Why I hate AAP Parents - vent

[Anonymous]

I have 3 children-my youngest just started AAP, the others didn't qualify for AAP. I went to an open house with the teacher a few days ago and I really haven't never experienced another open house full of such rude parents and grilling the teacher like it was a press conference. Been to plenty of open houses but never seen one like. It only seemed like a few parents like this and most seemed reasonable but I was still shocked.

[Anonymous]

The rudeness of the parents speaks to your neighborhood more than to AAP parents in general. I've had multiple kids in AAP, and the parents have been perfectly nice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Volunteers, anywhere, aren't/can't be held to much of a professional standard. She should probably to reported to the OM headquarters though ...

Unfortunately the segregation of AAP students means there will always exist @sshole parents.

Indeed. Easy to spot, because they are the ones on DCUM reserecting 3 year old threads about how much they hate AAP parents. On the second day of the school year. So already off to a great start. It takes a special kind of b@tchy person to search through 3 years of threads, and not be this angry on the second day of school.

The responses seem to show a lot hostility, but given the number of parents (a very vocal but not insubstantial minority) I have seen who can't have a conversation about children without first blurting out their kid is AAP, it makes me avoid mentioning that my kid was AAP. But then again we let our DS decide if he wanted to be at an AAP school, a significant number of his friends were non-AAP, I once had an AAP parent ask why I didn't have my son play with the AAP kids (my son refused to play with his son because the boy always told the non-AAP kids he was AAP). I think an earlier poster is correct, there are a few AAP parents that are complete jerks, if you are an AAP parent and don't recognize that you probably are one, because all of AAP parents I knew that were not jerks could tell you which ones were and understood how bad of an impression they gave for the rest of us. But one thing I can tell you is that running around telling everyone including your child how much better they are than everyone else will likely make your kid a jerk as well, that was my observation at least. And the OP yes back in 2014 saw the same things I saw. Parents who were so pathetic that they would criticize another child for not being AAP because they might be on a OM team with their super intelligent AAP kid. I saw they exact same behavior at my son's AAP school. I was the OM coordinator, guess whose kid did not make it on to a team? I was not going to give a coach a parent like that to deal with. That same parent was infamous for doing their child's projects for them (really not good for OM), clearly because their brilliant AAP child was unable to do the level of work the mother thought they were capable of. And if you needed to know who the super jerk parents were at our school you just had to go to a school event and see what crowd she hung out with. There were even other Jerk parents that distanced themselves from that crowd. So while the original post made some generalizations, those of us that are not Jerk AAP parents are probably able to sympathize. If one parent making a statement that clearly has some validity makes you that insecure that you need to attack, you may be one of the Jerks. There were times that I wondered if allowing my DS to choose to go to an AAP school was the right thing to do, but when I saw that he could tell which kids were jerks and he made friends with the kids he liked (AAP or not) and he did not judge people based on whether they were AAP I always felt better about the decision. But I always hated seeing parents behave similar to what the OP saw. Actually I am glad this thread resurfaced, it reminds me how glad I am that my son turned down TJ, because when I hang out with the TJ parents I see some of them are jerks as well.

Ah, but at least they do not capitalize Jerks and, better still, use paragraphs.

Wow a post form an AAP parent that unintentionally proves that some AAP parents are jerks. I guess the OP and the poster you responded to are not going to be surprised by your post. I wish I had not had similar experiences with AAP parents, but I take solace in knowing that they are the minority, even if unfortunately the vocal minority.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The rudeness of the parents speaks to your neighborhood more than to AAP parents in general. I've had multiple kids in AAP, and the parents have been perfectly nice.

I don't think the OP was trying to generalize to all AAP parents, they were venting. As an AAP parent myself in my experience dealing with AAP parents form many different schools, if all of the parents you have been around have been nice, you are singularly lucky individual.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have 3 children-my youngest just started AAP, the others didn't qualify for AAP. I went to an open house with the teacher a few days ago and I really haven't never experienced another open house full of such rude parents and grilling the teacher like it was a press conference. Been to plenty of open houses but never seen one like. It only seemed like a few parents like this and most seemed reasonable but I was still shocked.

+1 sadly

[Anonymous]

Wow, really? Our open house no one really had any questions beyond "how often is pe" etc. What kind of questions were people asking?

[Anonymous]

News Flash: There are jerk parents everywhere. AAP, General Ed, Soccer Field, PTA, Non-PTA, Swim Team, Chess Club, Cheer Team you know name it! Find some nice people to be friends with and stop generalizing AAP parents!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:News Flash: There are jerk parents everywhere. AAP, General Ed, Soccer Field, PTA, Non-PTA, Swim Team, Chess Club, Cheer Team you know name it! Find some nice people to be friends with and stop generalizing AAP parents!

+1. And people who did up old threads bashing other parents the FIRST WEEK OF SCHOOL are in no position to call other parents jerks. Way to start the year off giving people the benefit of the doubt.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow, really? Our open house no one really had any questions beyond "how often is pe" etc. What kind of questions were people asking?

The kinds of questions many parents were asking were about tests like SOL, IOWA for algebra placement, etc. and about how to get practice tests and how much tutoring their kids should have. These parents were deadly serious, and from countries that approach education this way, so it's a big cultural difference. I found it grim, but it wasn't like they weren't nice people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, really? Our open house no one really had any questions beyond "how often is pe" etc. What kind of questions were people asking?

The kinds of questions many parents were asking were about tests like SOL, IOWA for algebra placement, etc. and about how to get practice tests and how much tutoring their kids should have. These parents were deadly serious, and from countries that approach education this way, so it's a big cultural difference. I found it grim, but it wasn't like they weren't nice people.

I think the key element is not AAP, but rather the seriousness that the some cultures place on education. They typically come from a society which is very resource constrained, so if your child is not at the top of any given metric, they will lose significant opportunities, and will never catch up -- as the home countries do not have the resources to spend on every kid. So, "failure" to achieve AAP, TJ, pass advanced on the SOL's, 1600 SAT's, etc means a bad career.

As someone who is born and raised in this country, but in a family that values education, I know that, what matters is what you learn and how you retain it. College? People do very well from a variety of schools. While MIT does help get the first job out of college, there are definitely people, 10 years out, from MIT that are working for Virginia Tech Graduates. I think I will go rub that fact into to my MIT employee.

-- a Hokie from the mid 80's....doing quite well for myself (so is the MIT graduate, FWIW).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, really? Our open house no one really had any questions beyond "how often is pe" etc. What kind of questions were people asking?

The kinds of questions many parents were asking were about tests like SOL, IOWA for algebra placement, etc. and about how to get practice tests and how much tutoring their kids should have. These parents were deadly serious, and from countries that approach education this way, so it's a big cultural difference. I found it grim, but it wasn't like they weren't nice people.

I think the key element is not AAP, but rather the seriousness that the some cultures place on education. They typically come from a society which is very resource constrained, so if your child is not at the top of any given metric, they will lose significant opportunities, and will never catch up -- as the home countries do not have the resources to spend on every kid. So, "failure" to achieve AAP, TJ, pass advanced on the SOL's, 1600 SAT's, etc means a bad career.

As someone who is born and raised in this country, but in a family that values education, I know that, what matters is what you learn and how you retain it. College? People do very well from a variety of schools. While MIT does help get the first job out of college, there are definitely people, 10 years out, from MIT that are working for Virginia Tech Graduates. I think I will go rub that fact into to my MIT employee.

-- a Hokie from the mid 80's....doing quite well for myself (so is the MIT graduate, FWIW).

NP here. PP, the bold is an excellent summary of what lies behind much of the parental pressure to "succeed" and tick off all the boxes of school-related perfection, among certain cultural groups. And you did it without an ounce of judgment or snark about it. That is rare, maybe unique, here on DCUM. Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, really? Our open house no one really had any questions beyond "how often is pe" etc. What kind of questions were people asking?

The kinds of questions many parents were asking were about tests like SOL, IOWA for algebra placement, etc. and about how to get practice tests and how much tutoring their kids should have. These parents were deadly serious, and from countries that approach education this way, so it's a big cultural difference. I found it grim, but it wasn't like they weren't nice people.

I think the key element is not AAP, but rather the seriousness that the some cultures place on education. They typically come from a society which is very resource constrained, so if your child is not at the top of any given metric, they will lose significant opportunities, and will never catch up -- as the home countries do not have the resources to spend on every kid. So, "failure" to achieve AAP, TJ, pass advanced on the SOL's, 1600 SAT's, etc means a bad career.

As someone who is born and raised in this country, but in a family that values education, I know that, what matters is what you learn and how you retain it. College? People do very well from a variety of schools. While MIT does help get the first job out of college, there are definitely people, 10 years out, from MIT that are working for Virginia Tech Graduates. I think I will go rub that fact into to my MIT employee.

-- a Hokie from the mid 80's....doing quite well for myself (so is the MIT graduate, FWIW).

NP here. PP, the bold is an excellent summary of what lies behind much of the parental pressure to "succeed" and tick off all the boxes of school-related perfection, among certain cultural groups. And you did it without an ounce of judgment or snark about it. That is rare, maybe unique, here on DCUM. Thank you.

Ditto this, but I'm in a school system without a lot of the cultures to which the PP is referring. There are still lots of parents who are overly impressed with their children's ability and who make it hard on everyone because of their constant demands for special attention. Believe me, school officials know who they are and teachers are anxious NOT to have these families in their classrooms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, really? Our open house no one really had any questions beyond "how often is pe" etc. What kind of questions were people asking?

The kinds of questions many parents were asking were about tests like SOL, IOWA for algebra placement, etc. and about how to get practice tests and how much tutoring their kids should have. These parents were deadly serious, and from countries that approach education this way, so it's a big cultural difference. I found it grim, but it wasn't like they weren't nice people.

I think the key element is not AAP, but rather the seriousness that the some cultures place on education. They typically come from a society which is very resource constrained, so if your child is not at the top of any given metric, they will lose significant opportunities, and will never catch up -- as the home countries do not have the resources to spend on every kid. So, "failure" to achieve AAP, TJ, pass advanced on the SOL's, 1600 SAT's, etc means a bad career.

As someone who is born and raised in this country, but in a family that values education, I know that, what matters is what you learn and how you retain it. College? People do very well from a variety of schools. While MIT does help get the first job out of college, there are definitely people, 10 years out, from MIT that are working for Virginia Tech Graduates. I think I will go rub that fact into to my MIT employee.

-- a Hokie from the mid 80's....doing quite well for myself (so is the MIT graduate, FWIW).

NP here. PP, the bold is an excellent summary of what lies behind much of the parental pressure to "succeed" and tick off all the boxes of school-related perfection, among certain cultural groups. And you did it without an ounce of judgment or snark about it. That is rare, maybe unique, here on DCUM. Thank you.

I did not want my post to be deleted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's rude. Just as it's rude to ask little kids other personal things like what their parents do or things like that.

What is rude about asking a kid what his/her parent(s) does (do)? Is a 7th grader "little"? I ask my kid's friends what their parents do - nothing rude asking what mom/dad does.

Ask the parents directly if you must know!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's rude. Just as it's rude to ask little kids other personal things like what their parents do or things like that.

What is rude about asking a kid what his/her parent(s) does (do)? Is a 7th grader "little"? I ask my kid's friends what their parents do - nothing rude asking what mom/dad does.

What is the relevance of such information unless asked in the context of a specific subject?

Some parents don't want their kids playing with the wrong kind of peoples children. I have an employer that employs a wide variety of people ranging from GED holders to Doctorates, I can name my employer in a way that makes my job sound like I only finished high school or have a GED (like several of my closest friends) rather than having a Doctorate. My kids proudly said who I work for in their terms once and those terms implied a high school diploma at best, I realized that I could use it myself. So now when stuck talking with someone that is all about status I use my kids description and they will chew their leg off to get away from me to find someone of the proper status to be seen with. Some of my friends find it hysterical and it has gotten me away from so many Jerks over the years. The best part though is when other friends come buy to tell me that the guy who walked off thought I was a ??????, and was shocked to find out what I really do. Most of those people are smart enough to keep their distance, but some are such desperate status seekers that they actually end up trying to engage me in conversation again, unfortunately I have never found time for those people.

The one thing I am careful about is not doing this to a parent whose children my kids really like playing with. One time the parent actually walked away then went over and pulled their child aside and had their child go play with a different group of kids where my child was not. Luckily this was just kids who really did not know each other playing together for a few hours.