Opinion
Help! My school WhatsApp group is making me hate other parents
Shona Hendley
WriterPing: Don’t forget it’s nude food week, everybody!
Ping: This means daily lunchbox inspections, doesn’t it?
Ping: This feels like nutrition AND parent-shaming!
Ping: Not to mention a failure to gain consent from parents OR children.
Fellow parents, I understand you want to advocate for your kids, but do you really have to put it in the school class WhatsApp group chat and alert me to it 20 times a day?
WhatsApp groups for school parents are becoming increasingly cliquey and politicised. Credit: Marija Ercegovac
Where once these groups were used as a useful communication platform to arrange play dates, co-ordinate pick-ups, and gift second-hand school uniforms, WhatsApp parent groups have become a breeding ground for airing grievances about a child’s school, educational staff, other students and just about anything else you can imagine (the ethics of having a class goldfish included).
Some parents honour the original purpose of the group, but others generate unnecessary alerts at all hours. It feels like the only option left is to mute the group. But that would mean I’d miss the rare update that’s actually important.
And it’s not just the frequent pings. It’s the passive-aggressive nastiness. Ask any school parent and they’ll tell you these chat groups have become a digital, interactive, mobile version of Regina George’s Burn Book from the film Mean Girls.
As in real life, there’s always a ringleader. The most common, perhaps is the “Disgruntled WhatsApp Parent” (DWP), who is annoyed at everyone and everything relating to the school and has zero qualms about letting the group know.
The DWPs pay “exorbitant school fees” and therefore shouldn’t have to deal with this issue or that issue or any issue at all, for that matter. The new school uniform design is not flattering. The school gardener planted an ugly-coloured rose bush in the front garden bed.
The newsletter was uploaded 30 minutes late by “incompetent staff” whose wages they pay. Their child’s teacher (in fact, all teachers) “picks on” their child. Nothing is done about anything, ever, and the tuckshop menu is not dietary-inclusive enough.
Parenting WhatsApp groups have quickly become a place for Mean Girls-style cliques between mums and dads.
But rather than behave like a mature adult – raise these grievances with the school directly – they turn to the WhatsApp Burn Book.
Anyone can be targeted: principals, teachers, members of the leadership team, support staff, administration, maintenance, even volunteer helpers and the crossing supervisor. And that’s before we get to student teachers, other parents and even students themselves.
Then there’s the “Gossip Girl” (or Gossip Boy) Parent.
This type of parent will use WhatsApp to raise irrelevant and often inappropriate topics including (but not limited to) teacher hairstyles, wardrobe choices, appearance in general, marital status and/or sexual orientation.
The Gossip Girl (or Gossip Boy) parent will use WhatsApp to raise irrelevant and often inappropriate topics.
The messages of the GGP will often be cushioned by laughing emojis to suggest it is all a light-hearted joke and that there is no way any of these judgments or “observations” could be truly hurtful.
There are also the “Crowdsourcing Parents”, who ask questions of the group under the guise of obtaining advice.
In reality, they already have strongly formed opinions on whatever topic they are raising and are simply posing it as a question in an attempt to garner sympathetic and supportive comments. For example:
“To any parents who have the new teacher, Mr S, what are your thoughts?”
“Are anyone else’s Grade 3 children having issues with bullying this year?”
Misuse of the school WhatsApp groups is often fuelled by the belief that they are private forums and, therefore, a safe space to criticise, complain, and gossip, without repercussions.
It’s from this lack of awareness that the most toxic incarnation rears – the WhatsApp parent subgroups.
Just like in high school, these are the mean-girl cliques that are invitation-only and require you to swear a blood oath never to reveal their existence to other parents.
I have witnessed secret groups set up solely for the purpose of excluding mums and dads the ringleader(s) dislike. More often than not the excluded parents eventually find out and are, understandably, pretty hurt by being ostracised.
In using these groups to discuss every decision and action of teachers, parents are showing what Mossgiel Park Primary School principal Lynn Ordish recently described as “a lack of respect”. She added: “They forget we are human beings with emotions.”
I disagree with Ordish, though.
As a WhatsApp-using parent of two primary school-aged children and a past educator myself, I don’t think it’s that these “critical parents” in WhatsApp groups forget teachers and school staff are human beings; I think they just don’t care.
“WhatsApp groups can become as cliquey as children’s group chats, and some parents need to be reminded of this … It’s as if parents forget the very lessons we teach children about respectful communication,” Kirra Pendergast, the founder and CEO of the Safe on Social group, says.
With clear guidelines around acceptable behaviour, active monitoring and addressing any violations promptly, respectful and effective communication on school parent WhatsApp groups is possible.
A good place to start, Pendergast says, is with “every parent in the WhatsApp modelling the kind of behaviour they would like to see from their children”. “Be kind. Be polite. Be respectful,” she added.
In other words: don’t be like Regina George.
Shona Hendley is a freelance writer.
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