The kids are great, it's the parents that bother me

[carnation]

Agger_rob, welcome to the world of working with children. You're learning why there's such a high burnout rate of employees in that field.

Teachers see it day after day. There are so many parents who never should've had kids. Not just the grossly abusive ones, but those--and some are educated and upper middle class--who basically leave the raising of their kids to teachers or others. And once the kids are teenagers, they never know where the kids are.

Parents like this are why we can't keep leaders in Scouting. These parents will leave their child at your house for 4 hours after every meeting without asking--or they won't lift a finger to help but they'll scream at you if they don't think their child is having a perfect Scouting experience.

And don't even get me started on parents from all walks of life who brush off the need for education. When I taught high school, there were several who would let their kids lay out of class, even a test, to get their nails done or go hunting and then write an excuse saying they'd been sick. These are the same kinds of parents who go ballistic if their kids make bad grades after missing 10 days of class and blame it on the teacher.