Somewhere between the classroom and the kitchen table, teachers have long carried a private catalogue of what they see at home, and an online invitation to speak candidly drew that catalogue into public view. Their complaints circle a familiar human temptation: to smooth away every discomfort, skip every struggle, and hand children verdicts before they have tried. Whether these observations describe most families or only the ones that frustrate educators most is a question these anonymous comments cannot settle, but they offer a recognisable portrait of the old tension between protecting a chi
Teachers Say Parents Are Doing Their Kids No Favours by Solving Every Problem for Them
Your addiction is becoming their addiction.
Mark
Why does this thread land with people? It's just teachers complaining.
Mimi
Because the complaints are specific. Peeling a banana, a 1am bedtime for a preschooler, a parent saying they hated chemistry. Those are things you can picture.
Mark
The chemistry one stands out to me.
Mimi
It's about expectations. The teacher says kids arrive already convinced the class will be hard because of stories from home, before they've tried anything.
Luke
Worth saying, though, that this is one teacher's account of their own pupils. Nobody has measured how common it is.
Mark
And the discipline comments?
Mimi
Two commenters make nearly the same point: parents shouldn't hand all the discipline to teachers, and should be parents, not friends.
Luke
Those are opinions, and they're anonymous. We can't verify who wrote them or whether they're teachers at all.
Mark
So how should a reader take the list?
Mimi
As a snapshot of what some teachers say frustrates them. The three Cs advice, confidence, compassion, curiosity, is a good example: a view, not a finding.
Luke
Agreed. And the screentime section is cut off in what we have, so I wouldn't say anything about what was written there.
Der Puls
- Teachers, invited to vent on Reddit, unload a long list of parental habits they say are failing children.
- Phones glowing in the back seat and on the touchline are cast as a quiet addiction passed down to children.
- Parents who pull kids out of school, let preschoolers set bedtimes, or side with a child against the teacher are accused of undermining classroom authority.
- Commenters urge a turn back toward resilience, confidence and self-reliance, but every claim rests on anonymous posts, not research.
Somewhere between the classroom and the kitchen table, teachers have long carried a private catalogue of what they see at home, and an online invitation to speak candidly drew that catalogue into public view. Their complaints circle a familiar human temptation: to smooth away every discomfort, skip every struggle, and hand children verdicts before they have tried. Whether these observations describe most families or only the ones that frustrate educators most is a question these anonymous comments cannot settle, but they offer a recognisable portrait of the old tension between protecting a child and preparing them.
A Reddit thread gave teachers a rare chance to speak plainly about what they see in homes, and the replies came out blunt. The common thread running through them is a warning against solving every small discomfort for a child, because children who never meet a challenge arrive at school unprepared for one.
The complaints ranged from practical to emotional. One commenter argued that by the end of elementary school, children should be able to open a carton of milk, peel a banana and tie their shoes unaided, allowing for children with genuine motor difficulties. Others pointed to phones used during car rides and sports matches, saying a parent's screen habit often becomes the child's. Missed school drew a firm line, since three days away makes the work harder to catch up on, and one teacher criticised letting preschoolers choose their own bedtime.
A chemistry and physics teacher described a quieter harm: parents who announce they were bad at a subject hand their children a verdict before the first lesson. Many pupils arrive already convinced they cannot do maths. Discipline was another recurring grievance, with commenters saying that leaning on teachers to handle every consequence teaches children their parents are pushovers, and that parents should be parents rather than friends.
Not everyone wanted to measure children by grades alone. One commenter urged families to focus on confidence, compassion and curiosity, trusting that results would follow. These are anonymous posts gathered from people invited to vent, so they reveal frustration in staffrooms rather than proof of how most parents behave.
A Reddit thread gave teachers a chance to say what they rarely get to say to parents' faces. The prompt invited education staff to get things off their chests and name what parents are doing wrong. The replies, collected by HuffPost UK, were blunt, and the one that sums up the pile is simple: you are not doing your kid any favours by solving every tiny discomfort, upset or challenge for them.
The complaints range from the practical to the emotional. One commenter, going by No-Resolve-5037, focused on fine motor skills. By the end of elementary school, they wrote, a child should be able to open a carton of milk, peel a banana and tie their shoes without help. They allowed for children with genuine motor-skill or other issues, but the point stood: these are things parents can teach.
Phones came up too. Commenter coskibum002 asked parents to put them down while driving with a child in the car, while watching them play sports, and generally. In their words, the parent's addiction is becoming the child's. The thread also appears to have raised unmonitored screentime as a separate heading, though the published excerpt cuts off before any comment under it.
School attendance drew a firm line. One teacher said parents do no favours by letting a child pick and choose when to attend, because the work only gets harder after missing three days of instruction. Another, SaltCityStitcher, addressed sleep: letting preschoolers set their own bedtime is a problem, and so is shaming a child in front of the teacher and making them apologise for having chosen to stay up until 1am watching TV.
A teacher of Chemistry and Physics described a quieter kind of damage. Parents who say they were bad at a subject, or remember hating a class, hand their children a verdict before the first lesson. This teacher said the number of pupils arriving convinced they are bad at maths, or that the course will be needlessly hard because of their parents' horror stories, is mind-blowing. Their question was why set the expectation of a bad, hard class before the child has even tried.
Discipline was a recurring theme. BlackJeansRomeo wrote that outsourcing all discipline to teachers helps neither child nor parent, and teaches the child that the parent is a pushover. Another commenter, ambified19, agreed, adding that never telling a child no belongs in the same category, and urged parents to be parents, not friends. Sunraveled targeted a related habit: siding with the child over the teacher and acting as though the child did nothing wrong.
One commenter, Embarrassed_Sea4297, pushed against a fixation on results. Parents who focus only on grades and not on the kind of person the child is becoming are missing the point, they argued, and they suggested concentrating on three Cs: confidence, compassion and curiosity, with the rest following eventually.
These are anonymous comments on a public forum, not research. They reflect what individual teachers say they see in their own classrooms, and they were gathered by invitation to vent. They are best read as a window into staffroom frustrations, not as evidence of how most parents behave or what most harms children.
Bemerkenswerte Zitate
Be their parents, not their friends.— ambified19, Reddit commenter
Why set the expectations that my classes will be bad and hard before your kid has even tried?— Chemistry and Physics teacher, Reddit commenter
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