That's incredible - H

I read an article in Time magazine today about why teachers hate parents. I heard the following week's is even better with responses about why parents hate teachers or something like that. I haven't read that one yet. There was something in the article about how parents sometimes undermine the work that teachers are trying to do. Some do this by defending their child's behavior or actions no matter what, so that they are never reprimanded nor do they learn from the consequences of their actions...b/c there aren't any. Others do this by taking care of everything for their children so that they never learn lessons in self-reliance. Parents do what they think is best, but they often don't realize that they are depriving their children of opportunities to learn valuable life lessons and life skills for the sake of their academic success.

We experience this at work all the time. There was an incident recently of a student who got a low grade on a test and asked another if she could look over his test to see what she got wrong on hers. He got a better grade. Then somewhere along the way, she decided to erase his name, put hers on it, and then turn it in to the teacher to tell her that her test score was misrecorded in the gradebook. She told a series of lies but finally admitted to cheating. When all was said and done, what did the mom ask of the teacher? Is there something we can do so that she doesn't get a zero for this test?

EXCUSE ME?!!!!! You're not telling me that you want to communicate to your daughter that cheating is okay, and that mom will rescue you from the consequences of such a horrible mistake?! You don't really want to communicate to your daughter that you value her academic success more than you value her moral and ethical education, do you?

My favorite one this year was, "You should raise everyone's grade by 2%." Apparently, the student was 2% away from the next letter grade for the semester and the parents thought this was the fairest way to deal with it. The parents thought that the students should have a grade that they didn't earn. Two sets of parents on separate occasions made this request. That's just incredible.

I had a parent meeting today, and I was eventually pretty frank about their son's poor behavior and lack of attention in class. I talked about how this was probably linked to his poor performance in class. I gave specific examples, and what was their response? Well, he has so many activities going on, and he gets such little sleep. He's simply stressed out, and so he might have just forgotten the rules. That's just the way he is. He behaves that way at home too. He's not intentionally trying to be disrespectful. They're just making excuses for him.

My response was, "Well, he should let me know if he's stressed out and we can talk about appropriate arrangements."
Parents: He's only 14. Just a child. He doesn't know whether he's stressed out or not. We are the adults, and we can see that, but he can't tell.
H: (smiling and nodding, but thinking inside): Give me a break. (wants to roll her eyes.)

What happened to the parents that would wash their child's mouth out with soap if they uttered a bad word? What happened to those parents that made their children take responsibility for their actions, that made their sons apologize to their next door neighbor for throwing the baseball through their window and made them pay for it out of their allowance or work to pay it back? What happened to the parents that used to instill character into their children? They're still out there, but their numbers are dwindling. As time goes by, I see more enablers of bad behavior at work. It's scary to think what society will be like when these kids become adults.