When Parents Don’t Understand Your Role as a Counselor (and How to Change That!) [Episode 155]

Lauren 0:00
Remember I said, we’re on the same team. Bringing that back into it, you have to disarm them with kindness, even though that is very hard at times, and keep reminding them that you have their student’s best interest in mind. You have counseling skills that allow you to do that even with a parent.

Lauren 0:24
You got into this profession to make a difference in your students’ lives, but you’re spread thin by all of the things that keep getting added to your to do list. I can’t create more hours in the day, but I can invite you into my Counselor Clique where you’ll finally catch your breath. Come with me as we unpack creative ideas and effective strategies that’ll help you be the counselor who leaves a lifelong impact on your students. I’m Lauren Tingle, your high school counseling hype girl, here to help you energize your school counseling program and remind you of how much you love your job.

Lauren 0:57
It is hard when you feel like you are constantly fighting an uphill battle for people to understand what you do and see the value behind what you do. I know it’s a constant push and pull to get to that place of equilibrium. We swing back and forth along this pendulum of, I’m going straight to the White House to advocate, and then throwing in the towel, like, everyone should know what I do and care about what I do. It’s like, who cares anymore? You get to one of those points or the other pretty often. So I don’t know where you find yourself on this spectrum today or this school year, but I guarantee that at some point in your career you’re gonna find yourself in both of these camps.

Lauren 1:39
So let’s talk specifically about this idea as it relates to parents. I have stories for days about parents who didn’t understand or appreciate what I did. And I know, I don’t have these unrealistic expectations, not every parent is going to care about what I do or be interested in what I do. But it does get tiring after a while thinking, well, I need to advocate, or I need to stick up for myself, or tell them constantly about what I’m doing in the school, or if I can’t get back to them where I’ve been. If we go to the extreme. I also have stories about parents who are just plain mean. So definitely, I would say those ones didn’t understand what I did as a counselor.

Lauren 2:21
A mantra I found myself saying a lot in light of parents being frustrated, like we were in a conversation together, I would have to remind them that we’re on the same team. And I would feel like we’re having a really big misunderstanding if we don’t get it that we’re on the same team, like I would laugh to myself, thinking, I promise I do not get paid enough to be in it for the money. I have my own kids at home or at daycare, and I’m here because I care about your student. I don’t know how to communicate that any differently or any better than what I’m trying to do right here. I always have students’ best interests in mind. There’s not much to gain selfishly from this job where you’re just constantly pouring out.

Lauren 3:03
So maybe you got into this counseling role because of how great your high school counselor was, or maybe the opposite, that person didn’t exist. So you’re like, I’m gonna step in and I’m gonna fill this role for future students. You know how much you felt the lack and how good it could have felt, or how well you could have benefited from having somebody that was a high school counselor who was in your corner. We have to remember that parents’ views of what you do may be shaped on their own personal experiences with a counselor, whether that was good or bad or non existent altogether.

Lauren 3:35
Their views of us, also, I know this sounds silly, but it might be swayed by the media. Political things aside, I’m talking about like movies or TV shows. I mean, can you think of a school counselor that was even portrayed in a realistic light on TV, or a nice light, that wasn’t just this guidance counselor sitting behind a desk who just was out of touch with students? Probably there’s one that I can think of, Tammy Taylor, Friday Night Lights. Like if you get that reference and you’re a Friday Night Lights fan, then we’re definitely best counselor friends forever. But there are so many more really horrible examples of counselors out there on TV shows and in movies.

Lauren 4:19
So I’m definitely not saying that all crazy or ungrateful parent behavior comes from misunderstanding, because there are just some out there who are just plain mean or rude people, but some of that comes from parents just trying to do their best, but not knowing what your role is or what it could be. Just with any relationship building that you’re doing, whether that’s with a student, a new acquaintance outside of school, like you’re out making a friend, or in this case, a skeptical parent, you have to disarm them going into a conversation. And sometimes you don’t know it’s going to be a difficult conversation, until you have run into the brick wall and you realize, Wait, we are at a standstill. They are not budging, or they’re really mad right now, or they came in here ready to pick a fight, like you don’t start your day wondering who’s coming in to pick a fight with you.

Lauren 5:10
And I’m saying all of those experiences because I have had them. I’ve lived them, and I’ve hated every second of those experiences. Grad school does not prepare you for the parent who wants to brawl in the parking lot. But pause, remember I said we’re on the same team. Like bringing that back into it, you have to disarm them with kindness, even though that is very hard at times, and keep reminding them that you have their student’s best interest in mind. You have counseling skills that allow you to do that even with a parent.

Lauren 5:42
Now, again, I said I don’t think grad school, it didn’t prepare me for that. I don’t know about you, but it did not prepare me for the parent conversations that were going to be really hard. So ask questions, stay the calmest person in the room and be solution focused to move that conversation forward.

Lauren 6:02
I actually had a conversation with a friend of mine who is getting her doctorate in an adjacent kind of arena. She’s working with special ed teachers, but she told me that they are using AI to generate parent conversations and to simulate what those would be like, and she can put in information, like the parent is angry about this, and then it records the teacher giving that feedback and having that conversation and really bringing the conversation to a place of peace and moving forward with ideas and moving to a good place. And so I thought that was interesting, and maybe you could reach out to me and let me know if your grad school programs are doing something like this now, but that was not a thing a few years ago when I was in grad school.

Lauren 6:47
I know you’re tired of the quote advocacy efforts that you have to do all the time, but this is just one of the places that it’s really gonna pay off. When parents even understand like a tiny sliver of what you’re doing all day, they’re much more willing to be forgiving and kind when you call them back at the end of the day instead of within the hour. I found that even saying something like, “Hey Miss Nelson, I’m so sorry I’ve been tied up with crisis after crisis today. Thank you so much for your patience. I’m just getting back to all of this morning’s phone calls,” or something like, “Ms. Metcalf, yes, it’s so good to hear from you. I know I had those three voicemails from you today that did sound really urgent. That’s why I am so glad that I could get back to you before the school day was over. This morning was just crazy. I was in classroom after classroom doing lessons on scholarships and teacher recommendations. You know, it’s just that time of year.”

Lauren 7:41
You’d be so surprised at how many parents don’t know that we do classroom lessons. And let’s be real, when that’s on your calendar, you come in for the day and head straight to a classroom. You do not have time to Pass Go. If you spill your coffee on you, you’re doing a presentation with coffee down your white shirt, because there is no room for rescheduling this stuff.

Lauren 8:00
Now, obviously don’t lie if that’s not what you were doing all day, but if you really can work it into the conversation, I think that those little tidbits just kind of disarm a parent that you were not sitting there twiddling your thumbs, not calling them back because you were trying to spite them. I don’t know why they would think that, but I think sometimes they do. I know it’s not even any of their business to know what you were up to and to understand why you didn’t drop everything to call them back, but sometimes it helps. And I’m not saying you have to be out of your office to truly have something to be the reason why their call wasn’t returned right away. Maybe you save all of your voicemails to batch return in the last hour of the day. I don’t hold that against you. I actually think that’s a really smart and efficient use of your time.

Lauren 8:48
Speaking of efficient uses of time, when parents don’t know how your time is used, they can generally have unrealistic expectations for when you’re supposed to get back to them. Sometimes you’re just out sick and you cannot call them back in that day or within 24 hours. When you’re at home sick as a dog, you should not, I was gonna say you aren’t, but maybe you are. You should not be thinking about work. You should just concentrate on resting and getting better. The rule of thumb in my school was always 24 hours was the reasonable and expected amount of time to get back to someone, and that’s on a school day, on a business day. This was never expected outside of work, like on weekends or on breaks.

Lauren 9:27
If you find that your parents aren’t understanding or they actually need more training about this to kind of get it into their brains about what the realistic expectations are, maybe you put up an email away message at night or on the weekends. And this is not something that you have to do manually every time you leave the office. It’s really simple to automate depending on whatever your email service provider is or the program you use on your computer. Just look it up on YouTube, how to set that up if you don’t know how to do that for Outlook or Gmail. Make sure your voicemail gives them some expectations about when they can expect to hear back too. Or if you are going on an extended break from school, put that in there. Just don’t forget to change it when you come back, if you’re going to put specific dates in there.

Lauren 9:28
If you find that you still have a relentless parent who has absolutely no regards for your professional expectations for communication with them, like they want immediate responses to their emails or their phone calls or they’re just showing up at the school when you’re not responding and demanding to talk to you whenever it’s convenient for them, it might be time to bring somebody else into that conversation. Bring an administrator into the picture to help you do some intervening, because that’s a little crazy.

Lauren 10:38
Which brings me to my last thought about parent relationships. There will be some parents who are just plain difficult, and you’ll have to set different boundaries with them than most of your other parents. I mean, I truly hope I am never the parent who does this, but I think having worked in school, I will just have the understanding of giving grace to people and realizing that this counselor has a lot of students on their plate. I hope this isn’t something that happens to you often, but if it does, or if you even have a few of these, we know how much time they can take up and how much energy and headspace that they can dominate during your day.

Lauren 11:14
So I hope that you have some supportive administrators who can step in. And I’ve been on both sides of this coin. I have had very supportive administrators. And I’ve often felt left at the desk to fend for myself without somebody who cares. You already know which one of those makes you feel better and which one of those makes you want to quit your job and never come back, no matter how much you love your students.

Lauren 11:37
There are definitely levels of intervention here. It usually starts with a phone call, and then an in person meeting, and then if you need an administrator present, just to be an extra set of eyes and ears in a tough meeting, bring them in. You can escalate that to whatever level you need to. But it could go higher than that. There might be times when you need to bring in a district liaison, if things are escalating. Now, I’m obviously not a lawyer, but you know, when you need to bring in the bigger guns, or when you need to pass this off to someone else because it’s above your pay grade, which most things are, right?

Lauren 12:12
If you are running head on into this really tough parent all the time, then damaging the relationship with that person is probably the least of your worries. You are agreeing to disagree, and it’s time to move on. In most cases, I think you’re gonna try and maintain a relationship with that parent, because chances are, I mean, if you are alphabetical, you might be working with them for four years, where maybe they have multiple kids. So you’re gonna work with them for longer than four years.

Lauren 12:39
Just as an encouragement. You have the counseling skills to do this. You probably didn’t think that you would be using your counseling skills to work with parents, but you can do it. You want to reach a mutual understanding, including reminding them of what we talked about in the beginning here, that we are all on the same team. If they can see how much you care about their student and their student’s success, then I know that you can work through whatever it is to get them to the place where they can see that your words are true and honest and you are being genuine about getting to the heart of whatever this is that is causing a rift in the first place.

Lauren 13:13
Now I don’t know what examples are coming to your mind with you with this. Maybe you’re an intern and you’re really green to the profession. So you’re like, What in the world could make a parent so mad? I’d say, speaking from my experience, that rules that they want overturned are especially things that they can get mad about. They want special exceptions for their student. They’re having difficult relationships inside the school building, so maybe a teacher was mean to the student, or a teacher doesn’t teach the way a student can understand. And there’s just some sort of relationship that needs mending somewhere else in the building, but they feel like you’re the person who can do it, that you’re the mediator, that you’re the person to listen to about the situation. And I have found myself stuck in a lot of the middle of those situations as a counselor.

Lauren 14:02
But again, as an encouragement, you do have the skills to work through this and to be that mediator, and I hope that you know that, and you’re confident in that. And when you do that, when you sit down with a parent, you bring a student into it, you bring an administrator in, if necessary, parents do get a better look at what counselors do. When you’re doing that job well, they might totally shift their perspective about what your role is in the school.

Lauren 14:27
It doesn’t usually come in the form of this big intro meeting where you get to share about what you do, because a lot of parents don’t come to that, but through all of these little experiences and touch points with parents, my hope is that a parent will come to the realization that you do really good things in the school to help their kid. And it might be a situation where you help them personally, like you help that parent and student personally, and it gives them this eye opening experience, because now they have a front row seat to the ways that you’re helping students. Specifically their own. And I found that once you get certain parents on board, your credibility will spread. They could be your biggest fans or they can be your toughest critics, and you hope that you can win them over to spread that to other parents so that you can have enjoyable parent relationships.

Lauren 15:17
Let’s make sure that parents understand our roles as school counselors through the conversations we’re having with them, the meetings we’re hosting, and the way we’re communicating about student needs. I hope this was a helpful conversation to have, and I will see you next week.

Lauren 15:32
Thanks for listening to today’s episode of High School Counseling Conversations. All the links I talked about today can be found in the show notes and also at counselorclique.com/podcast. Be sure to hit follow wherever you listen to your podcasts so that you never miss a new episode. Connect with me over on Instagram. Feel free to send me a DM @counselorclique. That’s C, L, I, Q, U, E. I’ll see you next week.