What To Do When Your Child Feels Brushed Off By Their Teacher
The rain had turned the sidewalk by the elementary school into a patchwork of puddles, and my 10-year-old Mia was dragging her feet, kicking at every crack instead of heading for the car. I pulled a crumpled fruit snack out of my coat pocket and held it out, but she didn’t reach for it. “Mrs. Lopez brushed me off today,” she mumbled, staring at her scuffed rain boots.
She told me she’d raised her hand three times during math, stuck her arm straight up in the air long after most kids had put theirs down. Mrs. Lopez had stopped to help two other kids, then told the class to turn to the next page, and sighed when Mia waved her arm again. “Can we catch up after class, Mia? We’re already behind schedule,” she’d said. Then after class, she left to take a call from a parent, and forgot.
I tucked the fruit snack back into my pocket and slung her backpack over my shoulder. My first gut twist was the same one I get every time one of my kids comes home hurt: what kind of teacher ignores a kid who needs help? But I swallowed that thought fast. I’d been at back-to-school night three weeks earlier. Mrs. Lopez has 28 fourth graders in a room built for 22, two students with full-time IEPs that require extra one-on-one time, and her own 5-year-old has had three rounds of strep throat already this semester. I’d watched her apologize for running 10 minutes over because she’d had to stop to help a kid who threw up that morning. I knew she wasn’t ignoring Mia on purpose. But that didn’t make Mia’s feeling less real.
That night, over mac and cheese at the kitchen table, I didn’t immediately offer to email the principal or storm in the next day. I’d made that mistake with my oldest, when she came home in 2nd grade saying her teacher didn’t like her. I sent an angry email that made things awkward for months, before I found out the teacher just had a new baby and was sleeping three hours a night. So this time, I asked three specific questions, the same set I’ve started using when my kids come home with hurt feelings from school. First: “What did that feel like in your body when that happened?” Mia twisted her spaghetti around her fork and said, “My throat got tight, and I didn’t want to raise my hand again ‘cause I thought I was being annoying.” Second: “Is there anything you wish you’d said or done that you didn’t get to?” She said she wanted to tell Mrs. Lopez she really didn’t get the first problem, that she couldn’t move on until she understood it. Third: “What would make this feel better? Do you want me to talk to her, or do you want to practice saying what you need first?”
Mia thought about it for a minute, then said she wanted to practice. So while we folded laundry after dinner, we role played. I stood by the table like Mrs. Lopez at the front of the room, and Mia practiced walking over to say, “Excuse me, I don’t get the math problem, can you help me when you have a minute?” We did it three times, and she changed the line to “I’m still confused about the first question, can you stop by my desk soon?” that felt more natural to her.
The next day, she came home quiet. She’d worked up the courage to say it after math, but Mrs. Lopez was busy leading a reading group and said she’d get to her after recess, then forgot. This time, Mia didn’t hold back the tears when she got in the car. I told her I thought it was time I reached out, and I asked if the plan I had in mind sounded okay to her. She nodded.
I didn’t send a long email listing every time Mia had felt overlooked. I wrote three short sentences: “Hi Mrs. Lopez, this is Mia’s mom. Mia’s been a little nervous to ask for extra help with math lately, and mentioned she’s had a hard time getting your attention during full class time. I know how packed your days are, so I wanted to flag this instead of catching you off guard at drop off. Would it work for Mia to stop by your desk before morning announcements for 2 minutes any day she needs help? We’ve talked through it, and she’s comfortable with that routine.”
Two hours later, Mrs. Lopez wrote back. She said she’d had no idea Mia was feeling that way – that Mia was such a quiet kid who never acted out, she’d assumed she was fine waiting, that she was so sorry she’d made her feel brushed off. She loved the before-school plan, and that afternoon, she asked Mia to tell the whole class about her hamster’s new litter of babies, which Mia had wanted to do for a week.
I’ve thought about this a lot over the past month. When a kid feels brushed off, our first instinct is to jump in and fight, or to brush off their feeling by saying “the teacher’s busy, you just have to wait.” Both are wrong. What works is meeting the kid where they are first, letting them name the hurt, then letting them lead on how to fix it. For teachers who read this, there’s a tiny adjustment I’ve heard other teachers use that would stop this from happening so much: keep a stack of “I need help” cards by the door, so kids can just put one on the corner of their desk and keep working instead of waving their arm for 10 minutes. It takes 2 seconds to implement, and it saves a lot of hurt feelings.
It’s not perfect. Last Friday, Mia came home and said she got skipped during science presentations when she raised her hand to ask a question. But instead of shutting down, she wrote a note to Mrs. Lopez and put it on her desk that afternoon, and got her answer before school the next day. We still check in every Friday on the way to get ice cream, ask who felt heard that week and who didn’t. It’s a work in progress, same as everything else with school and kids.
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