Have you ever hit send on an email to your child’s teacher, then regretted it? Teacher and stand-up comedian Tyson Popplestone has built a huge social media following by sharing the hilarious and often shocking emails he receives from the parents of pupils in his class. From requests that their delicate child avoids punishment to outrageous excuses for outlandish and inappropriate behaviour, he shines a light on the tricky terrain of parent-teacher relations.
Comments under Popplestone’s posts often ask the same simple question: is this real? To find out, we asked teachers across Britain – anonymously, to preserve their careers – to share the most amusing, surprising and frustrating requests they’ve had to face.
“My child needs more lines in the school play”
Daniel, a teacher at a private primary school in London, says he regularly receives emails from parents shamelessly complaining about the size of the part their child has in school plays.
“It happens every year – the parents just can’t handle who gets the lead role and who doesn’t. I try so so hard to ensure casting is done fairly, sometimes even counting the lines so that everyone has a similar amount. One mum once emailed me to complain that her daughter was ‘just the narrator’ in the play, and actually said I’d discriminated against her child.”
He says some parents simply refuse to accept their child could ever be responsible for any problem in the classroom, and so complain if they are ever told off or disciplined. “One mother would send me epic emails at 8pm at evening, criticising me, my judgements and decisions, and arguing that it was not her son’s fault. But probably the worst one we got was from a father who wrote in to defend Andrew Tate when we did a lesson about toxic masculinity. He said he was a really good bloke and wanted to know more about what we were teaching his child in PSHE.”
“My child does not respond well to punishment”
Mark*, a trainee science teacher based at a secondary school in Yorkshire, says some of the requests he’s already fielded from parents so early in his career have left him “dumbfounded”.
“I had a chat with one of my most disruptive students’ parents and asked them if there are any behavioural strategies that work well at home. It then transpired that the parents don’t bother with behavioural strategies because ‘none work’. The question was then turned onto me – a man in my early twenties with no children – of how these parents in their mid-thirties should be parenting their own child?” he says.
“The same parents also requested the school be more lenient with punishment towards their child because they ‘do not respond well to it’. Even with twice as many extra warnings as they should be getting, this kid still manages to get more sanctions in my class than everyone else combined.”
“Could you hand out his birthday party invitations?”
Wendy*, a primary school teacher based in Northumberland who has worked in schools for more than two decades, says she could “write a book” about her experiences with parent engagement. Stories of children arriving underprepared for school and without full toilet training are accurate, she says. But some parents’ request for involvement in basic hygiene goes even further.
“We’ve had children arriving at school in full nappies or having soiled themselves, with parents explaining mum hadn’t had a chance to change them because they’d been to the shops, and asking if we could sort it out and provide clean clothes. We’re not a clothes shop, and we only have a very limited supply of spare clothes as so many items are never returned.”
Being asked to take on the responsibility of family admin seems to be a recurring theme. “We’re always happy to hand out party invitations, but we quite often get parents asking us to chase up RSVPs and menu choices and confirm exactly who is attending because they need final numbers. I’m lucky if I remember to give out the invitations as our day is so jam packed,” Wendy says. “Schools are expected to do so much beyond education now. We barely get a minute to go to the toilet some days, let alone manage some of these additional requests. It certainly keeps things interesting and often when you think you’ve seen it all they continue to surprise you.”
She has been asked for favours ranging from sorting out a child’s hair on behalf of a father who, despite taking over drop off duties from the mother, had yet to learn how to style a plait, to acting as a guarantor on a family’s mortgage application.
“During a childcare survey asking what additional hours might potentially suit parents, we actually received a request suggesting overnight stays,” she laughs. “And one parent asked if parents’ evening appointments could be held during the school day because they prefer to go home straight after picking their child up.”
“Please don’t tell off any of the children”
Eleanor*, a secondary school physics teacher based in London, said she had faced requests by parents to change how she manages classroom discipline – even for other people’s children.
“Once I had a parent ask that their son is not ‘told off’ by teachers or sanctioned, and that no other pupils were told off or sanctioned in front of their child either as it made him nervous,” she says. “This parent would also be the first to complain that other pupils in the class were disrupting the lesson for her son but that we should only sanction them when her son wasn’t in the room.”
She also reports that many parents ask for their children to be removed from PSHE – personal, social, health and economic education – lessons, despite also allowing them unfiltered internet access via a mobile phone or desktop computer at home.
“Take her paddle boarding – but don’t let her get wet”
Leila*, a primary teacher based in London, says she has been asked to achieve the impossible by parents on many occasions. “Last year, we had a school trip to do kayaking, paddle boarding and raft building on the river Thames. On the morning of the trip, I received an email from a mother telling me I must not let any water touch her daughter while she was on the river due to a skin condition she had,” she says.
“I was stunned as the parents had been told the kids had to wear swimsuits and have spare clothes, so getting wet was a given. I had no idea how I would prevent this happening. I couldn’t control her kayaking abilities.”
You can guess how this day ended. “She was the first child to submerge in her kayak, getting totally drenched.”
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