Head of Year Fundamentals

Handling Difficult Parent Conversations

An angry parent at the end of the phone is one of the most common challenges in pastoral leadership. These habits work regardless of the situation, the tone, or how justified the complaint turns out to be.

Difficult parent conversations are one of the things new Heads of Year dread most and receive the least preparation for.

There is no training session that fully prepares you for the parent who is shouting before you have said a word, or the one who is crying, or the one who has decided that you are the enemy before you have met.

What you can develop, over time, is a set of habits that work regardless of the situation.

These are not scripts.

They are principles that give you something to hold onto when a conversation goes in a direction you did not expect.

Principle 1: Hear them before you respond The most common mistake in difficult parent conversations is responding too quickly.

The parent says something upsetting or unfair and the instinct is to defend, to correct, to explain.

Resist that instinct.

Let them finish.

Let them say everything they came to say.

Most angry parents are not fundamentally angry at you.

They are angry because they feel their child has been let down, or not heard, or treated unfairly.

The anger is the surface.

Underneath it is worry.

When you let someone speak until they have said everything, the anger usually begins to reduce.

When you interrupt or correct them mid-sentence, it escalates.

Two things to say while someone is speaking and you want them to know you are listening: "I understand" and "tell me more." Not agreement.

Just acknowledgment.