<p>Below is a message posted in the High School life forum. Does anyone else think this mom is waaaaay over the line?</p>
<p>"I can’t believe this… </p>
<p>So at 12:30 in the afternoon I’m pulled out of class right before my AP World test. The front office said my mom called because of a “family emergency” so I’m thinking someone died in my family. I answer the phone and my mom tells me my report card came in the mail and that I got a 90 (a B in my school) in my Spanish III class. She promptly tells me I’m grounded for the weekend and that “I let her down.” At this point I’m fed up with her because I’m losing valuable time on my test and I start yelling at her through the phone and hang up. Apparently my yelling caused quite a commotion because the principal, dean of students, and attendance officer are staring at me. The dean asks what’s the problem and I tell him why my mom called. He tells me he’s going to call her back and tell her to not call about such matters. The worst part is that I feel like I bombed my test because I was so angry and couldn’t finish all of it.</p>
<p>Sorry about my ranting…I’m just really fed up with my parents. It feels like they’re pushing me too hard. It just ruins my day to have something like this happen to me"</p>
<p>When my husband was in elementary school, his mom came to school, pulled him out, and made him come home because he hadn’t cleaned his room. Some people really have no perspective.</p>
<p>Jeez, I didn’t call my kids’ schools even when people did die.</p>
<p>I mean, they would still be dead at dismissal time, right?</p>
<p>The only time I EVER called a school and asked to speak to (or have a message given to) one of my kids was when there were sudden changes in transportation plans (e.g., “I was supposed to pick you up after school today, but my car has broken down; therefore, you must take the bus home.”).</p>
<p>Having a kid summoned to a school phone for anything less urgent is obnoxious. And as this example shows, it can worsen matters if the kid is supposed to be taking a test at the time.</p>
<p>My son is a junior, I know how important grades are…but calling, yelling and grounding a kid over a 90 in Spanish??? The student “has let her down”???
I was just appalled reading this-- thinking the parent is way overinvested in the kid’s grades and acting inappropriately.</p>
<p>I think it’s really sad, and I feel sorry for that kid. That’s a lot of pressure, and he or she probably did worse on the exam because of the interruption and being upset over it. Then the scores come home to Mom and she’s mad again… it’s a vicious cycle.</p>
<p>There are so many things wrong with this scenario. I can’t believe that the school called him out of class to take a call from his mom. Usually a parent has to leave a message. This sounds so odd. Or maybe the mom convinced the secretary that it was urgent and he had to come to the phone at once? I just can’t imagine his being pulled from class cause his mom is on the phone. </p>
<p>I also cannot imagine a parent upset over a 90. Truly, that’s pretty bad. Grounding for this??? This kid sounds like a good student if he is in an AP class. All I ever cared was that my kids tried to do their best. If it looked like they had done their work and put in effort, the grade didn’t matter. If I had thought they were goofing off (they weren’t but just saying, what if), I’d have discussed measures to take to improve their grades or if something else had to be limited or whatever solutions we arrived at. But to ground a kid for a 90??? What message does that give? I don’t remember ever emphasizing grades. When they got the report card, we congratulated them and said we were proud. If there was a grade they wanted to rise, we might talk about what steps they’d take to make that happen. If they had done the best they could, then they did, which is all that I would ask. If they could do more, we’d talk about it. If they were goofing off, there would have to be stricter guidelines if not self motivated. </p>
<p>A 90 is not only a good grade but to ground a kid over a grade who is a good student, is over the top. To call and yell at him at school seems almost abusive to me. I also think the school should make it clear to this parent that they will not call her child to the phone and she may leave a message. If there is an emergency only, a student can be pulled but for no other reason. This kid should NOT have missed his test unless someone died or something similar.</p>
<p>When I reread the post, I caught that the mom had told the receptionist that it was a “family emergency.” She deceived the school and I really think they need to talk to her and God forbid she DOES have a family emergency next time she calls, they won’t be inclined to call him to the phone and she’ll have to explain the nature of the emergency and leave a message.</p>
<p>I’ve called both the middle school and high school (on the same day… one for each child) to speak to my kids. They were expecting me home that night after being gone for a few days over 1000 miles away to be with my dad, who was declining from cancer. The morning of the day I was supposed to leave, we the decline was for real. So I called both my kids to see if they wanted to come see grandpa before he died, because if they did, I needed to get them on a flight right away. I explained the need for the call to the school secretaries, and they did not hesitate for a moment to send someone to get my kids out of class while I was holding. High school daughter wanted to come, so I made travel arrangements for her right away. Middle school daughter did not want to come… she had a band concert that night at which she was sitting 1st chair for the first time… something she’d been working for, for a long time. My dad ended up dying late that afternoon, before high school daughter arrived, but at a time when, had I flown back home on my originally scheduled flight, I would have been in the air when he died. </p>
<p>Anyway, I’m glad our schools were cooperative in getting my kids to the phone… but yea, it’s no telling what story the mom gave the secretary to get her kid to the phone.</p>
<p>I have never even heard of such an occurrence like that. The only situation other than something urgent (death in immediate family, etc.), would be with regard to a change in pick-up time for a doctor/dentist appointment towards the end of the school day - or when there were free periods or lunch periods. S sometimes received calls in homeroom, but they weren’t from us (the parents) - they were probably school club related, and he had to take the calls (which probably didn’t occur very frequently), because they were most likely from either the club sponsor or someone who he was professionally working with (this was all film-related). The homeroom teacher didn’t seem to mind - she actually got a chuckle out of it - because she knew what he was doing and realized that it was something important.</p>
<p>In my experience, we can call the high school and leave a phone message that gets delivered to the student. The student can call home when they have a free moment. I don’t think a student is pulled from class to talk to mom but perhaps in an emergency, might be. The mom in this instance had NO emergency and abused the “emergency provision” by lying. Next time she has a real emergency, good luck. </p>
<p>I recall on 9-11, I was driving from here in Vermont to NYC with D2 for an audition. Half way there, we heard about what happened and we actually had planned to board a train in Albany (three hours from home) and it was not running and we had to turn three hours back to home. I figured D1 had heard about the attack at school and would be concerned that D2 and me were stuck in NYC. I called the school to get a message to her that we were heading home and did not reach NYC, not to worry. If I recall correctly,they would not deliver that message to her. :(</p>
<p>I completely believe this posting. Cue the helicoptors. </p>
<p>However, I am the mother of a VERY DRAMATIC 15 yo who I could see posting this, or telling this exact story to her friends when none of it was true, when the situation was she didn’t study and made up an “I hate my mom” excuse.</p>
<p>Terrible story. I’m glad the deans etc inquired and committed to tell the mom to desist from lying to them and wrecking her kid’s test performance next time.</p>
<p>Wondering, though, what SHOULD a school secretary do if a mom calls in to say “family emergency”? Should the secretary filter it and ask for details then-- what kind of emergency, etc.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what the secretary could do if the mom was lying or misleading that her son had to come to the phone right away due to a family emergency (which also is cruel to get a kid anxious like that!! I know if I got such a note, I’d be sweatin’). She could say she’ll take a message and ask that the son call her back on his next break. However, she still would not know if it was a legit emergency. Most emergencies can wait until the period is over for kid to be called to office and schools might not call them out of class but deliver an urgent message that student needs to call home after class. Still, it would have been inappropriate that the mom lied about the emergency nature. The policy could be that emergency messages to call home are delivered but students cannot be called out of class but will be directed to call between classes and then get a note to return to the next class late or something like that.</p>
<p>I am surprised that a mom who would call her kid at school about a grade didn’t know that he had a test at that time. In my (extensive) experience with parents, this type of mom knows her kid’s schedule and when his tests are. In fact, I believe that schools have given parents more tools that I view as somewhat harmful. When my son was in tenth grade or so, his school adopted a program that gave parents on-line access to homework assignments, etc. This week, I noticed in the local newspaper that our public elementary school is adopting an on-line system that allows parents to monitor their kids’ grades on a day-by-day basis. Sometimes I think that technology like this fosters “helicoptoring.” Anyway, I thought the fact that the mom didn’t know about her son’s test, given her obvious fixation on his grades, was unusual.</p>
<p>Our h.s. had a smart policy. If it was a normal message, the attendance office took it and waited to page the student during the next class change. They’d take a content message or just the message, “Call home” whichever the parent preferred. </p>
<p>If the family indicated “emergency” the phone call was immediately transferred to the Guidance Office secretary, who had the luxury of sending “runners” to a classroom. Perhaps the guidance secretary knew how to filter things, too. </p>
<p>Re: paging kids, we had amazingly quiet public school hallways. THanks to unusual “open school” architecture, there were no hallways. Kids just melted from room to room, so the paging announcements could actually be heard!
If the kid himself didn’t hear, then friends alerted him. None of those obnoxious interruptions to the teacher, either.</p>
<p>However I didn’t realize parents still went through the school to speak to their own child. </p>
<p>My parents call me on my cell, in the middle of class, and expect me to answer. I have no problem doing so because I can usually hide behind my books, have a friend distract the teacher, etc. but they never call me for ridiculous things like that.</p>
<p>I’m a teacher and a mom of 3 teenagers. Even though I teach at my kid’s school, if I need to get them a message I call the main office and ask them to please deliver the message, or I call their cell phone and leave a message. I’m a firm believer in knowing where the bar should be for your child and setting it there…no lower, no higher. Too low and you teach them to be lazy and irresponsible. Too high and you totally exasperate them. I’d say this mom needs to get some perspective. Even if her son could get a better grade in Spanish, that is not the way to handle it. My son put himself into a situation where he had to make at least a 90 on a Chem test to pull an A. However, he had barely cracked a book to study. So, I told him if he didn’t get the A his computer was gone for the summer, but only because I knew he could easily obtain it. That’s all I had to say. He studied enough to secure the A.</p>
<p>I believe the kid’s story. Even when parents are not as inappropriate as this one, they can give signals that tell their kids only As are acceptable. A friend of mine tells the story that her son once approached her very tentatively and said: “Mom, I’m really sorry I let you and Dad down; I got a B+ on my quiz.” It’s only then she realized how much subtle pressure to excel she and her husband had exerted. But for parents like my friend who mend their ways, there are many who think that anything less than 100% is sign of some major character defect., ranging from laziness to lack of filial piety and gratitude for the sacrifices parents have made, etc… I suspect the mom may have misjudged the timing of the test and called to put further pressure on her child to do better on it than the measly 90 or else…</p>