When Your Child Says ‘Some Of My Teachers Mock Me’: What I Learned As A Mom
The crumbs from Leo’s chocolate chip granola bar were scattered across our kitchen table, his muddy cross country socks propped on the leg of my chair, when he mumbled it. I was folding his gray soccer hoodie, the one I’d spilled iced coffee on last weekend, and almost missed it. “What was that, bug?” I said, tossing the hoodie into the clean pile. He stared at his phone for a second, then lifted his chin and said it again, slower: “Some of my teachers mock me. Not all. Just two.”
I froze. My first thought was to grab my phone, find the principal’s email, and type out a furious message. Then I waited, let him talk. He told me about Mr. Henderson, his math teacher, who’d called on him last week when he forgot his notebook. Leo has ADHD, so forgetting things is just part of his daily life, but Mr. Henderson had leaned against the front desk and said, “Wow, you brought your water bottle for practice but not your notebook? Must be all those miles taking up all your brain space.” The whole class laughed. Leo said his face got so hot he thought he’d pass out. Then there was Ms. Lopez, his English teacher, when he read his free verse poem out loud. It was about his goldfish, Gary, who’d died that winter, and when he finished, Ms. Lopez smiled and said, “That’s very sweet, but next time remember to follow the assignment rubric, okay? I’m not sure a goldfish eulogy counts for this unit.” Again, the class laughed.
When he finished, I asked if he wanted me to call the principal. He shook his head so fast his hair fell in his eyes. “No. If you do that, everyone calls you a snitch. They’ll just be more passive aggressive about it, and I have to deal with it every day for the rest of the year. I just don’t want it to happen again.”
I called my friend Jen that night, she’s a 7th grade teacher at a different school, and asked her what she thought. She didn’t defend the teachers, but she put it in perspective. She said most teachers are just running from bell to bell, grading 120 papers a night, and they crack little jokes to cut the tension in the room. They don’t stop to think that the quiet kid who already struggles to feel like he fits is taking that joke to heart. It’s not that they’re bad people, she said, it’s that they’re not paying attention to the small stuff.
That made sense. I’d pictured these cruel, intentional bullies in the classroom, but what Leo was describing was the casual, thoughtless mocking that gets brushed off as “just a joke” or “tough love” way too often. I decided to follow Leo’s lead: no big principal meeting, no public callouts, just specific, low-drama requests.
First, I had Leo write down every incident he remembered, with dates and what exactly was said. I didn’t plan to use it as evidence for a complaint; it just helped him organize what he was feeling, and made sure I didn’t misquote anything when I reached out. Then I asked him again to confirm what he wanted: he said just for the jokes to stop, no one got in trouble, no one got fired. That was clear.
I emailed each teacher separately, cc’ed the grade level counselor just to have a paper trail, and kept the email short, blame-free, and specific. I didn’t start with “my child says you mock him.” I wrote: “Hi Mr. Henderson, this is Sarah Miller, Leo’s mom. Leo has ADHD and often struggles with remembering materials and feeling comfortable speaking up in class. He shared that last week when he forgot his notebook, you made a joke about his cross country training taking up his brain space, and he left class feeling really embarrassed in front of his peers. He enjoys your class overall, and just asked me to let you know he’d really appreciate it if you could pull him aside privately to remind him about materials if he forgets something, instead of calling it out in front of the whole class. Let me know if you have 10 minutes to chat this week if you want to talk more.” I adjusted the wording for Ms. Lopez, keeping the same structure: specific incident, context for Leo’s needs, clear request, no blame.
Mr. Henderson wrote back that night. He said he had no idea the joke had landed that way, he thought it was harmless teasing to lighten the mood, and he’d absolutely be more careful. He pulled Leo aside before math class the next day and apologized, which Leo said caught him totally off guard, but made him feel a million times better. Ms. Lopez was more defensive. She replied that she’d been teaching middle school English for 15 years, she never mocks students, and it was just a gentle reminder about the rubric. But after that, the behavior stopped. She hasn’t called out any of his work in front of the class since, even when it doesn’t follow the assignment exactly. She just writes notes on his paper, same as she does for everyone else.
It’s not a perfect fix. Last month, another kid made a joke about Leo forgetting his lunch, and he said a different teacher laughed along. I still have days where I wonder if I should have pushed harder, if I should have demanded the school do more work around how casual teasing impacts kids with learning differences. But for now, it’s working. Last week, Leo forgot his notebook in math again, and Mr. Henderson just quietly handed him an extra from his supply bin before class started, no joke, no scene. Leo came home and told me that, and it felt like a small win.
What I’ve learned is that when your kid tells you a teacher is mocking them, it doesn’t have to be a huge, school-board-level fight to make it better. The most actionable thing you can do first is ask your kid what they want, not what you think they should want. If they don’t want a big confrontation, don’t force one on them. Then, go specific, not general: instead of opening with an accusation, name the exact thing that happened, share your kid’s needs, and lay out a clear, small change you want to see. For teachers, it doesn’t take much to fix it: if a parent tells you a joke landed wrong, just apologize and adjust. You don’t have to agree you were wrong to make a kid feel safe.
It’s still a work in progress. Leo still comes home some days frustrated with small slights, but he doesn’t slump into the kitchen and avoid eye contact when he talks about those two classes anymore. That’s enough, for now.
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