Netizens are by this dad’s side to remind his son’s teacher at a parent-teacher conference at school that he’s a parent, not a girlfriend
As we enter the 23rd year of the 21st century, many people’s actions continue with concepts and categories from about half a century ago. In many areas, from marriage and relationships to parenting and education.
For example, school fathers are often treated with some degree of prejudice because of the long-established social stereotype that women receive the most attention in the family when it comes to parents and school. LGBTQ+ couples are absolutely normal in the modern world.
New Year brought us such stories. Appeared very recently We managed to get almost 6.7K upvotes and over 1.2K different comments in a few days on the AITA Reddit community. Interestingly, the author of the original post says the story itself happened a few weeks ago, but a recent incident with one of his relatives prompted him to write this post anyway. However, let’s talk about everything in order…
More information: reddit
Poster is sole parent of 6-year-old son as mother lost custody battle
Image credit: David Lytle (not actual image)
So the original poster, a man named ‘Mark’, is the sole parent of his 6-year-old son, ‘Nathan’. The father says the boy’s mother lost a custody battle and is even barred from coming to the school to pick up the boy for safety reasons. According to Mark’s own words, the teachers are aware of this situation and in effect know that the woman next to him is not Nathan’s biological mother.
Image credit: u/throwaway192929197
The author wants to be a good father and is always very involved in his son’s school life.
The boy is in first grade and the father is actively involved in his son’s school life, including parent-teacher conferences. As the original poster explains, at Nathan’s school, these meetings usually take him twice a year. One before the Christmas holidays and his other at the end of the school year. So it’s about the meeting that took place before this Christmas.
Image credit: u/throwaway192929197
As Mark was preparing for a meeting, his son asked his girlfriend “Venus”, whom his father has been dating for eight months, to go with him. The boy and girl get along very well, and Nathan, whose mother tongue is Spanish, helps me with English. By OP’s own admission, he knows Spanish well, but Venus is so fluent that women often tutor children to help them improve their English.
Image credit: u/throwaway192929197
The boy asked his father’s girlfriend to come to the parent-teacher conference and wanted her to be proud of his success in English.
So the boy asked his father to let Venus go to the meeting too. He had made some progress in English in the past semester and wanted to please and make his father’s girlfriend happy and proud.Mark didn’t mind so we went to the meeting together. went. And here, the post’s author recalls, it all began…
Image credit: Maryland GovPics (not actual image)
The father was upset that the teacher primarily spoke to his girlfriend, even though she knew the woman was not the boy’s mother.
Throughout the meeting, the teacher always looked only at Venus, but he was well aware that the woman was definitely not the boy’s mother. Venus kept redirecting the conversation to her partner, but literally seconds passed, everything repeated, and the teacher went back to talking to Venus. Some more time passed and this started to bother the original poster…
Image credit: u/throwaway192929197
The man politely but firmly interrupted the teacher’s soliloquy, reminding her that he was Nathan’s father and that he would be very grateful if the teacher spoke to him. , after which Sensei seemed taken back and annoyed, but she apologized and spoke to him for the rest of the meeting.
Image credit: u/throwaway192929197
The author politely asked the teacher to speak to him, but was later ridiculed by his brother-in-law.
According to the OP, this story would have been completely overlooked – had it not been for what followed next. According to OP’s BIL, when he and his wife attend PTM, the teacher traditionally speaks to his wife as well. Because mothers tend to be more involved than fathers, so it’s just a force of habit.
Image credit: Nicholas Cole (not actual image)
Additionally, during a family Christmas dinner, BIL joked with the author. When his mother asked Venus if he had Nathan’s inhaler, his brother-in-law sarcastically commented: In general, according to BIL himself, the OP made a mistake by inviting her Venus to the meeting in the first place, making the poor teacher feel like he did something wrong to something possibly harmless. I was allowed to.
However, those in the comments sided with their father because he was neither mean nor disrespectful and had full rights to demand the attention of teachers.
Still, most of the people in the comments supported the original poster, although some are asking the same question as the brother-in-law. Secondly, the father was neither mean nor disrespectful, he was completely following his rights, and her remarks were his.
Some commentators believe Venus did the right thing in this case by supporting her boyfriend and forwarding her teacher’s speech to him. I hope you have a good time. Commentators are also amazed at how persistent the outdated stereotypes are, as people are actually used to women being the primary caretakers. , that is very correct. If the teacher doesn’t express things correctly, it should be corrected in the future.
As for us, if you already have your point of view on the character, we welcome your comments on this story. I’m looking forward to it too.