A note from your child's teacher...

[Belle]

Originally Posted by IndoorKitty Yes, she should have blocked the number. However, I should always lock the front door. If I don't, that doesn't mean that it's okay for you to come in.

By that logic, no one should ever call your home without permission, even a friend! Walking into someone's house is much, much different than calling someone, IMO. I would never walk into my friend's house unannounced, but I would call them at 7:30 at night without getting permission first.

As for the time, I have lots of friends for whom 7:30 pm is bathtime. If I were elbow deep in suds and answered my phone without thinking (because that's something that is easy to do when I'm distracted,) I would be super annoyed.

I posted to the OP that I completely get being annoyed, I just don't think that what happened makes the parent a stalker who violated her. Like I said, if I was dealing with 250 students and associated parents, there's bound to be one or two in the bunch that have poor social skills or lack of boundaries. What do you do if you're working with that many people with faults and foibles all day, every day? I would be surprised, honestly, that I didn't get more weirdness invading my personal life on a more consistent basis!

[jbug_4]

Originally Posted by Belle Maybe I'm misunderstanding the situation. It was one phone call? From one parent who misunderstood your personal boundaries? One time? And you feel "stalked and violated"?

I believe the stalked and violated comment comes from the fact that she called the parent in July and the parent saved the number for later use and used it just a few days ago (in Nov). A little melodramatic maybe but I would do a double take if someone saved my number for later use under these kind of circumstances. But then I don't use people's numbers off caller ID unless someone tells me to use that number.

[IndoorKitty]

Couple of things:

A parent who would do this is probably well known for her "mama drama." Note the part about how precious darling had to have his schedule changed by the teacher instead of standing in line with everyone else.

We are right on the edge of the holiday season. It's concert time. Show stress is a whole other stratosphere of stress. The OP is using DS as a way to exorcise her frustration. That's a good thing.

BTW OP,

Have you thought of checking in to google voice. It gives you a phone number to make and receive calls, and you can set it to forward your messages to your email. I have it and it's darned handy. I think that there is a way to have it scheduled to roll to voice mail at certain times and from certain numbers.

[IndoorKitty]

Originally Posted by Belle By that logic, no one should ever call your home without permission, even a friend! Walking into someone's house is much, much different than calling someone, IMO. I would never walk into my friend's house unannounced, but I would call them at 7:30 at night without getting permission first.

A friendship is not the same thing as a professional relationship. Furthermore, at some point in your friendship, you told you friend to call you and gave her your number. (Sure the number was probably on her phone if you called her, but you've said "Hey, call me tomorrow," right? That's permission.) If the OP were my friend, I wouldn't call her at 7:30 because I'd know that this is kiddie time. Sort of how I told my mom that if she wants grandchildren she really needs to quit calling after 9 pm.

I posted to the OP that I completely get being annoyed, I just don't think that what happened makes the parent a stalker who violated her. Like I said, if I was dealing with 250 students and associated parents, there's bound to be one or two in the bunch that have poor social skills or lack of boundaries. What do you do if you're working with that many people with faults and foibles all day, every day? I would be surprised, honestly, that I didn't get more weirdness invading my personal life on a more consistent basis!

Straw that breaks tha camel's back. Plus, the OP described one of the no doubt thousands of incidents of parents and students behaving inappropriately.

[luvsviola]

Yup...we have Google Voice. It makes texting free. I am too cheap to pay for it! Using the Google Voice app, you don't have to pay a dime for texts.

[Terra]

I'm sorry OP that you feel frustrated. It's certainly an individual thing. If those are the boundaries you want to set then I'd be very clear with parents from day 1. Hope it works out.
Personally, it's just par for the course, and I'm 'just a para' right now I get stopped in Walmart a lot, I've had calls. My son's teacher gives her number to all parents and says to call/text any time. He's in the ASD unit granted and often times parents just need support with the special needs aspect so she makes herself available.

[Kiliki]

In high school we had to communicate with some teachers on off hours.

Once b/c my English teacher thought I'd cheated on a test (no, I did NOT cheat) so he called from his home phone to our home phone, at like 9pm. We were shocked he would call so late!

And once b/c I was being continually sexually harassed in my Spanish class and my loser Spanish teacher never did anything about it and my Dad was seeing red and ready to hurt someone, and the Assistant Principal called him from her cell or house phone late in the evening, returning his call, to try to help sort things out before my Dad went nuts.

....there were a handful of other times, too.

Oh, once a teacher drove all the way to my house (which was a big deal, I grew up 30 mins from school, out in the middle of nowehere land) to give me 3 or 4 hand-me-down dresses from her DD. She was really sweet.

I have no idea what the appropriate "etiquette" is for all these situations. I don't really care. I'm glad we had good relationships with all my teachers. And I would hope if my kids were ever in public school, we'd also have these kids of good relationships with their teachers.

I don't consider 7:30pm too late to call anyone. But I guess it would depend on how close I felt I was to that person.

[mibarra]

Originally Posted by Kiliki In high school we had to communicate with some teachers on off hours. Once b/c my English teacher thought I'd cheated on a test (no, I did NOT cheat) so he called from his home phone to our home phone, at like 9pm. We were shocked he would call so late! And once b/c I was being continually sexually harassed in my Spanish class and my loser Spanish teacher never did anything about it and my Dad was seeing red and ready to hurt someone, and the Assistant Principal called him from her cell or house phone late in the evening, returning his call, to try to help sort things out before my Dad went nuts. ....there were a handful of other times, too. Oh, once a teacher drove all the way to my house (which was a big deal, I grew up 30 mins from school, out in the middle of nowehere land) to give me 3 or 4 hand-me-down dresses from her DD. She was really sweet. I have no idea what the appropriate "etiquette" is for all these situations. I don't really care. I'm glad we had good relationships with all my teachers. And I would hope if my kids were ever in public school, we'd also have these kids of good relationships with their teachers. I don't consider 7:30pm too late to call anyone. But I guess it would depend on how close I felt I was to that person.

There will always be exceptions and special situations. In both cases above school personnel called your family after hours, from what it sounds like. But I think it's becoming more common for parents to view teachers as "on call" 24/7 for every little thing, most of which could probably wait or be handled through email.

[Belle]

Originally Posted by IndoorKitty Straw that breaks tha camel's back. Plus, the OP described one of the no doubt thousands of incidents of parents and students behaving inappropriately.

Like I said, that's why I couldn't be a teacher! I could not deal with the thousands of incidents gracefully. I probably couldn't deal with 5 incidents gracefully! If I got one mama drama call at my house at 7:30, I don't know where that would fall on my radar if I had 500-ish parents of 250 students. Even if I was really good at adjusting my expectations for appropriate behavior (or what others might consider appropriate behavior), I'd probably take a lot of it way too personally.

[sojomisa]

Originally Posted by *KaiMom* When someone calls from an unblocked number it's almost automatic for someone to save the number for future use=permission to call them at that number. If the op has such a problem with parents calling then why give out the number; and yes when you call from an unblocked number you are handing out your number. That's probably why doctors don't call you from their home numbers.

I completely disagree. Permission is saying "here's my number, call me" or writing these are my contact numbers in a note.

FWIW, I don't save any of my caller ID numbers. It's only there for me to decide if I feel like answering the phone, and serves no other purpose.