Help, my son says he doesn't like the teacher

“I don’t like the teacher.”

There are phrases that parents hear and, in seconds, they start building an entire story in their head. Is she too picky? Did you scold him? Don't you like him? Is my son being wronged? Or, worse still, is something going on at school and I don't understand?

Easy.

When a child says “I don’t like the teacher”, the first thing we need to realize is that this sentence is not necessarily a conclusion. It's often an emotion looking for words.

Children can’t always say “I feel insecure when she corrects me”, “I’m embarrassed when I can’t answer,” “I think she likes other boys more,” “I’m afraid of making mistakes in front of the class,” or simply “I don’t like being told that I have to do something I don’t want to do”. And then they say what they can say: “I don’t like her”.

It is important not to devalue, but not to dramatize.

The answer “you must like the teacher” closes the conversation. The answer “Why? Did she do something to you?” can quickly turn it into an interrogation. And the answer “You don’t have to like her either, you have to respect her” may even be true, but it doesn’t help us find out what’s really behind that sentence.

Maybe it's worth more asking: “What happens when you’re with the teacher who makes you not like her?”

This little change is huge. Instead of discussing the person, we start exploring the experience.

Because a child may not like a teacher who demands too much. You may not like a teacher who corrects you. You may not like a teacher who sets limits. You may not like it because you feel that you are less valued than your colleagues. You may not like it because there was a specific episode that marked it. You may not like it because you are having difficulties in a discipline and started associating that difficulty with the person who teaches it. And, of course, there can also be a truly difficult, unfair or inadequate relationship that deserves to be known and accompanied by adults.

That is precisely why we should not immediately choose a side.

When parents say “if he doesn’t like her, something must have happened,” they risk validating an interpretation before they know the facts. But when they answer “the teacher knows what she does, you have to adapt,” they may also be teaching the child that what she feels does not deserve to be heard.

The path is somewhere in the middle.

Listen without feeding.

To investigate without questioning.

Protect without turning every conflict into a war.

And there's another important thing: not liking someone is part of life.

We don't need to like all the people we live with. At school, a child will find teachers with different styles, colleagues with different personalities and adults who communicate in ways that do not always correspond to what she likes. Learning to relate to different people is also an emotional competence.

The goal is not to teach a child to like everyone. It is helping her to understand what she feels, to identify what happened, to distinguish between “I don’t like” and “I don’t feel safe”, between “she is evil” and “I don’t like the way she talks to me”, between a normal frustration and a situation that really needs the intervention of an adult.

So the next time your son says, "I don't like the teacher," you might just answer: "Okay. Tell me what happens to make you feel that way.”

And then listen.

No interruption. Without defending the teacher immediately. No attacking the teacher. Without turning the conversation into a criminal investigation.

Because, many times, what begins to be “I don’t like the teacher” ends up revealing something else: “I’m afraid of making mistakes”, “I feel like I’m worse than the others,” “she called my attention in front of the class”, “I can’t keep up with the story”, “I think she doesn’t like me” or even “I’m tired and I don’t want to go to school.”.

And that's where the real conversation begins.

The school does not need to be a place where the child likes everyone but needs to be a place where he feels respected, safe and able to learn.

And parents don't need to solve the problem right away.

Sometimes you just need to ask the right question.

Because a child who says “I don’t like the teacher” may actually be trying to tell us, “there’s something in this relationship that I still can’t explain.”

And that deserves to be heard.”

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