What is the craziest parent conference you’ve experienced as a school teacher?

Divorced parents who share parent/teacher conference times are always the worst. It’s awkward for all involved.

Several years ago, I taught three siblings in the same year. Their father was the coolest, nicest guy you’d ever meet. He chaperoned field trips, helped out in the classroom when necessary, and basically was really supportive of his children’s education. He also had primary custody of all three children.

The mother was a total bitch.

For whatever reason, we (all of the teachers who taught all three kids) ended up conferencing with both parents at the same time. I think it was just for logistical convenience. Rather than six different 10-minute conferences, we just did one big 30-minute conference with both parents.

That was a mistake.

The mother nit-picked and criticized everything anyone said, from her ex-husband to the teachers. She wanted to see all of the documentation for everything, even though everything we were saying was positive. She wanted to know how we were “challenging” her children. She criticized her ex-husband’s clothes. “Why would you wear that to meet with the teachers?” She turned every criticism back to him somehow. And the whole time, he just sat back, like it wasn’t fazing him.

The teachers just kept looking around at each other like: “Does anyone else see what’s happening? This woman is out of control. She’s complaining about nothing and really putting down her ex husband, right in front of him.”

I felt so bad for the guy. I could see why he left her. I wondered how such a cool, laid-back guy ended up with a woman like that in the first place.

I learned, later, as he and I chatted during a field trip he was chaperoning with me, that his wife wasn’t always that way. According to him, her personality changed when their youngest child was a toddler. She “made some new friends” at work, and he suspected she was doing drugs with them. They were divorced within two years, and he got primary custody of the children because, in his words, “she didn’t care enough to argue for her own kids.”

The children went to their mother’s house every other weekend and, according to them, the mother was equally nit-picky and critical of everything while they were with her, and they’d learned to ignore it. I’m told that, once they were old enough to decide for themselves, they quit going to her house.