25 Awful Helicopter Parents Who Thought Their Kids Could Do No Wrong, According to Teachers

As a father of two, I'm constantly worried about "spoiling" my kids. I don't want to discipline my toddler when he draws on the wall or won't listen to his mom, but there are times when I have to stop pretending to be a lion or T-Rex and let him know that he needs to change his behavior.

And although it's easy to develop into a cheap fellow-parent shamer and get up on my high horse to talk about how much better behaved my kid is than yours (in some instances, it's true), some parents just hate being the bad guy. Or even worse, they are helicopter parents.

When your children start running around and destroying another person's house, throwing toys/food all over the place, bullying the other little cuties who are just trying to have fun, and pulling on a two-week-old infant's hair while she's sleeping, then you might want to sit their butts down and get mean. Otherwise, you're raising someone who thinks there are no consequences for garbage behavior.

And as these teachers and childcare workers of Reddit revealed in a recent Ask Reddit post, there are tons of kids who turned out just downright awful on account of their parent's poor child-rearing decisions. Whether it's never letting kids do things for themselves or thinking that their children are the bees-knees — no matter what anyone else says — these tales of reverse-child abuse are just plain sad.

Music teacher here. I had a heli-mom of one of my guitar students sit in on him during his first lesson. She was sitting right by him, shoulder to shoulder. As I was talking about various things like how to hold the guitar and how to shape your hands and fingers around the neck, she would grab his hand and do it for him. Every single time. For everything. Time to strum some chords? Mom did that for him too. Can’t get the fret hand to squeeze hard enough to make the strings ring? She pressed his fingers for him. He cried out at that and that’s when I stopped and told her she had to let him do it on his own. All I got for that was a sharp look and a “Fine, then.”

He tried on his own and the string just made kind of a thud noise and she said, “See he needs me to help him.” I told her that the only way he was going to be able to do it was to try and do it, on his own. He was the one who had to build up the strength. Things didn’t really progress much after that and I ended the lesson.

With all of that, I wasn’t thinking they’d be sticking around for a second week but back they came. Second lesson started off the same and I politely told her she’d have to give him space in order to try. Still she wasn’t thrilled but relented and got up in a huff and went out into the hall to watch from there. After she left this kid took a deep breath and was visibly more relaxed. After she stepped out, he was able to have his own space and actually try on his own; he started to do better. It was awesome. At the end of the lesson he said he couldn’t wait to come back and his mom came in and grilled him with something like “Why can’t you do that when I’m helping you? You don’t want my help? You don’t need my help?”

I could understand stuff like this if he was a young kid, 7 or younger, but dude’s 14 years old. He’s going to be a freshman in the fall.

This poor kid has ended up being one of my best students. His mom still hovers and he’s still a super weird and socially awkward dude from living in a bubble but he’s finally found something he can be good at independently from his mom. It’s really rewarding to see him gaining more and more confidence even if it is slowly, he’ll get there someday.

-  TheLivingEnd1884

An incredibly quiet student just flat-out refused to engage in any discussion in class. She was an extremely pleasant girl, she just wouldn't speak. I brought it up with her mother during an interview and she told me she'd forbidden her daughter to express her opinion and to just listen to the teacher out of fear they wouldn't agree with her opinion and mark her down out of bias. I assured her that expressing an opinion wouldn't get a student marked down in my class and that developing one is important to her learning but she just said "I'd rather she didn't."

- losturtle1

While studying, I worked in an after-school care.

One day a 9yr old was showing everyone his lighter by trying to set the shirt he was wearing on fire, I obviously took the lighter off him. When his mother came to pick him up I handed it to her and told her about him trying to set his shirt on fire.

Turns out it was her lighter, so I had "no right" to confiscate it and her son just wouldn't try to set his clothes in fire because "he's not an idiot," so I must be making that up.

-  samaki14

I taught middle school for 1 year. We had a student who was being disruptive in all the classes. He was refusing to turn in work, or even do it. He was constantly causing trouble.

We had each tried several strategies to deal with the behavior in our own time. We had each talked to the parents numerous times, but they never did anything nor believed that the student was doing anything inappropriate. No one was having any success.

Eventually one of the teachers had enough so he suggested we do a meeting between all of the student's teachers, the guidance counselor, a vice-principal, the student, and his parents.

There are 6 teachers plus the vice-principal and the guidance counselor all saying the same basic version of, student needs to pay attention, needs to do the work, needs to stop distracting other students, needs to be respectful, etc.

The mother disbelieves us; it's not the student's fault. We all have it in for the student.

Nothing changed.

Teaching sucks.

-  sodabased

1st grade — My 2nd or 3rd year, I had a kid whose mother was my first legit, extreme 'helicopter mom.' She would walk him into the classroom every morning and put his backpack and folder away for him and then sit at his table with him and he would cry and cry for her not to leave. The crying is normal at the beginning of the year, but at this age  they don't cry for very long once the parent has left. After about 5 min, he would be fine. But she would take 20 min to leave because she "didn't want to leave him like that." I asked her a few times to let him get his things ready by himself, but I was young and this kid was a surprise kid (had brother and sisters with kids of their own), and the parents were older. She didn't give a flying s--t what I would say. That's when I started rationalizing with the kid. Much easier. "Do you see how all of your friends put their own backpacks and folders away every day? You're a big boy, too. You don't need you mommy to do that for you, do you?" Worked like a charm.

After the 2nd week I started physically blocking her at the classroom door (I'm a big girl), have them say their goodbyes, and have him go in the room by himself. The first time this happened he snatched the backpack from her and said, "I can do it. I'm a big boy." She. Was. Pissed.

One morning during the 3rd or 4th week I had a meeting and it wasn't over before school started. The person covering my class didn't know to block her and she let crazy mom in. When I came back, the kid was crying his eyes out, chasing his mom around the classroom and she was smiling and giggling about his fit that she caused.

Around December, mom had told the kid that he was going to be home schooled and wouldn't go back to our school. When she dropped him off the next day, he cried and cried and we could not console the poor kid. She left him at the door and smiled at me because he was so upset when she left. After a few hours he had finally calmed down enough to tell us the problem. "My mom said I was going to go to school at home and I wouldn't have to come here today, but she lied."

She told him she was going to home school him so that he would cry when she left him at public school. WTF?!

He had one friend in the class. Super sweet boy who would play with anyone. The crazy mom kid would punch other kids if they got in the swing next to his friend. No one else was allowed to swing next to him. Crazy mom called me and asked if I could just let them two play inside alone so her kid could have him all to himself (not in those exact words, but that's what she was asking). Nope. Not an option.

Cut to April and we had a zoo field trip. Our whole class had our lunches in a cooler that was in the bus in the zoo parking lot... except his and his mom's. She insisted that she carry theirs and she doesn't want them in the cooler. Whatever. We had a meeting time and place for lunch because parent chaperones took small groups of kids around. We didn't stay in one big group. Had to wait about 10 min for a very nice dad to fetch the cooler with the lunches. Perfect. Waited on the stragglers and let kids use restroom and wash hands while waiting. During this time, kid comes up to me and asks if I have a knife to peel his apple. Yeah, I always bring a knife to the zoo. "No, the kind of knife you need to peel an apple isn't allowed in the zoo, just eat it with the peel on. You'll be fine." He walks away. Lunches get to us and I make sure everyone is eating and accounted for. Come to crazy mom who is PEELING HER KID'S APPLE WITH HER CAR KEY. What?! When she saw me walking up she said, "It's better to eat the peel separately, it's healthier" with that smile. I say, "I hope you sanitized the key before you started. Otherwise, it won't be healthy at all," then I returned the same smile. At this point, she hands the apple to the kid and he said he didn't want it. She was flabbergasted. "WHY NOT? I just spent 20 minutes peeling it for you!" He said, "That's gross. You used a car key," and walked away to play with his friends.

There are more stories about this parent from other teachers as he moved through the school. She once snuck into the school to get a picture of him taking his first standardized test. This is/was literally against the law in Texas (photographs during state testing) and they had to contact the testing officials and fill out tons of paperwork and our school had to reschedule the testing dates, all because Crazy Mom wanted a picture of her baby taking his first test for his scrapbook.

Didn't mean for this to be so long, sorry. That mom still pisses me off when I think about her and how she effed up her kid's life.

tl;dr - Crazy Mom wanted her kid to cry every day when she left him at school and when he didn't cry anymore, she would lie to him to get him to cry for her not to leave. She also made a whole school stop and reschedule a state standardized test because she wanted a picture of her baby for a scrapbook.

-  LilacSlumber

Less helicopter parent, more “my child is innocent,” and a scam. My mom was kicked out of work (temporarily) from her underprivileged school until this case was settled. A kindergartener had just gotten her ears pierced and she took the earrings out in class because they hurt. The teacher sent her to the health secretary (my mom) and the little girl lost an earring somewhere along the way. Cleaned the ears and sent her back to class. Mother of the child sued my mom and filed a case with the school because I guess the earrings were solid gold and diamond. I guess that’s what Claire’s pierced with, seems legit. Tried to accuse my mom of stealing the earring, no chance that a 6 year old lost a tiny object. Of course the woman did not win in this situation and my mom got back to work but it was a whole bunch of baloney, accusing the teachers and office employees at the school for a lost earring and injured earlobe.

-  sortamorma

I had a boy who kept acting out in class; things like talking to classmates while I was giving directions, giving strange answers, hitting the boys sitting next to him in the arm, grabbing a boy's p-nis during class. I kept notes and informed our academy director about what was happening and he was pulled aside after school a few times to talk about his behavior.

One day, at the end of class, he reached across the table and forcefully flicked a girl in the forehead. She complained and he cocked back his arm like he was going to punch her in response. I had him sit while I let everyone else leave and told him to stay seated while I discussed his behavior with the academy director. (If nothing else, being the last one to go would be a sort of punishment.)

The director chewed him out and apparently he told his mom about it because his mom came to the academy to say that her son was an angel and I should be reprimanded for exaggerating or lying about the situation. Cue the director listing off all the crap her son had done over the past few weeks and telling her that her son was no longer welcome at the academy. Never saw him again after that.

-  woeful_haichi

My mom owned a daycare center, and I worked there when I wasn’t in school. There were some very unique kids and some crazy a-- parents. The one that comes mind though had a 6-year-old son. This kid was an incredible brat, but as soon as you met his parents you understood why. He had just started school and was coming home upset because kids were making fun of him, because of his pacifier that he kept with him and used throughout the day.

So his mom decided to wait with him at the school bus stop and pick him up from there. One day they were waiting and he mentioned he had a wedgie. So right there at the bus stop, in front of all the kids in his class, and the crossing guard, his mom picked it for him. Just stuck her hand down his pants and took care of it for him.

She wouldn’t even let him handle his own wedgie.

Needless to say, that did not help with his teasing.

-  quoteunquoteandquote

I had a third grade student whose mother felt that I favored other students over her son. She would call me and yell at me about not treating him fairly and lying. She snuck past the office a few times to come into the classroom to watch me teach (which of course is illegal and I’d have to call the office). She’d tell me and the principal that she was trying to “catch me in the act [of being dishonest].” (Of course my principal always defended me and dealt with the parent). 

As a final straw, the mother bought a watch with a voice recorder in it and the boy wore it to school. He yelled out in the middle of class suddenly, “I’m secretly recording you and you won’t teach here for much longer!” (An 8-yr-old!) Of course the watch was confiscated and the child was moved into a different classroom, though the school district could have legally moved him into another [school]. But the mother still never backed down and the next teacher had similar issues.

-  daleene

Criminal defense lawyer here. I was talking to my 23-year-old client in the hallway before court. His mom walked up to me and said forcefully, “He is a CHILD, do you understand me? A CHILD!” Because she was upset that he was in trouble with the law.

-  tinyahjumma

I wasn’t a teacher, but I did have a brief stint as a cheerleading coach. Kid gives an attitude about doing literally anything. Won’t follow any instruction and usually either sasses me or sits on her phone. Additionally, kid skips practice to snort Xanax and put it on her Snapchat. Ok. I told her that if she wasn’t interested in participating, she can sit in the stands Friday night instead. Kid proceeds to go to bathroom and calls mother (it’s not like I can actually take away their phones — try dealing with parents on THAT). Mother drives from work 30 minutes to scream at me for almost an hour. Apparently it is my fault. Her child is the best on the team and I am clearly targeting her. She says I have destroyed her confidence and am jealous of her talent. She can do whatever she wants if she’s the best on the squad. Oookay lady. I stopped coaching after that year.

- brittke

- joeyf11

Okay two great stories...

Happened in 2006. A parent who volunteered in her child’s classroom just to videotape her child all day, everyday. She threatened to sue if we did not allow her to. She did this all through elementary. It ended in middle school when they told her no. She stood outside the fence and video taped him at PE. Someone saw this and called the police. She pulled her kid and homeschooled him.

Happened to a brother and sister I went to high school with. The son was socially awkward, tall and a little round. He was in high school for only a year by himself but his mom was present at every band function we had. She even tried to come to every practice, even the ones from 9am-9pm. But then she decided that her 7th grade daughter was going to skip the 8th grade so she could enter high school early. Now she had two kids, she was always at school, even stopping by to lunch with them, it was so sad. The kids were miserable. Then she had her daughter skip the 11th grade, literally appealing to the school board. Threatening legal action if they “held back” her child from her “destiny.” So now she has both kids in the same grade, they graduate together. Mom enrolls them in community college together, in the same classes... with her. So, she is now going to classes with them. She never actually passes the classes but she wants to be with them so that the professors knows she is watching. Since she is a student, there are no grounds for having her removed. The kids get ready to transfer to the local university. They are done with mom, she tries to “ sit in” on classes but that is a big NO from day one. They diverge in interests so they get their own majors. Then they go nuts with classes, appealing to admin to take a huge load of credits. They are in school all day, every day they can. How I met up with them again was weird. I was working on campus and closed the library one night. I found them bedding down for the night in their old station wagon in the parking lot. I offered to let them stay overnight with me. They came to my house and told the tale. Last I heard the daughter dropped out and went into the medical field.

- Ginnylala

Work at a Summer Camp and we told scary stories. One of the boys in the camp couldn't sleep for the whole week because of some of the stories so his mom demanded the scary stories be banned otherwise she would basically badmouth our programs. The next Monday, the boy complained to me that we couldn't tell scary stories anymore and was upset about it... Tell that to your f--king mom...

- Melchizedek823

Before uni started we used to hold activities for first year students (frosh week for Canadians reading this). Nothing educational, but always good fun.

Had a student show up with his mother, and she questioned everything we were doing and how it will relate to her son's studies.

It didn't. We were very clear that it was all for building relationships and a bit of pre-study enjoyment. It was also a chance to meet older students and get an idea of uni life.

She was having none of it. She wanted to speak with the head of department and file an official complaint about these activities. Clearly having fun was not part of an education.

The second day she came again, and triumphantly said the dean is coming to talk to us. The dean did come, gave us a pep talk and said how much he enjoyed this time of the year, chugged a beer, and told us to join him in the local pub later on.

She was speechless and left in a huff dragging her son by the hand.

Neither showed up for the rest of the week.

- MeanElevator

In kindergarten, we have testing twice a year, once in winter and again in the spring. A parent called in a conference because her daughter had received 2 percent under the cut-off that suggested her child may, by THIRD grade, need additional help meeting reading goals. Now, that isn't why I consider her a helicopter parent. Those test scores can be confusing and I could see why she might have been worried upon seeing that if she didn't really understand the way it worked. However, myself and my mentor teacher spent about 45 minutes (with her kid in the room hearing everything) trying to console her that her daughter was doing fine and that we weren't concerned about her progress at all. We told her she interacts well with her peers, feels confident, and comfortable reading, and that these tests aren't a good way to showcase understanding, especially for a five year old. The mother revealed that she makes her daughter do over thirty minutes of homework every night and won't even let her walk downstairs without reciting all of her weekly spelling words. Other stuff too, but basically the mom was putting unreasonable pressure on this 5-year-old girl. Like planning college and thinking years ahead.

Just relax, your kid is five. If we have any concerns, trust me, you would know. Don't burn your kid out this early in their education.

- its_inspired_us

Late to the post but I’m a high school counselor. Last year I had this student who was a total sweetheart but really needed intervention. This girl was a sophomore and had a grand total of 20 credits towards graduation under her belt. She should have had 90 by that point and was on track to fail 25 more that spring. She was failing miserably. Not only that, but she would be constantly ditching class and often end up in my office because there was nowhere else to go. The school has only one way in or out. I did everything in my power to help this girl and eventually was able to get a parent meeting with myself, teachers, the school psych and school administrators involved. I explained to her parents in great detail how at this point, it was mathematically impossible for her to graduate from high school ... at the rate she was failing classes. I offered continuation school that has a much higher rate of graduation for students in her situation. I desperately wanted her to get tested for special education because it was obvious she had deficiencies and could have at least gotten some legal accommodations put in place for her in order to help her. Parents just said no to everything. No to continuation school because that’s where the “bad” kids went. No to testing because special ed had a “bad stigma.” No to after school tutoring [because] “she’s capable of doing all of this work.” No to working one-on-one with the school psych to sort out her emotional issues. No to everything. I’d never felt so defeated and knew then that I couldn’t save every kid no matter how much I wanted to.

- PM_me_datSmile

I had a student who was failing pretty badly, he had a pretty bad attitude and was extremely disrespectful. When I called his father, the response was “You’re a woman, he doesn’t need to respect you.” I handed the phone to a male mentor teacher pretty dumbfounded and explained the situation. The male teacher proceeded to ream the dad out and then had the kid transferred from my class to his class. The kid still failed and was still a disrespectful a--. Not sure what the dad had to say about that, but at least he couldn’t blame it on me being a woman.

- e-spats

I'm a nanny on the Upper East Side of New York and while my boss is a good non-helicopter father, I routinely have playdates with other kids. I have a 4, 8, and 13 year old, so I've seen it all. My two favorites though:

A mother of one of my girl's little friends called my boss up furious and insisting he fire me because I let her child play with sidewalk paint. She was mad I made her seven-year-old use a paint brush, instead of doing the drawing for him after he told me what he wants. He could've poked his eye out with a brush according to her, and it was irresponsible.

The saddest part was that little boy told me before he left how fun it was we made the paints ourselves and then got to use them.

My 13 year old had a sleepover and I got a four-page list of things one girl wasn't allowed to do or eat. When I asked her about it, she told me she was only allergic to hazelnuts, and everything on the list was there because her mom 'didn't want her getting fat.' I let her eat with the girls (we had a build your own nacho/quesadilla thing) and I took them to our bodega that is legitimately less than 250 feet away (it's the bottom level of an apartment building on our corner and we're not even in the middle of the block) and got candy and soda to watch movies around 10 after they begged me to do so, and her mother informed my boss two days later her kid was no longer allowed to be friends with his daughter and it was my fault, as it was irresponsible for me to let four girls leave the house after dark, with a chaperone or not.

I also have a great one about my four-year-old's team hockey mom threatening to call CPS on me so she could get my boss' attention, but that's less helicopter parenting and more pathetic.

- poiuylkjh2345

This is a little different from the rest of these but it sprung to mind: I taught a 5-year-old whose very eccentric and wealthy mother came in to meet with us before she started to tell us that he had some developmental and social issues and needed a little extra attention and help understanding things (note that at this age a lot of kids aren't officially tested yet for anything) . He comes in and we discover after a week or two that he is absolutely one hundred percent f---ing fine developmentally, he's just HORRIBLY behaved and has never been disciplined in his entire life. He was a NIGHTMARE who was rude, entitled, and bratty, but he was perfectly smart and once we got through to him about what behavior was expected of him, he could easily do it. She was a lazy parent who instead of admitting that he was a brat, chalked it up to disabilities. To sum it up: "There's no way that my child can be wrong something must be wrong WITH him".

- DevOnDemand

Happened in sophomore year in high school, we had a classmate who was of Indian descent and it was notable in his somewhat accented voice, while sometimes he played it up and he sounded like a cartoony Raj.

Anyways, he was a troublemaker and notorious for not listening to any female figures and even punched a female classmate during gym class.

He also had a sister the same year in classes as him, who was more level-headed and smarter; get this, he was older by 3 years!

Every time he gets in trouble with a female teacher, he takes out his phone and calls his father and gives the phone to the teacher, who starts yelling, we could all hear it.

This got everyone angry because it would cut our class time and the stress from exams coming up, so one day his parents came in and had a shouting match with the principal, we could hear it from the class next to their office.

Turns out, some students followed the kid home and beat him up and even took his pants. No one knew who it was, and the kid always played the incident as him fighting a bunch of gangbangers.

All I know now is that he was either deported or went back to India, as he had a criminal record and could not do any basic life skills.

His sister is doing well, though.

- illogicalfuturity

Teacher here. We had a student, 5th grade, who was pretty sneaky at first. He acted innocent but he was far from it. I'll jump to the end. He stepped on someone when they were laying down during free reading time. He would constantly talk and prevent the class from getting to lunch and specials on time, and did this just to cause trouble. He hit someone with a meter stick. He would "accidentally" kick people. He stole stuff. He cursed. Mom came out and said we were singling him out and he would never do those things and told us to stop contacting her. Later he did something else, something like ripping up classroom decorations or something like that, and the principal saw it. Principal called mom. Instead of accepting her child does wrong, she pulled him out of school. Since he hadn't been doing his work, this kid that was actually quite smart had all F's as transfer grades.

- jibberjabbery

I'll give two examples. One suburban, one inner city.

Suburban: Kid asked where dogs came from. Not sure why, I was an English teacher. I said they were bred from wolves, and gave two common explanations for how human interaction may have started. Mom called the school, then called me, freaking out that I mentioned evolution. Turned into a whole thing.

Inner city: Teen sucker-punched some poor girl, then punched me in the face when I broke them up. Ended up getting escorted off by campus cop. Dad, who was obviously a crackhead, showed up to the school and started threatening to kick everyone's a--.

- Darmok-on-the-Ocean

One-on-one aide for a student in public school. Kid has Downs so he's a preteen but obviously is at a lower level with schoolwork and has socialization issues. Unfortunately, kid also has hit puberty hard and has major anger issues in addition to acting sexually frustrated a lot.

He's tried to grab males and females in a sexual nature, has gotten violent with multiple students, and has physically grabbed me (female) on more than one occasion. When he's told "no" or that it's inappropriate to react that way, he either throws something or screams in your face. Oh and he's tried to masturbate in multiple classes, which resulted in him having to leave one classroom because the other students, who were not special education students, were understandably uncomfortable with his actions.

Mom insists he is not aware of his actions, that she's "talked with him" and he won't do it again. This is what she says after every incident, without fail it continues. The violence alone could get him suspended as he has shown that he's cognitively aware of his actions & the consequences but parents are "high-profile" persons in the community. Also, I've watched the kid grab his mom's breasts and hump her leg & she just waves it away with "oh he's just a little excited," you know, like one does with a dog . . .

- MarvelSyrin

- Sarnick18

Yikes.