When your teen hates the vice principal: what we tried and what actually helped
I was halfway out of the pickup line when my son threw his backpack into the footwell and announced, “I hate Vice Principal Reed.”
The rain had just stopped, and the windshield was still covered in spots. I turned the radio down and said, “Okay. What happened?”
“She gave me a detention for holding my phone in the hallway,” he said. “I wasn’t even using it. I was walking to the bathroom. People walk around looking at their phones all the time. She just hates me.”
I had a few parent responses lined up. The first was: “Well, maybe you shouldn’t have your phone out in the hallway.” The second was: “Did you say something to her?” But I’ve learned with a 17-year-old that those responses usually end with a slammed car door and both of us sitting in silence.
So instead, I said, “What do you think she should have done?”
He thought for a second. “I don’t know. Said, ‘Hey, put the phone away.’ Not given me a detention.”
That felt like the actual issue. It wasn’t about the phone. It was about being treated like a problem instead of a person.
The weird thing is I’ve been on the other side of this. I taught for six years before switching to a district job, and I remember hallway conversations with kids who were just walking around. If I saw a phone, I’d say something like “Tuck that in, please” and move on. But I also remember the kids who rolled their eyes or shoved the phone into their pocket sideways. That made me tighten up. There’s something about a teenager dismissing you that makes an adult want to prove a point. And once that happens, the rule gets bigger than it needs to be.
I remember one kid who got a lunch detention because he sighed when I asked him to take his hat off. The hat wasn’t the battle. The sigh was. I don’t say that proudly, but it’s true.
With my son, I wanted him to understand something. Vice principals are the people who handle rule violations. By the time a situation reaches them, it’s often already been ignored once or twice. So when a teen says “the vice principal hates me,” sometimes it’s because the administrator has only ever seen them in moments of annoyance. That’s not the same as hatred. But to a 17-year-old, it feels personal.
I asked him, “Do you want to just complain about it, or do you want to do something about it?”
He looked at me like I was speaking a different language. “What can I do? She already gave me the detention.”
That’s when I realized he didn’t need me to solve it. He needed me to help him figure out what he actually wanted. So I asked another question: “What would you want her to know about what happened?”
He shrugged. “That I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful. I was just walking.”
“Okay,” I said. “So what if you told her that?”
He went quiet. I let it sit. When we got home, I told him he could either serve the detention quietly or email Reed and explain himself. He thought that was ridiculous. “She’ll just read it out loud to the other vice principals and laugh.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe she’ll read it and think differently.”
He didn’t email her that night. He served the detention the next day. When I picked him up, he was still annoyed, but the anger had softened into something more like sulking. I asked how it went. He said Reed had him sit in the front office and read a booklet about school rules. “She didn’t even talk to me.”
“What would you have wanted her to say?”
“I don’t know. Something like, ‘I get that you were just walking. But next time, keep the phone in your pocket.’”
“So you wanted her to acknowledge your side?”
He nodded. “She didn’t even ask what happened.”
That was the real need. Not to get out of the consequence. To be asked. To have his version heard. That’s a pretty universal teenage experience. Most arguments between teens and adults aren’t really about winning. They’re about being seen as a reasonable person.
I told him that the next time he got stopped, he could try one small thing. Instead of just putting the phone away, he could say, “Sorry—heading to the bathroom, forgot I was holding it.” Just that one sentence. It gives the adult a narrative to work with. It changes the interaction from “kid ignoring rule” to “kid made a mistake and acknowledged it.” That doesn’t work in every situation, but it works more often than silence.
He rolled his eyes. But later that week, his younger brother forgot his lunch money, and I asked him to drop it off at the front office. When I picked him up, he said, “I ran into Reed at the entrance. I just put my phone in my pocket and said, ‘Hey, I’m here to drop something off.’ She said ‘Okay’ and kept walking.”
“So she didn’t hate on you?”
“No,” he said. “She was fine.”
It’s not a heartwarming turnaround. He still doesn’t like her much. But the anger has shifted. He’s starting to understand that a lot of school discipline is less about the specific kid and more about the pattern. Vice principals see the same hallway behavior dozens of times a day. They don’t have the mental space to consider every individual story. That’s not fair, and it’s also just true.
The practical part is helping a teenager translate their frustration into something an administrator can hear. When a teen says “this adult hates me,” the underlying message is often “I don’t know how to talk to them without it turning into a power struggle.” That’s a skill, not a personality trait. It can be practiced.
At the same time, I don’t want to coach my son into becoming the kind of kid who sweet-talks his way out of consequences. The goal isn’t to manipulate. It’s to communicate. The difference is subtle, but it matters. One is about controlling the outcome. The other is about making sure both people understand the situation.
I still think Reed handled it a little clunkily. A two-second hallway conversation could have prevented the whole detention. But I also know what it’s like to be the adult who has to enforce a rule on a busy Tuesday while thinking about a staff meeting and a parent email and the kid who just got caught vaping in the bathroom. There’s not always room for nuance.
So I’ve stopped trying to make my son like his vice principal. I don’t think that’s the goal anymore. The goal is for him to get through the next year without turning every hallway interaction into a war. And for him to know that when an adult steps into his space, he has some say in how it goes.
The other day, he said, “Reed isn’t the worst.” That’s not a glowing review. But for now, it’s enough.
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