Kamikaze Bombers
Judith Warner writes about the extremes of parental over-involvement in children's lives, using the tragedy in Missouri as an example, which resulted in the suicide of 13 year old Megan Meier, The Good, The Bad & The Ugly. In her NYTimes blog, Helicopter Parenting Turns Deadly, she writes about the case and its consequences:
This reminded me of the latest local example of the helicopter parents who need to be grounded for interfering in their kids lives. The Main Line high flyers, of course, are the Pouls family, who are involved in nasty litigation with a former Baldwin 2nd grade teacher, Patricia Tollin.But for me the tragedy highlighted another troubling issue that threatens our homes just as steadily as poisonous online communications. That is the disturbing degree to which today’s parents – and mothers in particular – frequently lose themselves when they get caught up in trying to smooth out, or steamroll over, the social challenges faced by their children.
You only hear about the most freakish cases, like that of Lori Drew or of Wanda Webb Holloway, the Texas mother who in 1991 tried to pay someone to murder the mother of her daughter’s chief cheerleading rival. (“The motive here was love, a mother’s love for a daughter,” said a police investigator at the time.) Yet everyday examples abound of parents whose boundary issues are not so extreme, but still qualify as borderline wacko.
The gossip that this case has generated revolves around a donation that the Pouls made to the Baldwin School, which they then threatened to pull unless Tollin, their daughter's 2nd grade teacher was fired. The Pouls claim that Tollin was "mean" to their daughter (although an older daughter had also been taught by Tollin and liked her) and Tollin claims that the Pouls assaulted and harassed her and threatened to pull a large donation to the school for construction of a new athletic facility if she weren't fired. Teacher files lawsuit against Baldwin donor, school. The October issue of Philadelphia Magazine has the whole sordid affair in juicy detail, Class Warfare (and don't miss the priceless comments).
Charges and counter-charges were exchanged over the past several months. The school finally settled with the teacher, Baldwin, ex-teacher settle one legal fight, but the Pouls are in this fight to the finish.
In their latest salvo, the Pouls allege that Tollin, a teacher at the private girl's school for 22 years, was a monster. As the Inky notes, Couple sued by Baldwin School teacher file response claiming she had poor record:
The Gladwyne couple who are being sued by a former second grade teacher on grounds they cost her her job at The Baldwin School have responded to her allegations by detailing 72 complaints from parents and others about her loud, threatening classroom manner.See also, Move over Main Line Mama...You Can't Compete With Baldwin's Dirty Laundry.....In documents filed yesterday afternoon, Michael and Sheryl Pouls charged that rather than being the model teacher as she has claimed, Patricia Tollin "had one of the worst records--if not the worst record--of all the teachers in the roughly 120 year history of The Baldwin School."
The documents from the Poulses includes a counterclaim in which they are suing Tollin for defamation, invasion of privacy, assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The 86-page file from the Pouls family is the latest salvo in a bitter, Main Line dispute that erupted in June when Patricia Tollin, 67, filed suit against the Poulses and against the private girls' school in Bryn Mawr where she had taught for 22 years.
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The Poulses' filing, which includes what the complaint says are excerpts from Tollin's personnel file, maintains that Baldwin parents have been complaining for years that Tollin screamed at and belittled their daughters and that school administrators had admonished her to change her behavior. The Pouls attorney subpoenaed the file as part of their discovery in the lawsuit.
"It is my belief that the teacher was very embarrassed by the fact her contract was not renewed and has tried to lay the blame on my family," Michael Pouls said.
After reading the various articles (and assorted comments by other parents, teachers and former students), it appears that the Pouls just had to viciously retaliate against a 77 year old woman who spent her life at the Baldwin school as though she were a child abuser rather than a strict teacher. Their daughter had problems well before she entered the classroom of Patsy Tollin. But they didn't like the way she was treated by Pollin and had to strike out. These people seem like they decided to trade up -- being helicopter parents just wasn't good enough. They are the new breed of interfering parent -- the kamikaze bombers.
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