When it comes to education, teachers often face the challenge of balancing their responsibilities in the classroom with parents’ unreasonable expectations. While some parent-teacher interactions should be constructive and focused on the well-being of the students, some requests from parents can be downright outrageous. From demanding to see the teacher’s lesson plans in advance for review to requesting changes in school policy to suit their personal preferences, teachers deal with a wide range of unusual and sometimes ridiculous demands. I asked my teacher followers to share one or two of the most insane parent requests they have gotten, and more than one thousand teachers responded.
This article explores some of the most astonishing and entertaining requests teachers have received from parents, shedding light on the sometimes funny, sometimes perplexing dynamics that educators navigate in their efforts to foster a positive learning environment for all students.
- “Since my son got second chair, I want you to re-audition all of the children for and record it so I can take it to my child’s private music teacher, and they can judge who should be the first chair. I will also listen to the auditions.”
- A mom asked me to show her daughter how to put a tampon in because she didn’t have time.
- I was asked not to get pregnant because the teacher the year before was pregnant.
- “Come to my house and get my child to come to school.”
- A parent of a kindergartener asked me to push the child’s legs up toward her torso when she’s constipated on the toilet.
- I taught science. A parent asked me to stop teaching about gravity because they were a Christian family and didn’t believe in it.
- A mom asked me to make daily toasted peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. She sent in a toaster, a whole loaf of bread, a jumbo jar of jelly, and peanut butter! She would not listen when I said it was against the fire code. I was yelled at multiple times over this.
- “Can you send the test home? I will proctor it at home and then send it back.”
- Mom said her child needs time to catch up on social media during first period because she gets up late and doesn’t have time in the morning.”
- A parent of a 6th-grader told me to remind her son to poop. Two days later, she complained that I didn’t remind him.
- “Please pass my adult child. (He had a 12%.)
- “Can I sit in during the drama club auditions to make sure casting is fair?”
- A parent asked me to smile more. They said I was fake smiling.
- Mom asked me to go outside and look for the tooth that her son lost when he was biting my arm after he was throwing ice chunks at my face.
- I was asked to call a mom’s husband at work and ask him to come home because she was pregnant and wanted him back, even though the reason he left was because the baby may or may not have been his.
- “Can you talk to my child about peeing in my dresser drawers at home?”
- I was asked to remove a tick off of a 1st-grade boy’s privates. He was standing in the nurse’s office screaming, and Mom was on the phone declaring she would not leave work for that.
- I was asked to bring extra food for her child in case she didn’t like the food for the week.
- Mom wanted me to take more photos of their child and post them online.
- A parent said I made too much eye contact with students while I taught. She wanted me to tone down the eye contact.
- I’m an art teacher. A parent wanted me to paint their son’s basketball court.
- Mom said that we needed to give her son more flexibility in the classroom when it came to his behavior because he was going through puberty.
- “Please only update grades outside of school hours. Otherwise, he gets upset and can’t focus.”
- A parent told me I wasn’t giving her kid enough motivation to succeed in class. She said I should bake the kid some muffins and offer them as a reward for good behavior/grades. She recommended I bake apple cinnamon muffins because those are her daughter’s favorite.
- “Can you help me pay some bills?”
- A parent wanted me to come to her child’s birthday party and do face paint and balloon animals.
- “Please walk my child home from school every day.”
- “I want my daughter to sniff Mr. Sketch markers throughout the day to help her focus.”
- A parent of a 5th-grader asked that I stop teaching her son that I was a lesbian. I am not a lesbian and never said that I was.”
- I was directing a musical and gave one boy the lead over another. The parents of the boy who didn’t get the role told me that I needed to add a second weekend so that their son could play the lead. (The boy I gave the role to is now on Broadway.)
- A parent demanded she get all tests a week before we were to administer them so she could give feedback on our tests. We also needed to provide an answer key.
- A parent said my speaking so much Spanish in class was turning off her child to learning. It was a Spanish class.
- “Does my daughter have your permission to bring bull semen to school?” I still have no idea why she had this and wanted to bring it to school.
- A parent asked if I could put toilet seat covers on the toilet when her son needed to go number 2 and to make sure he had privacy so he could relax.
- “Measure my child’s heart rate every hour on the hour and adjust your expectations accordingly.”
- “Let my child sit where he wants (in high school math) and let him have his cell phone out during exams because it helps with his (undocumented) anxiety.”
- A parent asked that when her kid doesn’t want to do work or behaves disrespectfully (daily), maybe I could provide some Legos to play with instead. I had to explain that a) we don’t have Legos for kids to play with in grade 10 English class and b) Legos won’t help the student earn a credit in the course.
- “Please hold off returning the test he failed until after his track meet so he doesn’t get frustrated and distracted by the poor grade.”
- “Could you move the eclipse viewing to another time? He has a dentist appointment.”
- I was given a Solo cup for their child to urinate in.
- I was asked to plan and host a petting zoo birthday party inside my classroom with live animals like goats.
- A parent asked me to change a student’s partner because he was getting made fun of. Then the parent said it was her other son who was making fun of him.
- One of my student’s moms asked me if I could speak with her son about cleaning up his room.
- A mom told me her son was misbehaving and disrespectful toward me because I was female, and he had issues with women in authority positions.
- “Can you teach my daughter how to wash her hair and why she should wear deodorant?”
- I had a parent conference with a non-English-speaking family through an interpreter. The parents were at wit’s end because their son wouldn’t shower, do chores, or do anything they asked. They said it was because he learned about First Amendment freedoms in my class.
- I was told I was messy, and she would have to clean and organize all my stuff before her child could come to my class.
- It was springtime here in Southern California and a parent sent an email requesting that we not let his child walk in any puddles of wth yellow dust floating in them. He explained that this dust gets on the child’s shoes and then tracked inside the car and at home. He further explained that the dust is most likely sulfur dust and toxic. He added that it “might” be pollen, but we were not to let his child walk in any puddles.
- It was my first year teaching, and I had a parent call my direct classroom line and ask me if her son had pooped yet. She informed me he had been constipated and needed me to monitor his bowel movements. This was seventh grade.
- I’m a school social worker, and the parent of one of my first-grade students told me to keep “a rod” in my office and to beat him with it if he misbehaved again. When I told him there was absolutely no way I could beat a child, he told me to just threaten to beat him.
- “He got a D on a math test, but we told you he can’t fail.”
- “Can you please stop by our home after school today and encourage **** to go to school?” (first grader)
- I was asked to stand next to their (high school) daughter and keep asking her if she needed help the whole class period while ignoring the other students.
- I was told to give extra hugs to her son.
- “Please sit with her in the classroom ( when the class is out for recess) because the sun is too bright.”
- A parent demanded that her son be able to do a report on the Green Bay Packers when they were doing science reports.
- A mom asked me to get a backpack out of a tree that her child threw up there. It was thrown up into the tree about 30 feet, and she wanted me to get a ladder from the custodian, take all my kids outside, get on the ladder, and grab her son’s backpack.
- A parent asked me to pay their electric bill so it wouldn’t get cut off. I was also asked for gas money to get to the hospital where her older daughter was headed in an ambulance.
- I sent a message home to remind parents to send a water bottle with their kids since we do PE outside, and it gets very hot where I live. A parent responded that I should provide a 5-gallon water jug for the kids to use like AG workers must have.
- I was asked not to assign any homework because it was ruining their mother-daughter relationship at home.
- Can I teach my 17-year-old student how to wipe?
- Mom said her son should be allowed to swear. Just have him go into the bathroom (in the classroom) and say all the potty words, and flush them away.
- I was asked to move a different kid out of the class and into someone else’s class.
- I had a mother ask me to buy her a Christmas tree.
- A parent wanted a girls-only class for her daughter because a boy was mean to her.
- I was asked to make a student five extra copies of every worksheet because he would lose it. I also had to write his name on all the papers.
- Mom sent a head of romaine lettuce and a bottle of ranch and asked if I could please clean and chop it so her son could have a fresh salad for lunch.
- A parent once abruptly got into my car with their mom (my student’s grandparent) and told me— not asked, but told me— to drive them to their doctor’s office.
- A mom complained that there was a glare on my whiteboard. I told her it only happens for a week or two, and I don’t use that whiteboard during that time. She said, “Well, can’t you just move it?” The sun? No. The whiteboard? It’s nailed into the wall.
- “Your son is accused of plagiarism.”
“We chose the best sentences to copy from various sources together.”
“That’s what we call plagiarism.”
“It’s because you found out with Google! I did this method in university without getting caught because Google didn’t exist! It was easier!”
“Your son is 13. Those sentences would never come out of a 13-year-old boy. That made me suspicious.”
“Are you saying that my son is stupid?!?”
- “Please allow my daughter to bring her pet snake to class along with live mice because the snake needed to consistently eat live mice throughout the day to “fatten up.”
- A parent dropped off an ice cream cake that was meant for six people max and expected me to cut it for 28 kids. It was also rock solid, and they didn’t send a knife, napkins or plates.
