Sassy Guardians

We aaaaaaaall have them in our classes. THOSE parents. You know exactly which parents I’m talking about.

The ones who email you at all hours of the day and night, the ones who question every single decision you make, the ones displeased with every paper sent home.  Dealing with sassy parents and guardians can be super stressful. But, it doesn’t have to be!

In this episode of Real Teacher Talk, I dive into this topic and discuss where this behavior might be coming from, how to see these parents and guardians through a different lens, and how to navigate tricky conversations. I also chat about simple ways to adapt what you’re already doing to clear up potential misunderstandings, and how to build trust.

While sassy parents and guardians can be a challenge, the families of our students are a critical piece of the puzzle for student success! When we can successfully navigate these relationships, we help set our students up for a positive school experience.

Resources Mentioned:
What Teachers Wish Parents Knew blog post

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Transcript

00:00

If you have a parent or caregiver in your classroom right now who's kind of stressing you out, you know the parent to emails you all hours of the day, they're constantly questioning teaching choices or things that you're doing in your classroom or things that you're not doing, and you want to pull your hair out. Well, if you do this episodes for you, this is one area I really, really struggled with. Because I'm very much a black and white thinker. I'm very much for fairness. And I often felt as a teacher, sometimes really disrespected by parents. And I think to myself, if you talk to me like this on the streets, it would look like a different story. But because you're an employee of the school district, you have to be professional. 

And as an adult, sometimes it feels really hard, especially because someone just isn't being kind. So today's episode is not talking about the parents, or caregivers who are disrespectful, who are calling you names who are a bit out of hand, we're not talking about those parents, that's a whole another episode for another day, what we are talking about is the parents that you probably encounter fairly often. And I have a different perspective now as a parent, than maybe I did a couple of years ago, when I wasn't, and at the end of the day, the reason why parents are emailing you, or micromanaging or whatever it may look like, often comes from a lack of control. And this is something I talked with my last principal about because I was I was struggling with this one mom, who

01:55

I don't think ever said anything nice. The emails are always complaining. It was Why are you doing this? Why aren't you sending me this reminder, you know, just being really rude. I mean, downright rude. And I was getting frustrated, because I felt like I was bending over backwards, I was doing everything I could to really support this family. And no matter what I did, it just wasn't good enough, nothing was going to make me happy. And so my principal said, hey, look, because she deals with this all the time, right with parents, she says it's not about you. It's about this parent. And it's about the lack of control that she's feeling in her life. And because she doesn't have that she's trying to control whatever she can with her daughter, or with that situation. And I learned just last week at therapy, because I do the same thing. 

And I'm nervous about what I'm going to be you know, a parent, who's a former teacher, and my students classes are my student, my kids, my own kids. But my therapist said, Kristen, the reason why you constantly need to control the day. And what it looks like is because it's an anxiety or like a trauma based way to comfort yourself. And it was really, really eye opening, because I thought I was just getting ahead of potential problems, which does serve me really well as a mom and as a teacher, and of the course creator behind easy organization tools, but it also causes a lot of anxiety. So if we can look at it from that lens, when caregivers are sending the emails, and the phone calls and wanting all the meetings to how we interpret maybe question what we're doing is really coming from anxiety, and fear and a lack of control. And if you think about it from that lens, you know, maybe they're, they're worried their child's not getting the best education, or maybe they're worried they're falling through the cracks. That's more about them than it is about you. And so maybe if we can look at it from that lens, and realize it's not a personal attack on us, even though it feels that way, right? That it's more about them.

04:18

And so here's a couple things, you can do five things that you can do with those parents, you know, or stressing you out a bit.

04:27

So first things first, when you get that email, or you get the phone call, I like to take a moment and not respond immediately. This is the number one reason why I took email off my phone off my iPad, why I stopped checking it when I got home was because I would let it ruin my night when I get an email like that I'm emotional. I'm anxious. And so it really bummed me out. So I took that off. And then I wanted just to give myself some time to think about it.

05:00

Do not respond right away, you probably already know this. But the response is going to look a lot different than if you gave it time to kind of cool down and process it.

05:12

Second thing you can do is try to keep it student centered. So whenever you respond back, or make a phone call, keep it around the student, and what you're going to do together to do whatever you can to support that student and do what is best for him or for her. So keep it student centered. Now, if you get that, that email, and they are just on a good one, right, you know, maybe they had a couple glasses of wine, those emails typically come in the evening time, maybe they just got into an argument with their spouse had a bad day at work, and you're going to take the brunt of that, then that's when it may be better to have a phone call, within like 2448 hours, I feel like a lot can get lost in translation. 

And because I'm very blunt and direct, some people tell me it can come across a little bit rude. So sometimes just having that phone call, where you keep it student centered that way really, really helps. The third thing, and this is not something I'm great at, especially if someone's being in my opinion rude is to show empathy, to let them know I hear what you're saying validate their feelings. I'm so sorry, this happened, I hear that you're frustrated, because whatever is they, they want to be heard. And if you look at it in your own life, you know, maybe with your spouse, when I look at it with my husband, I just want him to hear that I'm frustrated. And then talk about like next steps, what can be the solution. So you're going to be showing empathy and validating. And then the fourth thing, which is really, really powerful, is to ask them, what's the outcome you'd like to see? So maybe they're upset about an assessment that their child brought home? They didn't do so well on it. Okay, well, what do you want to see? What do you want to happen? And sometimes that helps

07:27

kind of cut through all the nonsense, the background story, whatever it is, and it's just like, Okay, what do you want the solution to be? What can we do to work together to maybe make that happen, or come up with some sort of alternative.

07:43

And then the fifth thing is to really set those boundaries. Sometimes we feel stressed, because, you know, I'm responding to an email at nighttime, after my husband did and unload the dishwasher. And I'm annoyed. So I may read that email coming from a place of already being annoyed. So if you set email boundaries, or email office hours, which I've shared a lot about inside the easy organization tools program, so maybe you check email from 8am to 4pm.

08:17

So you're letting them know upfront, hey, I'm available at this time, I may be available to get back to you, I can't promise anything. But this is typically when I have time, I'm able to respond. And then that way, you know, the stress isn't so much there at nights or on the weekends, because you don't even know that email is sitting in your inbox.

08:42

How does that sound and then I'm going to throw in a sprinkle in a couple little things that I would do to kind of set the tone for the year because this was an area I knew I wanted to improve, where I didn't want the way parents were talking to me. And by the way, I don't mean all parents. I had many amazing, lovely parents. But for some reason, it's human nature. I focused on the negative ones, or the ones that really

09:13

the ones that I really allowed to stress me out. So some things that I did to build those relationships. And you're probably already doing this is communicating effectively. And often. You know, sometimes people are I found parents would email often because maybe they were unclear about an assignment. So I started getting more clear, and my newsletters and rather than sending monthly newsletters, I went to weekly newsletters where I explained what we're doing for the week, so that eliminated some confusion, or I was more clear about

09:48

due dates and things that were coming up. Because you know, I'd get those emails like hey, why didn't you tell me about picture day and it's like I did, but maybe I need to be doing it in a different way. So those emails come in laughs

10:00

less often. So look at the type of emails and if you're seeing a pattern, that's really where we got to reflect as teachers on look at, hey, what is my role in this? What can I do to decrease the amount of confusion maybe that's happening to make it easier for families, because I'm telling you, as a parent of two now, and just seeing how much busier my plate is, as a human being, than it was pre kids, I get trying to juggle all the due dates, and all the things in the spirit weeks and the assignments and whatever it is, and lives only in preschool. So I can only imagine what its gonna look like when she gets a little bit bigger. But that's the lens, I like to look at it, something else you can do to really build that trust. And I've shared about this before. And I learned about this, I think from Ron Clark years ago, when he was on Oprah, he would go visit students in their school or their homes that I don't do, that I did not have time for or didn't make time for. But instead, I would send a friendly email once a month to every student in my class. 

So I use my plan. But you can use your grading checklist, whatever it looks like. And each week, I'd send about five friendly emails, really simple with a heading or the subject saying friendly email. Because if you don't do that, you can give families a heart attack when they see that an email from the teacher like, oh, gosh, what happened. And then I would just point out something that I appreciated about the child, some area of progress, a win that they had, how helpful they were being to another student or to myself, whatever it may be. So that way, if you have to send an email in between, or maybe they're happy in between the next friendly email, your communication isn't always about a roadblock or a challenge or something that's happening. So that way, they're more likely to be on your side and work together to support their child, when they're also getting positive feedback. So that's something really helpful. And then the third, and this is hard for me, is to not take it personal. Most of the time, it's not about you, it's an outside factor. And you just happen to be the person taking the brunt of whatever frustration, fear, anxiety, lack of control that they're going through.

12:36

I'm gonna say that, again, it's not personal. My first reaction, my gut reaction is always straight up, to get annoyed, roll my eyes to get frustrated. And if I were back in the classroom right now, that would be a massive area, that I'd want to grow as an educator, and as a human. Because sometimes, you know, when you're being critiqued, I don't want to say called out because it's not being called out. But you know, when people aren't being so nice, you know, it can be frustrating, because in everyday life, when we communicate with people like that, you know, you can choose not to be around them. You know, if you have a friend who's like that you can choose not to respond, you can choose to say, Hey, you're being really rude right now. And you know, with parents and caregivers, that looks a lot different. So deep breaths, hang in there, you can take your power your control back a little bit, right. And by keeping it student centered, by building that trust, showing empathy, asking them what outcome is it that they'd like to see and set those boundaries so that getting to interact with parents is more positive than it is a little bit frustrating or negative.

14:05

All right, everyone. Thanks again for being here. This week on real teacher talk. I can't wait to see you next week and make sure to take some time for you today. You deserve it.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

email, parents, caregivers, student, week, talking, respond, teacher, due dates, feel, control, rude, frustrated, empathy, phone call, area, lens, anxiety, friendly, child