Parents and Teachers Working Together by Brett Novick

Author:Brett Novick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Chapter 6

Top Ten List

The Top Ten Most Challenging Parent/Family Types

Sometimes the only answer people are looking for when they ask for help is that they won’t have to face the problem, alone.

—Mark Amend*

Every school and every district has them—challenging parents. These are the few, the 2% of parents who occupy 95% of your time. They leave you pulling out the few gray hair that you have left after a few years of having their children under your tutelage. I want to be clear, these are not your ordinary (the majority of) run-of-the-mill delightful parents. No, these are the difficult ones that earn reputations and make faculty and administrators alike cringe. They are scattered in every school district and, though their names and faces may be different, their behaviors, goals, and attitudes are markedly the same.

Before I discuss these parents I want something to be abundantly clear. The personality types of the parents below are stereotypes meant to highlight varying parental idiosyncractic traits of those you may find in a school setting.It is no way meant to be disrespectful to the parent(s). Parents have developed various ways of handling issues in order to get to the end result—providing their child what they need.

If you are a parent, you understand the highs and lows, the frustrations, as well as the rewards of your role. You also will know the heartbreak of when your child fails, when he or she is failed, or when he or she comes home feeling disappointed or sad. This is when we all do our very best to get what is needed for the child by any way possible. Each parent uses the tools they feel comfortable with to get what their child needs.

Likewise, the more tools you have at your disposal the better you are able to handle parental issues. If you only have one or two tools on your tool belt, you are limited in what you can fix. However, if you have a multitude of tools (including those out of your comfort zone), they will help determine your marketability in repairing challenging interactions.

The Top 13 Difficult Parental Types

1. The “My child is an angel and you are all at fault” parent: This is the parent who believes that their child is never, ever, at fault. It is the school, faculty, or students that somehow provoke and victimize their child (though it is proven time and time again that this is contrary to fact).

• This parent tends to staunchly defend and protect their child from the potential of any natural or logical consequences. They equate protecting their son/daughter with defending him or her from any potential negative criticism (even when it is warranted). They will observe things in regard to their child in very “black and white” terminology. They will view teachers and administrators in a very concrete manner of great educator or bitter enemy, and hold their child to an impossibly high standard that most children could never reach.

• Stick to the facts with these parents and avoid the pitfall of getting sucked into their emotional whirlpool.

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