Ballet Teacher Blames 'Horrible' Parents For Traumatizing Experience Working With A Group Of 5-Year-Old Girls
She's begging parents to make a change.
pixelshot / Canva Pro With thousands of parenting stories, advice channels, and narratives on the internet, it’s surprisingly difficult to get a clear picture of what young kids are like today.
Amidst debates over gentle versus traditional parenting, technology, and the teaching crisis, many underlying assumptions about our children’s behavior can be made.
However, a ballet teacher on TikTok was quick to blame one group for the children’s “traumatic” and inappropriate behavior in her class — their parents.
A ballet teacher called working with her group of 5 year-old-girls ‘traumatic’ and blamed their 'horrible' parents for the bad behavior.
Relating to similar struggles of teachers on TikTok, Sai (@saaaaaaaii1 on the platform) empathized with educators who quit the profession saying her experience teaching a ballet class was “traumatic.”
Citing misbehavior and an overall lack of respect from her 5-year-olds, the 22-year-old ballet teacher took to TikTok to beg for “a change” in the parents of this generation.
Not only were her young students misbehaving, but they were actively disrespectful to her and other kids in the ballet class.
Sai painted a picture of what a ballet class was like. Typically, the teacher demonstrated a basic pose for everyone to copy while music played in the background, and the kids were excited to learn something new.
However, her classroom looked much different from that expectation. Even getting her kids to stand in one spot was a battle. Instead, they screamed, called her names, and refused to follow directions.
Along with the verbal abuse she faced at the hands of her 5-year-old students, she was forced to break up fights between her students, as well!
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She explained the frustration of her job and how she felt mortified that all of her kids acted this way and were incapable of following any type of direction at such a young age. Apparently, the parents of these children made excuses for the behavior instead of correcting it.
Blaming a lack of boundaries from their parents, this ballet teacher was mortified at the inappropriate songs and dance moves of her 5-year-old students.
She further explained how her students regularly requested inappropriate music with explicit language and concepts and they would even twerk during “freestyle dance time.” Other TikTok creators blamed a type of “gentle parenting” as the root cause of the misbehavior.
TikTok creator Kam said she heard one little girl call her mom an expletive when she refused to buy her a shirt. Instead of reprimanding her the mom simply told her not to speak like that and continued to buy her all the clothes she asked for.
This is not gentle parenting, however, and both TikTokers have dubbed it “passive parenting.” Passive parenting, or parents not actively teaching, playing, or reprimanding their children, results in children who don’t see their parents as figures of authority.
So while many of these parents made excuses for their children, the ballet teacher was clear that she was not blaming her students. It was the parents themselves that had to make a change.
All she wanted to do was help these girls realize their worth by teaching them that they are talented and capable of doing great things in their lives.
The teacher stressed the importance of teaching kids boundaries.
Not only did she call for parents to have more appropriate boundaries with their kids, but she begged them to just reprimand them, and “stop applauding bad behavior”.
With so much discourse shaming older generations of parents, this ballet teacher wondered why nobody was talking about younger parents and their kids today. In her TikTok, she begged for someone to address her situation because she’s close to quitting.
When it comes to parenting, there are so many factors at play it's impossible to blame an entire generation and their child-rearing skills. Instead of pointing the finger at the parents of these unruly ballerinas, perhaps this teacher should try a different approach.
Shaming parents will only make them dig their heels in, but creating a fair but disciplined environment in her class could give her kids the tools to thrive, even if only during her weekly classes.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a news and entertainment writer at YourTango focusing on pop culture analysis and human interest stories.