When Your Kid Says ‘My Teacher Targets Me’: What Parents Can Do First
I was leaning against my minivan last September, holding a half-melted carton of chocolate milk in one hand, waiting for my 7th grader Leo to come out after school, when he stomped toward me, crumpling a math quiz in his fist. “Ms. Henderson targets me. It’s not even a question anymore.” He flung his backpack into the backseat and folded his arms, staring out the passenger window so I couldn’t push him to talk more if I wanted to.
I’d heard versions of this before, from other parents at pick up, from my niece when she was in middle school, but that was the first time Leo had said it straight out. My first instinct pulled me two conflicting ways: either shoot off an angry email to the principal right now, or tell him he was probably overreacting, that teachers have a lot of kids to manage. Neither felt right, so I waited until we got home, he’d had a snack and calmed down, and I texted my friend Lila, who’s taught 7th grade for 12 years, to ask what she thought when parents come to her with this.
What she told me started with a question I hadn’t thought to ask: “Can you get him to walk you through the last three times this happened, exactly how he remembers them?” No “do you think she’s being unfair?” No “are you sure you didn’t do something to get in trouble?” Just get specific details. So that night, I sat down next to him on the couch while he scrolled TikTok, and asked that exact question.
He ran through three incidents: last Monday, she called him out for tapping his pencil during silent reading when two boys two rows over were tapping just as loud. The week before that, he got detention for forgetting his gym shirt, but the girl in front of him forgot hers the same day and only got a warning. Last week, he got stuck with the “worst role” of note-taker on his group project, even though he’d asked to do the presentation.
I wrote those down, just the facts as he told them, which already made the situation feel less dramatic than the blanket claim “she always picks on me.” Next, Lila told me how to approach the teacher, if I still had questions after getting the details. She said don’t go in guns blazing, don’t open with “my child says you target him” because that puts any teacher on the defensive immediately. Instead, open with: “Leo’s been feeling like he gets called out more than other kids in class, and I wanted to hear what you’re seeing from your side.” That’s a concrete line, no blame, just opening a conversation.
I got a 15 minute slot after school the next week, walked in and saw Ms. Henderson’s desk stacked with ungraded vocab quizzes, a chipped coffee mug that said “World’s Okayest 7th Grade Teacher” on the edge. I said that line exactly, and she leaned back in her chair and sighed, like she’d been waiting to talk about this. She pulled out a small spiral notebook where she tracks minor behavior issues, and showed me: Leo had 11 minor infractions in the first 8 weeks of school – forgetting supplies, talking after the bell, tapping that distracted the kids behind him. The average for the class was 2. She said she’d started calling him out faster because he already got a few warnings, and she didn’t want to have to send him to the office. The other kids tapping that day? They’d never had a warning for distraction before, so she just gave them a look. The girl who forgot gym shirt? It was her first time, Leo had forgotten three times that month. The note-taker role? He’d bailed on his last group project by not turning in any work, so she put him in a role that required daily check-ins to make sure he didn’t get left behind.
We also realized I’d forgotten to send a copy of Leo’s new ADHD accommodation plan to Ms. Henderson – the pediatrician had just updated it, I’d sent it to the office, but never copied her directly. That’s why he didn’t have the allowance for extra fidgeting I thought he was supposed to get.
That’s not to say that every time a kid says their teacher targets them, it’s just a miscommunication and a forgotten form. My neighbor’s 8th grade son, who’s Black, came home with the same complaint last year, and after they sat in on a few classes, it turned out he was called out for talking three times as often as the white kids in the same rows, for the exact same behavior. They ended up switching him to a different class, and it was the right call. But most of the time, what feels like personal targeting is just two sides seeing completely different patterns. Kids remember every time they’re embarrassed in front of their friends, they don’t see the 10 times the teacher let their small misbehavior slide, or the pattern of repeated mistakes that the teacher is responding to. Teachers are overwhelmed with 30 kids, they don’t always stop to explain why they’re calling one kid out more than another – it just becomes a habit.
What’s worked for us, after that conference? We keep an extra gym shirt and a pack of pencils in Leo’s locker, so he stops forgetting supplies. Ms. Henderson uses a quick nod from across the room to remind him to stop tapping, instead of calling his name out loud, which cuts down on the embarrassment. We check in for five minutes every Friday after school, just to go over any times he felt singled out that week, instead of letting it build up until he’s ready to explode. It’s not perfect. Last month, he came home saying she’d targeted him by marking his essay late, even though he’d turned it in. We talked through it, turned out he’d put it in the 6th grade homework folder by mistake, and she fixed the grade once he pointed it out. It’s still messy sometimes.
I don’t have a neat answer for every parent who gets this line from their kid. Some days it’s a miscommunication, some days it’s bias that needs to be addressed. The biggest thing I learned is that picking a side immediately – whether that’s siding with your kid against the teacher or siding with the teacher against your kid – just makes everything worse. It doesn’t take much to get the details, talk to the teacher with an open mind, and figure out what’s actually going on step by step. Right now, that’s enough for us.
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