to the elementary school. These parents would correct their kid's posture and manners every chance they got.
If the son ever slouched, the parents would tap them to straighten up their back. The mother would make her kids eat their sandwiches with a fork, and she would yell at the kids if they tried putting "too big of a piece" in their mouth. There was never a dirty napkin on the table.
On the last Wednesday of the school year, the son tried talking to me and my upper-middle class friends who were hanging at the shopping center. After he talked to us for about 30 seconds, his mom came over and yanked him away. When they were leaving, we could hear her mutter, "See, I don't want you to end up like those kids."
24. Beat Them At Their Own Game
It took me a while to figure out that my parents had a tracking device activated in my cell phone. All throughout high school they knew exactly where I was... That is until I learned to leave the darn thing at the place where I told them I was going and then venture off wherever I wanted. There is always hope, even in the darkest of childhoods...
25. The Proactive Parent
I had a parent come into my class with their child about a year ago, holding one of those "WiFi/Cellphone Radiation Detector" contraptions. It was even weirder than I imagined. During the first five minutes of class, she walked around the room scanning and beeping with her son in tow.
After what seemed like a ridiculous amount of time, she finally pointed to a seat for her son to sit in, and then came up to me and asked if there was any way I could make the building maintenance staff aware that the radiation levels were still quite high...
26. Spoiled Rotten Freshmen
During first-year orientation at the local college, the residency halls had meetings with the students and the parents, individually. The student meeting went well enough; the students seemed to be smart enough to figure things out and asked good questions.
However, the parent meeting was a different story. When the parents had their question period, one woman asked, "Who will do my daughter's laundry?"
27. Like Giving Candy To A Baby
I am a summer camp counselor. On Thursdays after a night hike, the campers sleep under the stars on the field. There are two rules: first, no outside food. Second, no parents after 8 pm. I bet you can guess where the problem would be.
There was a kid whose parents came up for the pre-overnight barbecue. The barbecue went fine until it was time to leave. Most parents bring the bare necessities for their kid: sleeping bag, pillow, and toiletries. These parents brought a freaking bed, heating pad, potty, lantern, tent, pepper sprayer, and a care package with perfume. Does a seven-year-old really need perfume in the woods?
After our goodbye song, the kids are given 20 minutes to say goodbye to their parents. While everyone else’s parents were long gone, this kid’s father was throwing a tantrum because his precious baby was not sleeping at the front of the group. He verbally harassed anyone who refused to move their stuff from the front of the tarp.
Following the tarp fiasco, the kid received about two pounds of candy from his parents. Our protocol for non-camp food is to confiscate it and have the children pick it up the next day when they leave camp. When we tried to take the candy, his father threw a fit because his child needed the candy to "calm down."
He went as far as to say that if his kid did not sleep next to his candy, he would sue the camp. Isn’t that a bit extreme for some licorice and lollipops?
Flickr, Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area
28. Time For A Time-Out
Oh goodness, helicopter parenting is rampant in the cheerleading world. I used to cheer at an elite, private gym. Of course, parents are always angry about their child’s placement, position in a stunt, etc. The parental hovering got so bad that the gym built a small glass observation room for parents, which had to be monitored by an off-duty coach or trainer.
If any parent was caught trash-talking the coaches, their own child, or another child, their kid was immediately kicked off the team. That really quelled some of the cattiness, but sticking parents in a monitored fishbowl still didn’t stop them from their outbursts.
29. #Twinning!
I work for a camp for middle schoolers where we teach a heavily hands-on and demo-based curriculum in order to get kids interested in science and engineering. We have a policy that if a parent wants to helicopter their kid, we charge them whatever it costs to enroll their kid in the camp. We even give them the T-shirt and backpack to drive the point home. Still, some parents show up decked out in gear to scrutinize their kid...
30. Mother Knows Best
My buddy had the worst helicopter mom. We were going to college 3 hours away from his hometown and ended up at a random after-bar party with people we met just that night. His mom showed up (I have no idea how she found us), grabbed him by the ear, and dragged him out of the bar to her car.
The next day, after she had driven him home to their family house, she made him get a ride back to college with his former high school sweetheart he had recently broken up with. She was playing matchmaker because she didn’t approve of their breakup. Ever since, he’s been tormented with jokes about that night...
31. More Power To You!
I work in an ER and I get sick and tired of helicopter parents bringing their offspring in for ridiculous reasons, like getting a nosebleed or muscle pain after gym class. The worst are the parents that bring their 18-year-old kids into the ER because they want them drug tested. I love turning to the "legal adult" and asking "do you consent to this?"
The parent normally turns beet red and starts yelling at me about how they are the parent, their kid lives under their roof, and they pay insurance so they deserve to test their “child.” This is where I remind them that their precious child is an adult and without their consent, I cannot perform any tests on them.
I've seen many light bulbs go off over kids' heads, and I revel in joy when they take hold of their power and refuse all lab work. I turn to the parents and say, "Alright, you heard him. I can't do anything," which normally ends in a call to the administrator who will repeat the same thing. It's a good day when I get to watch people's veins throb when they can't get their way.
32. Holy Smokes!
One day my dad barged into my room and screamed at me, telling me to "give him the drugs" and "come clean" because he apparently smelled that I was smoking, when in fact I was only watching a movie and eating pizza. Meanwhile, there was something on fire in the neighbor's house. Clearly, dad’s never smoked a day in his life.
33. iPod Peril
I remember when I finally got an iPod touch. Everyone else with one would bring theirs to school and use them in their free time. But I couldn't take mine to school. If I tried, my mom would freak out. One day, I took it to school anyway. Rules be darned. Well, I paid for it very fast. And while I was in one of my classes, I got called to the principal's office.
As if getting called to the office wasn’t enough, when I got there I found out that my mom had called the school and told them to take my iPod. Of course, I went to a small school so before long, everyone knew about it. And when I got home, my mom threatened to do worse.
Apparently, she wouldn’t hesitate to come to school and sit in my classes with me. All this trouble just for sneaking some tunes to school.
34. On The Sly
I worked in a college admissions office and got a call asking if there was any way for me to alter an application. I told her no (naturally) and that since it was online, she could do so herself. She asked if she would be getting any automatic confirmation via email and then she asked if it was possible to disable this. This was when my mind began asking me to sit up and pay attention.
Turns out that when she applied to college, all emails would go to her father. She was calling from a payphone, because her father would go through her phone regularly. She had restricted access to computers at home and had a brother and male cousin in school who were more or less chaperoning her at all times. I could barely believe what I was hearing.
She'd been forced to apply to us because that meant she would be able to stay under her father’s roof. She told me plain and simple that she wanted to make sure her application would get rejected, and needed help finding out how to get admitted to somewhere far, far away.
In the end, an attachment to her application ended up "misfiled." And due to some curious error, the database was never updated to reflect that her application was incomplete. I also pulled some strings (she ended up set up in school on the other side of the country).
35. Motion Picture Propaganda
It was mainly my dad who was really strict, and mostly about movies. When I was in high school, I asked if I could go to the movies with my friends. It was a GI Joe movie that I wasn't super into, but it was mainly to just do something fun.
My dad said he wouldn't let me go unless I wrote a paper on the movie after I watched it, listing its redeeming qualities and Christian principles. I’m not sure GI Joe was worth it...
36. Gaga For The Game Plan
When I taught second grade, we took a field trip to our district's vocational school so the kids could get a sense of the wide array of career choices available. One parent would not allow her daughter to attend because she was so afraid her daughter might take a liking to one of the non-collegiate career tracks (horticulture, culinary arts, etc.) and ruin her predestined path to medical school.
I repeat, she was in second grade.
37. The Journey Home
My mom would follow me home from school and catch me slippin'. When I got home I would get grilled on what I did after school. "Did you go straight home?" "What time did you get home?" "How long did you take to get home?" "What did you do while you walked home?"
Apparently, she had been getting off from work early to spy on me walking home so she could catch me in the act, playing around while I walked home from school. But I would do normal boyhood things, like pretending my umbrella was a rocket launcher and aiming at aliens in my neighborhood on my walk home.
When you got in trouble she enjoyed double jeopardy. Not only did she already know what you did wrong, she also tried to get you to confess to the embarrassing acts, and I would always get in extra trouble for lying. Eventually, she went overboard. Her "traps" started giving false positives so I would get yelled at for things I didn't even do.
The worst part is she could have just been a good mom and given me a ride home.
38. That’ll Teach Someone A Lesson!
I once sent a student’s project home with two grades: one for the student and one for the parent. I wouldn't have tried to pull that on a parent I didn't have a good relationship with, but it was a clear acknowledgement that there was parent intervention. It was towards the end of the year, so I was very familiar with what the student was capable of. Student got an A, but I gave the mom a C. It wasn't mom's best work.
39. Eyes Like A Hawk
My dad would go to every meet-the-teacher night and insult the level of intelligence of every math teacher I had. He demanded I go to extra tutoring and then called my teachers to make sure I was there. Every. Single. Morning. As if that wasn’t enough, he even made me get their signatures to prove my attendance.
After that, he went with me to my community college orientation and followed me to each class, making sure he knew where each one was, writing down the phone numbers and emails from all my professors along the way. College was a nightmare.
40. Swipe Left!
I am a coach for a youth band program at the local university. While chatting with the kid's mom for the first time, I noticed she was writing down notes—and I wasn’t saying anything new that she didn’t already know. Her kid later told me that his mother compiles personality profiles of every person that is ever in charge of her kids.
I’d be lying if I didn’t say I wasn’t curious about what she’s got in my dossier...
41. Pass With Flying Colors
I teach kindergarten at a private school that severely sucks up to parents. I gave the kids a fun Halloween activity that was a “color by number” on a hundreds chart. If they followed the directions, it turned out to be a monster. I hung them up for parents to see and one of the moms saw her daughter's art and was so disappointed.
She told me, "she can color better than that, you just have to push her." She's five years old, and it was supposed to be fun...
Flickr, San Mateo County Libraries
42. Seventh Grade Sorcery
When I was in seventh grade, our Magic The Gathering Club (that was hosted by an awesome teacher) was banned from the school because a helicopter parent saw it as witchcraft. It is the devil’s work, you see? And she couldn’t let a thing like that touch her child.
The worst part of it was that the kid wasn’t even in the club. He only told his mom about it and she went berserk!
43. Calling For Backup!
My worst experience when I was teaching was when a mom yelled at me in the middle of the hallway, during passing period between classes, because her daughter didn't turn in two of her assignments. The mom blamed me for losing the work. Because it makes perfect sense that I would lose her daughter's papers and no one else's.
Kids later told me how the girl was bragging about getting her mom to yell at me in front of everyone. And how she did, in fact, not do the assignments.
44. Dazed And Confused Curfew
My parents put a curfew on me: I couldn't stay out past 9:00 pm when I was in high school. Apparently, "that's the time when kids start sleeping with people and doing drugs." Amazingly, I managed to smoke pot well before 9:00 pm.
45. Panic Parenting
I was working with a class of gifted high school students taking a summer course. During a field trip, one of my students needed to go to a doctor's appointment and would be picked up early by her parents. The only way to contact the group on the field trip was my cell phone, so the parents got my personal number. In the week left in the summer course, I received 23 text messages and 15 calls asking why their 10th-grade daughter had not called them back.
46. In The Dragon’s Den
I’d like to nominate my mother for the Best Helicopter Parent Award. Alongside my school degrees and diplomas, all of my gold and diamond jewelry has either literally been taken out of my hands or pilfered from me for “safekeeping” because apparently, I ruin everything I touch.
Everything’s hidden in shoeboxes at her house, but if I behave myself on holidays, I'm allowed to look at some of what she has stowed away... I hope there never comes a time when I need to ask her for my degrees or diplomas...
47. Extra Special Treatment
I’m not a teacher, but I'm a nanny. I briefly worked for one mom who still wiped her 8-year-old son's behind after he finished his business in the bathroom. That poor kid would just sit on the toilet waiting for mom to come clean him up. Suffice it to say, I didn't stick around that family for very long.
48. The Elephant In The Room
My boss recently interviewed a candidate who brought his mother to the interview. I turned to my boss and said, “Lucky us, two employees for the price of one!” The mother asked us all the right questions: what little Johnny will be doing day-to-day, what the work environment is like, etc.
Too bad we weren't trying to hire Johnny’s mother.
49. The School Of Hard Knocks
We have a student whose mom is the worst helicopter mom I've ever seen. At the start of each school year, mom emails all of her kid’s teachers with a list of "expectations", like handing back all assignments (regardless of length) within the week. Or being ready for mom to drop-in for a meeting at any time (because “appointments are just there for teachers to buy time to prepare a story”).
My favorite story is when the student's mom came in (without an appointment) to demand from a much older, battle-seasoned teacher that he increase her child’s final exam grade. The student had something like an 89 in the class, and when mom went in to argue, I heard the teacher yell from the other end of the hall, "Are you out of your mind?! Get out of my classroom!"
She walked out rather shaken, muttering something about her rights. That teacher is now the staff hero.
Flickr, Many Wonderful ArtistsFollow
50. A Sticky Situation
My sister-in-law had to stop putting stickers on her 3rd graders' papers because parents were upset that some stickers were "better" than others. For example, one student received a "Great Job!" for earning a 98 mark, while another student only received a "Good job!" for earning a 90, which implied that a 90 was not great.
The kids didn’t give a hoot and were just happy with a colorful sticker. Who knew parents would be the ones making such a fuss over illustrated stickers?
51. To Whom It May Concern
I’m a teacher, and a student once threatened to "fire" me over a minor assignment. She emailed me, the principal, and the Board of Education. Her father followed suit, but he went one step further: He sent a copy of the email to Barack Obama. Still no reply, after four years.
Flickr, Global Partnership for Education
52. Under The Radar
I was a resident assistant for my university and we had some major helicopter parents during move-in day. One guy's mom helped him move into his dorm room and when it came time for the parents to leave so that students could gather for the first meeting, his mom went off the deep end. She thought she could stay the night with him by hiding in the bathroom until everyone left.
The only reason she was caught was because the guy's roommate came to me and rightfully said he wasn't comfortable with her being there. Who would want someone else’s mom hiding in their shared room? The mom did not go quietly and campus security had to lead her out.
Flickr, UW-Whitewater University Housing
53. The Boss Baby
I used to teach at a private primary school in China where many kids are excessively pampered by their parents. There was one student who had servants and was used to ordering others around, even adults. So, at school she tried to give orders to the other kids. As you can imagine, this did not go down very well...
After her entire class refused to play or talk with her, she complained to mommy. But get this: mommy marches into our office and in front of our principal, threatens to have the other children killed unless they started playing with her daughter. I guess that’s one way to go about it...
54. The Sleepover Struggle
In high school I became really good friends with this kid named Dan. Dan and I hung out a bunch and one weekend I invited him over for a sleepover (to stay up late, watch TV and play video games). Who knew that this sleepover would cause such a big fiasco?
I had to meet his parents to gain approval. It was essentially a job interview. I had to tell them what I planned to do with myself, where I wanted to go to college, my life's goals, etc. It was a wonder I left the interview in one piece.
The morning after our sleepover, my mom gets a call at 6 am. "Hi this is Dan's Mom, are you watching your child and my boy?" My mom quickly gets over the shock and replies, "Yes they are in the basement, sleeping." "Well, I would appreciate you checking on them because I haven't heard from Dan all night."
My mom woke us up far too early for comfort, and Dan realized he left his cell phone upstairs. It turns out he has 63 missed calls, 105 missed text messages, and 20 voicemails. My poor friend started to cry and mom just hugged him and made us breakfast.
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