Confrontational Parents: Examples
Pete Bland

Case #1:
Janet is a kindergarten teacher who has taught for over 15 years. She has taught in virtually all grade levels including multi-grade splits. She has served on her school site council and many other committees and has served as head teacher at her current school. When Janet was teaching a first grade class, an irate father confronted her in her classroom.

One day she had a little boy in her class that needed to use the bathroom very badly. It just happened to be at the end of the day when all of the students were being dismissed. As she let her students out for the day, she watched the little boy enter the bathroom. As her students left, she returned back to her classroom to clean up her room when she suddenly heard this crash. She looked over at the door and the little boy’s father had just slammed the door open and entered the room shirtless, screaming and cussing at her about his son.

What had apparently happened was that his son did not make it to the bathroom in time and the father saw that his son had gone to the bathroom in his pants. The father continued to yell and curse at Janet calling her a stupid teacher and asking how could she let a little kindergarten boy just go the bathroom in his pants. Nervous about what this irate father might do, Janet got to the classroom phone and called to the office and told the principal that she needed him in her classroom. While she listened to the cursing father her principal came into the classroom and confronted the tyrant father.

Janet’s principal began to get into the matter with the father and she began to think that the father and her principal were going to actually begin to have a fistfight right there in her class. Luckily there were no students or other parents around.

Eventually the principal demanded that the father leave the school grounds. The father left after yelling many threats and cursing at both Janet and the principal. The next day Janet’s principal took on the issue and got a restraining order against the parent. That parent was no longer allowed to be within 100 feet of the school grounds and was not allowed to pick up his child from school for the next three years.

Janet later found out that the father and the boy’s mother were going through a nasty divorce and that this was the father’s first time picking up his son since the split up. She also found out that the boy had put up a fight at home earlier that morning about going to his father’s home for the weekend.

From what Janet recalls, she said that she would not do anything differently had she been in the situation again. She said that her principal acted in a very supportive manner and helped get her out of the situation. Janet says that if it were to happen again that she would probably ask the parent to leave the room. She did not do that when this particular incident took place. Janet feels that we as teachers tend to take on more than we should and usually put up with combative parents more than we should.

Case #2:
Mary Jane is an assistant principal at a school in our district. She was my mentor teacher when I first began my teaching career and she has held many positions within the district. She used to teach in Virginia and has taught in California for the last 15 years. She is very well respected as an administrator and as an educational leader.

Mary Jane’s experience took place when she was still teaching about four years ago. The incident took place in her sixth grade classroom while the students were in the room. A father of a boy in her room stormed into her room demanding that he wanted to see her, now. Mary Jane asked the father to please step inside because she could not leave her class unattended. At that point the father kept demanding that she come outside. Mary Jane said that she was scared and thought there was no way that she was going to step outside with this irate parent. Mary Jane then suggested that he should go to the office and he complied. At this point Mary Jane found somebody to cover her classroom and she called for her head teacher as a witness. Mary Jane and her head teacher sat down with the father in the principal’s office to find out what was going on. As it turned out, the principal was out that day at a conference.

As Mary Jane listened to the irate father, she came to find out that the man’s son felt that Mary Jane did not like him because Mary Jane was making him do his class work when he did not want to do it. Apparently he wanted to take it home for homework. The father said that he saw nothing wrong with this as long as he got it done. At that point the father demanded that his son be transferred out of her classroom. Mary Jane said that was okay with her pending the principal’s final decision. Eventually the boy was transferred.

Mary Jane says that when she reflects back on the incident, that she feels that she handled it the best that she could. She says that she used try to reason with oppositional parents but now she has learned to let them just vent their anger and then try to reason with them in a calm and organized manner. She says that not saying anything in that type of situation is sometimes the best thing to do. Silence is golden.

Case #3:
Sarah is currently a sixth grade teacher at my site. She has been teaching for about six years and currently holds the learning specialist position. She team teaches with another teacher and specializes in language arts.

Sarah had an incident this year with an over bearing father who does not seem to trust anyone. Shortly after parent-teacher conferences, one of her female students received a bad score on a social studies test. After handing back the tests to the students, she received a phone call from this girl’s father. The father had called in an irate manner and wanted to have another conference with Sarah and her partner teacher. Sarah asked if there was anything that she could help him with over the phone and he went off on a tangent. Sarah said that she just let him vent his anger and then presented the facts to him after he had calmed down. Before the conversation was over the father requested a meeting with Sarah and the principal. She agreed and they set up an appointment. After the phone call with the father Sarah informed the mother that there was going to be a conference and she said that she did not want to be there because she felt that there was nothing wrong. The father felt otherwise. He continued to call as time went on up until their appointment time. When the day came, the father had to cancel due to a business trip.

In the meantime Sarah was finding that the student was not being all that truthful about her assignments to her parents and telling them at the last minute about when things were due. The father felt as though Sarah was giving the assignments without enough notice. Little did the father know that his daughter was playing him against her teacher.

As time went on the conference never happened and the student started to receive outside tutoring. Her grades starting to improve but there was still room for improvement. Then one day the father came in to talk to Sarah about how his daughter was improving and after he pointed out all of the improvements Sarah quickly agreed and then proceeded to inform the father of where his daughter needed to still improve. At that point the father became enraged and started yelling with his face becoming red and flushed. He had a few choice words for Sarah and then left.

There was later a conference with the father, Sarah, and the principal. When the report cards came out, they showed an improvement in the student’s progress in social studies. After the conference and the release of the report cards, the issue was dropped. The father has not been in the classroom since, nor has he called.

As Sarah reflected upon the incident she feels that she could have handled it differently by going along with the praise that he wanted when he came in to show the progress that his daughter had made. She felt that she jumped the gun a bit by immediately pointing out the student’s weaknesses instead of focusing on the strengths and improvements that she had made and then showing areas that the student could still improve in. Sarah feels that she could have avoided the whole conference and yelling incident had she been a little more sensitive to the father’s praise seeking. Sarah pointed out that the parents are divorced and that the father really does not trust women very much. Sarah said that during her discussions with the parent that he would continually degrade his ex-wife, and show a constant distrust in his daughter. It also showed in the fact that he did not trust Sarah and her grading system on the social studies tests.

Case #4:
Jon is the principal at my site. He is new to our site this year and has been an administrator for the past four years. This is his first principalship. He is very well liked by the community and has made a positive impact on our staff and school.

Jon recalls having a time with an oppositional parent that almost physically hit him while he was an assistant principal two years ago. Jon had just come in to the office through his back door after attending some business elsewhere on campus. He was asked by the principal to take care of okaying the release of a child to his father. Apparently the father had just been divorced from his wife and this was the first time he had picked him up. Jon was checking the school records to make sure that the student could be legally released to the father. After finding that it was okay and releasing the boy to his father, the father became enraged at Jon for not trusting him. The father asked why would they question the release of a student to their own parent? Jon proceeded to explain the need for the procedure, which in turn made the father even more enraged. He started screaming and swearing in the office in front of the other parents and students.

At this point Jon asked the father to leave. This is when the father grabbed Jon’s shoulder and started pointing his finger in Jon’s face. While this was happening, the office staff started backing up while someone called the sheriff. Jon said that he truly thought that the father was going to hit him. Jon said that he just kind of sat there not knowing what to do or say. Finally the father stormed out of the door and took his son home.

After the incident, the sheriff arrived and they filed a report. A restraining order was filed and the father was not allowed within one hundred feet of the campus for the next three years.

After reflecting upon the incident Jon learned that another teacher who worked at his site had an encounter with the very same father at a totally different site. The father had a restraining order against him there as well. As it turned out, Jon’s principal knew about this parent and his history but was too busy at the time to explain the situation. Jon feels that he dealt with the situation the best he could but wishes that his principal would have given him some fore warning. Jon also feels that he could have tried to ask the father to take control of himself and leave or he was going to call the sheriff. Jon did not know that someone had already done that.