16 teachers share the story of the absolute worst parent they ever dealt with.

Entitled parents who think their child was carved by a team of goddesses and therefore incapable of ever getting a grade below an A+ can be extra special nightmares at the student-teacher conference...

So, when a Reddit user asked teachers everywhere, 'Who was the worst parent you've ever had to deal with?' educators who work with students (and unfortunately their parents too) were ready to gossip.

1.

As a music teacher, I had a mother of a student who would crash choir rehearsal for our Christmas concert and try to 'demonstrate' how she had learned to sing 'O Holy Night,' when she had been a student.

Not only was her pitch 3 cents short of a dollar, but it took the principal and custodian to escort her OUT of the rehearsal room. For their part, the students thought it was a 'planned comedy.' It, however, was not! - Back2Bach

2.

Not the worst but definitely up there with the stupidest. Currently dealing with a parent who thought I that I taught their kid about Jihad. We had Holidays Around the World before our Winter Break.

Each teacher took a holiday and explained it through activities, videos, music, food etc. I chose Diwali and decorated my room in lights, had a fun writing/coloring activity and a child friendly video about the holiday.

The student then goes home and tells the parent that I was teaching about killing and about a religion that started with a J. The parents questioned their child to the point of him crying. I asked him about it and he said that they wouldn't let him leave it alone and he ended up crying for awhile about it.

The parent said they knew it wasn't the Jewish religion so then it had to be Jihad. What!?! Jihad?!?! That's a religion?!?! And if it was a religion why would I be teaching that to my elementary classroom? Seriously, face palm.

The best is that the parent CC'ed my boss on the email without talking to me at all about it. My boss usually faults on the side of his teachers so I'm not worried about that but I just couldn't believe a well educated adult thought that Jihad was a religion. And she asked her husband and he agreed it had to be Jihad as well!!!!! If that is the mindset going in that child's home they have a lot to overcome. - [deleted]

3.

My first teaching job, I had a fifth grader who was THE WOOOOORST (Jean-Ralphio voice). He would literally just stand up in the middle of class, laugh like a madman, and run out of my classroom. He also did a few things in the bathroom that no sane child would ever do, mostly involving feces.

I was new, so I asked around to see if this kid had a history of bad behavior. All of his previous teachers said he was actually one of the better-behaved kids, and he was pretty smart. No previous history of this kind of attitude or behavior whatsoever. They were baffled.

We (and by 'we' I mean 'all the fifth grade teachers and the principal') met with his parents 4 times in two months, trying to determine the cause of all of this. In the first three meetings, his parents were cooperative, but seemed a little slow. They couldn't think of any reason why little Jamal would act in such a way.

In the fourth meeting, I said 'listen, kids don't just flip a switch like this. Jamal has ZERO history of disciplinary problems until this year. Can you think of ANYTHING that happened between 4th and 5th grade that might affect his psychological makeup?'

They said 'Oh! Jamal's uncle was found shot dead in our home this summer. Jamal was the one who discovered his body.' Something that could have been brought to my attention YESTERDAY!!! - somanytictoc

4.

My father once had a parent pull a gun on him during a parent teacher conference. Eventually they got him to calm down and put it away. - bryansnameistaken

5.

Keith's mom. Keith was a 10th grader and I was new to teaching. He was such a pain in the neck. Didn't do any work. Mouthed off. Got other students distracted. I ended up calling his mom about half a dozen times, asking her to come in and meet with me to talk about the situation. She never returned my calls.

And then one day, out of the blue, she showed up to talk to me. She didn't look happy to be there but hey, at least she came, right? I thanked her for being there and began to talk about how Keith was doing. She looked around the room while I spoke, and her body language made it very clear she didn't want to be there.

After a few minutes, she interrupted me, looking straight at me for the first time. 'Look,' she said. 'I gave up on that kid a long time ago. You want to try to do something with him, you go ahead. I wish you luck.' And then she got up and left.

I felt sick. This was her son. He was maybe 15, still a KID, for crying out loud. In the days that followed, I thought about Keith a lot. In class, I did my best to see him through fresh eyes. I made a point of talking to him more.

And at some point, I realized that for all the headaches he caused, I actually liked having him in class. Turns out he was a funny guy. He had a big heart. After a while he even started doing some work. Not a lot, but some.

One day, another kid in class was being really smug and obnoxious. Without warning, Keith punched the kid in the face. He sighed and looked at me. 'I'm really sorry. Had to be done. I'll escort myself down to the office.' I guess that was the last straw for the school, because Keith was sent to an alternative school in the district. A good one, thankfully.

I saw Keith one more time, about a year later. He came to my class, grinning, a report card in hand. All A's. 'I decided it was time to get my $#*! together,' he said, simply. I never saw him again, but I heard he continued to do well. And I'm glad that though others gave up on him, he decided not to give up on himself. -

[deleted]

6.

A parent created an extremely extensive treatise on how the traditional methods of grading should be scrapped. They ended up e-mailing it to every staff member in the school. They did not, however, ever address the fact that their child did not turn in a single homework assignment between December and June. - dostoyevsky23

7.

My roommate is a preschool teacher. She has a student in her class who is very, very rambunctious, and she has a pretty good line of communication with the boy's mother, as she is not in denial about her son's behavioral issues. She also has a girl in her class who is spoiled rotten, used to getting everything she wants immediately.

One afternoon, my roommate was waiting on parents to pick up the kids, and she was chatting with the mother of Rambunctious Boy. All of the sudden, the mother of Spoiled Girl bursts into the room. She starts yelling... at Rambunctious Boy. Apparently he had pushed Spoiled Girl on the playground the day before.

Spoiled Girl didn't tell my roommate or the other teacher, just her mom, and she also told her mom that Rambunctious Boy didn't get punished (since she didn't say anything to the teachers). Mom decides to take this out not on the teachers, but on this 4-year-old boy. She screams at him not to touch her daughter and that there would be consequences and blah blah.

Obviously, Rambunctious Boy starts crying, my roommate and the other mother are just in shock, and Spoiled Girl and her mom turn and leave in a huff. Congratulations, lady. You just bullied a four-year-old into crying. I really hope you feel good about yourself. - [deleted]

8.

In terms of ANNOYING, we have a mom who is self-admittedly OCD. She goes completely nuts over anything being 'dirty.' This extends to our rooms and her child. If we have lots of toys on the floor (in a room full of toddlers, that is 99.99% of the time yes), she freaks out and starts complaining.

We have to strip her child every single meal because he's a messy eater and mom is in such deep denial about that fact that she goes nuclear if he has even a crumb on his clothes. She brings this kid in in name-brand designer clothing and goes ballistic if it's dirty at all. Some days, he walks around naked more often than not.

Yesterday we painted and she went nuclear over that fact. She told me, well yeah, the paint washes out well ((she asked which one I used and I told her the one I used last week; I only use the paint that washes out well)), but still, ew! Eugh! Omg! She tells me all the time that her son is happy here and that she can never get him to do art at home -- that I 'come up with these great project ideas that [she] could never think of!' -- but that's because she does art that explicitly isn't messy.

Crayons and colored pencils, neatly contained in the little box. I let her son get into the paint with sponges, brushes, and hands. I clean him up well afterwards -- she's never complained about that -- but sometimes it gets on clothes, smock or no smock.

Still, she complaints and whines on a regular basis. I don't know what you want me to do - do you want me to put your kid aside and not allow him to have fun? If he sits over there and says NO, NO, NO when I ask him to come paint, then by all means, I won't make him - there are a couple kids in my class that refuse to paint.

But he's engaged, he's learning, and he's having fun. That's what you pay me to do with your child. I'm not a babysitter; I'm a teacher. Yes, I do diapers, serve meals, and wipe up puke, but beyond that I'm trying to encourage learning and creative play. At this age, that often becomes messy. Sorry. - AnyelevNokova

9.

I had the parents of a Muslim student demand to me that their son be excused while my student teacher taught lessons to the class because she's a woman and no son of theirs would be taught by a woman. I told them that's fine, but he's still responsible for the materials he missed (this would be every class over a 3 week period). They freaked out, called me a racist and went to the principal over my head who promptly told them that their son would be responsible for any material he missed. - [deleted]

10.

One of my favorite moments:

I walk into the school office to check my mailbox. A parent of one of my students sees me and says very loudly, almost screaming, 'Oh, FINALLY!!!! LOOK, EVERYONE, I FOUND A TEACHER!!! Do you realize that I left work EARLY to come here after school to talk to my son's teachers about his report card, and you are LITERALLY the ONLY teacher I have found?!!!

I went from classroom to classroom and everyone is GONE!!! Do you know what time it is?!! It's 3:45pm! School ended FIFTEEN MINUTES AGO!!! FIFTEEN MINUTES!!!! And you're the ONLY teacher STILL HERE!!!! CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO ME WHY EVERYONE IS GONE?! CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO ME WHY EVERY TEACHER HAS LEFT THE BUILDING WHEN SCHOOL JUST GOT OUT?!!!!'

I paused, waiting to see if there was more. When I realized he had finished, I said, 'All the teachers are in the library. We're having a faculty meeting.'

The look on his face was priceless. He knew he was in the wrong, but by that point he had committed so fiercely to his anger and righteousness that he couldn't just apologize. So he said, 'Well that's just irresponsible.' And he walked out of the office. - woolyboy76

11.

Any parent of a college age student that thinks they still need or can do anything about their child's grade. I've had at least one student all 4 terms I taught freshman biology labs call my admin about why there is someone with a BS in Physics teaching their precious child Biology, what does he know about grading lab reports, and they need to change their precious child's grade on the last report that was supposed to be 10 pages with graphs they their innocent perfect child turned in only 1 page with no graph from an 'F' to the more fair 'A' grade. - Rockman507

12.

I just got back from an internship at a German 'Gymnasium' (high school directed towards kids who would normally go to college after). This school was also a boarding school and one of the kids is a complete twat waffle. He steals and drinks and bullies everyone else then plays dumb as if he didn't know what was up.

His mother is probably the biggest problem parent I had to deal with at the school, but I was an intern so the real teachers had to deal with way worse I believe. His mother ignores everything bad we told her about her kid. He is a saint who can do no wrong to her, and he's too fragile to ride the train home so every other week and on holidays she drives across Germany to pick him up.

He got caught stealing from 3 other kids that lived next door to him, but his mom always gives some bullsh*t excuse like 'Oh, he's under so much pressure, you all just blame him for everything!'

Meanwhile D*ckless is growing up to have no future because he refuses to participate in school and can't stop acting out. There is probably a problem here that needs treatment but I am a college student and those teachers are way overworked as it is. - TheQuiter

13.

My wife is the principal of an expensive Chinese daycare. Like, really expensive. Every parent drives a BMW or better. A three-year old once ran away from the group during a field trip. The teacher, an incredibly mild woman, caught the kid and asked him if he thought what he did was good or bad. She didn't hit him, she didn't even criticize him or make him go in time out -- she just asked him if he thought it was a good thing to do.

The mother freaked out. Not because her child nearly went missing - she was furious that any type of discipline whatsoever was administered. My wife was on the phone with her until 2:00 AM while this woman screamed, 'She has no right to tell my child what to do! Who does she think she is?!'

Fortunately, the woman became angry enough that she pulled her kid out a few days later. But that teacher is now so terrified to discipline her students that her class is out of control. -takenorinvalid

14.

I had a parent of a kindergartner tell me, in all seriousness, that she was told by their church prophet that my student was sent to lead the world into salvation. Her little girl was the second coming of Christ. Gee, no pressure. 'Here, teach the Christ-child to read.' Plus, she was one of the meanest children I ever taught. - esk_209

15.

I've been pretty lucky - most of my parents have been cool, supportive, and laid back. I did, however, have one mom who stalked me heavily online, not because she liked me, but because she wanted to constantly talk about her daughter's (supposed lack of) progress.

She sent me friend requests repeatedly, showed up at the school once while I was teaching to ask me why I didn't accept her request. She somehow got my personal email and began emailing my personal email rather than my work email.

She also told her daughter to follow me home one day so she could 'stop by' sometime (thankfully the daughter told me about this in advance and she didn't do it).

It finally ended when the daughter was pulled from the school only after a lawsuit was filed declaring negligence on our part for 'meeting the student's needs' (the daughter was a straight B student who didn't really act out too much and seemed to enjoy school). - BosskHogg

16.

I was teaching a sweet 13 year old girl, who obviously couldn't see the board very well and needed glasses as she was falling behind in class. I called her mother, her mum told me to f*ck off and that 'I didn't need f*cking glasses, my mother didn't need f*cking glasses so she doesn't need any f*cking glasses' and hung up. - breakyourbad