Parent-Teacher Conferences: Often Not About the Student
The one-on-one sit-down is more stressful for the parent than for the child.
Sept. 8, 2010 — -- You have butterflies in your stomach. You are biting your fingernails. You have an appointment to meet with your child's teacher. It is the dreaded parent-teacher conference.
With school starting for millions of children, it won't be long before you get the message that it is time to meet the teacher. That one-on-one sit-down is often more stressful for the parent than it is for the child. In some cases, it is equally stressful for the teacher as well.
In fact, a University of New Hampshire study reveals the meeting is often less about the student and more about a sizing up of parent and teacher, by each other.
Danielle Pillet-Shore, assistant professor of communication at the university says, "Parents and teachers behave in a way suggesting that they are each treating the conference as an occasion for their own performance review – using the student's progress, or lack thereof, as a gauge of how the teacher is doing at his or her job of 'being a teacher' and how the parent is doing at his or her job of 'being a parent.'"
