A bit of a moan coming up - so what's new!! One of the parents came to me on Friday saying their kid wouldn't be in Monday morning as they were going to look at another school. "Moving house?" I asked? "No, just thinking of going to another school" the parent replied.

This mother is a right pain in the neck - spent the whole of last year complaining her daughter was being bullied, and ended up being brought in to sit in the head techers office to peer through the curtains and see that her daughter kept playing with these girls who were supposedly bullying her. The girl is bright and has settled down now, and indeed, is one of my brightest kids, but the mother is still not happy. Which brings me to my moan...parents!! OK, not all, just some.

One of my most depressing days as a teacher was when I was shopping in Sainsburys and met a parent. "Oh hello" she said, "how are you? You taught my children didn't you but I can't remember your name." Not only had I taught her troublesome daughter for a year (and had her coming in once a week for chats about her behaviour), I had her lively but likable son for 2 years - and he had only just left my class! I had spent many hours trying to help her children, writing reports on them, trying to do my best for them. I could have told her about her son's reading and writing, about his attitude to work, and his quite amazing ability to talk for an entire lesson yet STILL do loads of work!(That used to drive the other kids mad!) I was just depressed because I realised that I could have told her all that, while she didn't even know my name...

Of course, there are some lovely parents, but a minority of them view us as little more than babysitters, sending in their kids when they are sick because they have no one else to look after them. A recent event had us calling in a parent because her child was covered in spots, and an ex-nurse on the staff suspected measles. The mother was FAR more annoyed at being called into school than for her child's welfare. She returned an hour later claiming she had taken the child to a doctor who said there was nothing wrong with her ans she was "run down". Anyone knows you just cannot get a doctor's appointment that quick, and how many doctors would even *say* that a child was run down??? She just wanted to get the child back into its day care...sorry, education! This same mother had just spent £100 on hair extensions, while her older daughter had told her teacher how pleased she was, because she had managed to buy herself a PE kit from a charity shop and still had some of her pocket money left!

Anyway, it's the minority that just really get your back up and make you wonder why you bother sometimes. There are many compensations, good things about teaching(I'll have to blog about that instead of whinging sometime! ), but I thought I'd rant about one of THE biggest pains!!! Sorry about that..Moan over.