My Child Says Some Teachers Mock Me: What I Did As A Parent And What I Learned
The broccoli was the garlic-roasted kind she usually licks off the baking sheet, and she just pushed it into a dry little pile on the edge of her plate. I’d already asked twice how her algebra retest went, and she’d shrugged both times, staring at her phone under the table. Then she looked up, thumb still hovering over the screen, and said, “Some of my teachers mock me.”
I almost spilled my iced tea. My first instinct was to grab my phone and fire off an angry email to the principal right there. But I saw her jaw clench, like she was waiting for me to say it’s just a misunderstanding, or she’s overreacting. So I pushed my own plate away and said, “Tell me what that looks like. Give me examples.”
It wasn’t the big, screaming insults I’d braced for. It was the small, offhand stuff that gets brushed off as “classroom banter.” When they do fitness testing in PE, she can barely do one pull up, and the teacher leans against the wall laughing and says, “C’mon Mia, even the grandmas that come through for career day can do more than that. Don’t you ever leave your room?” The whole class snickers. When she stumbles over a long word during oral reading in English, her teacher snorts and says, “Honey, did you even read this last night, or were you scrolling TikTok again?” More laughter. She said it happens once every couple of weeks, not every day, but it sticks. She lies awake some nights replaying it, trying to figure out what she did to deserve it. And if she says anything, she’s just the sensitive kid who can’t take a joke, so she stays quiet.
I didn’t tell her she was overreacting, because I remembered being 12, having a science teacher call me “space cadet” because I forgot my notebook once a week. I still remember the way my ears burned when the whole class laughed, 30 years later. Small jokes at a kid’s expense don’t fade that fast.
That night, I pulled out a spiral notebook and wrote down every single example she gave me, with rough dates and exactly what was said, as best I could. I didn’t go into the next step with a vague “my kid feels teased” complaint – I had specifics. Then I didn’t email the two teachers directly, or jump to the principal. I emailed Mia’s homeroom teacher, who Mia already trusted, and asked for 15 minutes after school. I wrote, “Mia shared a couple of interactions this week that left her feeling hurt by two of her other teachers. I’d love to talk through how to support her, no rush, no drama.”
Ms. Lopez, the homeroom teacher, didn’t act surprised when we met. She said she’d noticed Mia shrinks into her chair when teachers call on her, and that this is way more common than people talk about. A lot of teachers use that kind of teasing to keep the class loose, and they only target the quiet, easygoing kids that never push back. They assume if the kid doesn’t complain, they’re fine with it.
Ms. Lopez offered to come with me to talk to the two teachers separately, which took all the pressure off me and off Mia, who didn’t have to be there at all. We talked to the PE teacher first. He actually looked guilty as soon as we repeated what he’d said. He told us he’d been the slow, out-of-shape kid in his PE classes growing up, and he just thought tough love was how you motivated kids. He had no idea Mia went home and replayed the comment for days. Then we talked to the English teacher, who was a little defensive at first, said she was just trying to hold kids accountable for homework. But when we repeated we weren’t there to get anyone fired or reprimanded, we just wanted the comments to stop, she apologized and said she’d be more careful.
After that, I thought a lot about the advice I see online that says you should make your kid stand up for themselves first, that they need to learn to confront the person who hurt them. That never made sense to me here. My kid is 13. She’s already at a power disadvantage in a classroom full of adults and peers who are already waiting to judge her for being too sensitive. It’s not her job to teach a grown adult how to talk to people respectfully. It’s my job to be her advocate, and it’s the teacher’s job to adjust their behavior.
If you’re a parent going through this, the first concrete step I’d tell you to take is write down the specific examples before you reach out to anyone. Vague complaints get defensive responses. Specifics make it impossible for teachers to brush off what happened. Second, don’t force your kid to join the meeting if they don’t want to. You go, you speak for them, that’s your job. Third, don’t go in guns blazing unless it’s repeated, intentional abuse. Most of the time, it’s just thoughtlessness. Teachers are overworked, tired, and they repeat the same classroom habits they’ve used for years without stopping to think who they’re hurting.
If you’re a teacher reading this, just do one small thing: if you make a joke at a student’s expense, even a small one, pull them aside after class when no one else is around and ask if that was okay. Most kids won’t tell you they’re hurt in front of the whole class, but just asking lets them know you care, and it gives them space to say if it wasn’t okay.
It’s been a month now. The comments have stopped. Last week, Mia did an oral presentation in English, and she told me after that the teacher just said “thank you Mia” when she finished, no snark, no jokes. That was enough for her that day. She still gets a little tense before PE fitness days, and she still doesn’t volunteer to read out loud in English. Bad memories don’t just disappear because someone apologized, and that’s okay. We didn’t fix everything all at once. We just made the hurt stop, and that’s enough for right now. I still ask her every Sunday at dinner if any stupid comments happened that week, and she’ll tell me if they do. I don’t have all the answers, and this isn’t a story with a perfect ending. It’s just what happens when your kid tells you they’re hurt, and you choose to believe them instead of brushing it off.
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