Dealing with difficult parents can present a challenge

Unfortunately, not all parent-teacher interaction is a warm and fuzzy experience. Even teachers who are welcoming, friendly and comfortable with parents in the classroom may occasionally find themselves faced with a difficult parent who puts them to the test.

In an article titled "Parents Behaving Badly," Time magazine describes a new breed of "pushy parents" who make life difficult for teachers. "Teachers say that parents have double standards: 'Push hard, but not too hard; maintain discipline, but don't punish my child.' … Some talk about the 'dry-cleaner parents' who drop their rambunctious kids off in the morning and expect them to be returned at the end of the day all clean and proper and practically sealed in plastic."

Janet Winsor can relate to this. "In the district where I used to teach, parents were very involved in every kind of process," recalls Winsor, a member of the Mount Diablo Education Association. "That was good in many ways. Parents made sure their kids were prepared for school, had all the supplies and were provided enrichment at home." Most of the parents were very helpful, she says, but at least a couple of parents each year would make life extremely difficult.

"One of the most common complaints was that they didn't think I was challenging their children enough," says Winsor. "One parent wanted to know why I wasn't teaching Johnny precalculus in fourth grade."

She figures the students were primed for problems by parents who were constantly asking them if they were bored. "Some parents openly said that teachers in the district should be paid less than teachers in other school districts, because their children were so much brighter and teachers didn't have to work as hard."

The pressure was especially intense on newer teachers, one of whom quit midyear, says Winsor.

Of all the challenges they face, "new teachers rank handling parents at the top," according to the Time article. It's one of the reasons so many new teachers leave the profession.

One of Winsor's students was extremely sarcastic and becoming a behavior problem in class, she recalls. "If I asked her to sit down, she would sit down on the floor instead of going to her seat. She knew exactly what she was doing." When Winsor contacted the parents, they blamed Winsor for the daughter's behavior and demanded that she document every interaction.

"Principals in wealthier schools are sometimes afraid to stand up to parents, because parents are giving the school thousands of dollars to spend in any way the principal thinks is necessary," adds Winsor. "In my former district, one auction would raise half a million dollars. Even if a principal wants to support teachers, he or she may not have the backbone."

The effort to involve parents in their children's education is important to academic success, but not always easy, notes Time: "At a time when competition is rising and resources are strained, when battles over testing and accountability force schools to adjust their priorities, when cell phones and e-mail speed up the information flow, and all kinds of private ghosts and public quarrels creep into the parent-teacher conference, it's harder for both sides to step back and breathe deeply and look at the goals they share."

Such is the case of Fern James, a second-grade teacher at Ayers Elementary School in Mount Diablo.

A mother demanded that her child be transferred into James' class when another teacher notified her that the child was at risk for retention. Even with the transfer, the mother was unhappy, says James. "One morning before school she showed up and demanded to meet with me now! I explained that I had to focus on getting ready for class."

Shortly thereafter, the mother announced that she wanted to be a classroom volunteer. James, who trains parents to assist her in the classroom, told the mother that school rules required her to get fingerprinted before she could volunteer. "She didn't want to do that and instead she insisted on 'observing.' Her agenda was really to look for fault. She was told that she could observe for 30 minutes, but she stayed until the secretary asked her to leave. She was distracting my students by talking to other parent volunteers.

"I was stressed to the max and felt completely harassed and pushed up against the wall. I also felt frustrated because I had 19 other children who deserved time and attention."

What really helped was when the union president contacted the principal and said the parent's observations "went beyond reasonable." At that point, the parent's harassment ended.

"The big thing is to focus on the future and not the present or past," says Todd Whitaker, co-author of Dealing With Difficult Parents (And With Parents in Difficult Situations)."Parents may never agree about what happened in the past, or what you're doing now, but they will agree that in the future they never want it to happen again."

For example, if a student is facing the possibility of an F in your class, Whitaker suggests asking the parent, "What can we do the second half of the grading period so he has more success? You and I both want him to do better, don't we?"

Lakewood School in Paramount, which had students bused in from a gang-infested community, used to have a reputation for parent problems, says Chris Carey, president of the Teachers Association of Paramount (TAP). "Some parents would try to break down the door, or slam the door and swear at you." Office staff acted as a first line of defense, but angry parents would sometimes break through.

"It's hard for the children to have respect for teachers when parents are swearing and screaming at them," says Carey.

But things are much calmer these days because teachers decided to look for ways to resolve the problem. TAP members Luz Avila and Lynessa Vaughn decided to take on teacher-parent relations at Lakewood as a project to satisfy a college course requirement. In addition to earning college credit, they earned the respect and admiration of Carey, who describes the duo's work at Lakewood as "groundbreaking."

"We decided that, first of all, we really wanted to get the parents involved," says Avila, a third-grade teacher. "In the past, we had a low number of parents coming into the classroom as volunteers or joining teachers for parent nights. We decided to try to make school more welcoming and friendly. Some parents were asked to volunteer at something they found nonthreatening, like art. And they loved it. Parents started to see teachers as approachable and realized that we're here to help."

"It's been very beneficial for parents to see our everyday interaction with students," she adds. "They get familiar with the curriculum and pick up on strategies that work in the classroom, and begin using them at home. And when students see their parents demonstrating a caring attitude as volunteers, they are more willing to give their best effort in the classroom."

One success has led to another. The site literacy coach joined with teachers to offer workshops on reading fluency and taught parents how they could support literacy at home. Then, because many homes were devoid of books, decodable books were sent home on loan.

After the parent outreach campaign, signup sheets were distributed to parents asking them to participate in a Pizza and Math Night. Instead of only a handful of parents participating as had been the case in the past, more than 100 parents showed up, much to the amazement of staff. Likewise, 600 students and parents showed up for a Cuddle Up and Read Night at the school.

"I think something like this has a huge amount of importance," says Vaughn. "The kids feel supported and feel that their parents and teachers are on the same page."

Things still aren't perfect at Lakewood. Last June, Vaughn had a parent get extremely upset when her son lost his jacket. When Vaughn suggested looking in the lost and found, she was sworn at and accused of not caring. The parent called the principal to complain and also came into Vaughn's classroom in an angry state.

But Vaughn had new skills to use in handling her. "I told her I felt uncomfortable with her there, and that if we were going to talk about it, I wanted to have a witness. Once I said I needed to have a witness, everything got calmer."

While things aren't perfect, they are much better. "Toward the end of the day, you see parents at the gate picking up their children, and lots of them are waving and smiling," says Vaughn. "I think we've definitely succeeded in making school more welcoming here."