Parents Are Not Entitled to Non-Stop Text Access to Their Child During School

Sometimes it feels like our job as educators is to help the apple fall a little bit farther from the tree.

One of my coworkers used to joke about that when I was a middle school teacher.

And of course, that's kind of an inappropriate joke.

We want to be partners with parents.

We don't want to criticize or alienate parents.

But in looking at the comments, like over 3,000 comments on my video about parents texting their kids during the school day, now we should not be allowing that as educators.

So many parents showed up in the comments to defend their right to interrupt their child constantly throughout the school day.

And it was really astounding to me how many teachers said, yeah, this is happening constantly.

Parents are calling their kids on the phone or on their Apple Watch or on FaceTime during class saying, what do you want for dinner?

Or they're texting them things like grandma's in the hospital or Grandpa Joe is dying.

And it's like, how do you expect that child to be able to concentrate on learning for the rest of the school day if the parent is dying?

contacting them like that throughout the day like sign the kid out absolutely if grandma's dying like go check your kid out and go go visit her or whatever but don't text distressing information to your child during the school day don't constantly distract and call and ping them during the school day knowing that they're gonna see it and they're gonna need to respond and of course if it's distressing This is going to interfere with their learning, absolutely.

So it really seems like what's happening is that a lot of parents are using their child as their weighted blanket or they're using their child as their therapist.

They're leaning on their child, maybe it's a teenager, with these text messages and expecting a response that can be comforting, that can be engaging, that can kind of deal with the parents' boredom, maybe the parents at work or maybe the parents at home.

And they just they want somebody to interact with.

So they're interrupting their child who is at school supposed to be learning.

And in a lot of cases, they're transferring their distress.

They're transferring their anxiety.

They're transferring their boredom.

They're transferring their impulsivity onto their child.

And as educators, I think we've got to help that apple fall a little bit further from the tree and say, during the school day, you do not get to constantly text your child.

Yes, you can sign them out if you need them.

Yes, you can leave a message at the office.

Yes, you can leave them a voicemail or a text to check after school.

But this expectation of constantly being able to reach your child in order to transfer your anxieties onto them or get information, like your lack of planning ahead is not a reason to interrupt your child's learning.

Like, frankly, if there are some things you needed to talk about before school, Leave a message at the office or just talk about them before school.

I really think we have to put some boundaries in place because clearly there are lots of parents who have no boundaries.

They do not see school as something that is worth protecting and respecting.

They see school as something that is mostly a waste of time and that can be interrupted any time.

And of course, if parents are mostly interrupting school most of the time, then it's going to be very difficult to do anything worthwhile.

It's going to be very frustrating for students and teachers to try to get into anything if everybody's constantly distracted.

So I think we've got to fight back against this distraction and this disruption, especially from parents.

Let me know what you think.