Here is how I would delineate the parent categories at our school:

The obnoxious pushy parent, another pejorative term used by teachers. Since my husband and I are the only ones, that I know of, actively advocating for more challenge for our student at an already highly achieving school, I guess we�d fit the bill in the opinion of many teachers.

The hot-house parents at our school are the ones who are way overly invested in helping their children with their projects. My son recently had to work with a kid whose dad inserted himself as the third person for their project, shot down my son�s ideas, set the direction and worked on the assignment with ds and his non-assertive son. Oddly, a good number of teachers seem oblivious to this form of hot-housing.

Aside from the majority of parents, who are perfectly satisfied with the status quos (which we are for our daughter), there is also a large population of �teacher suck-up parents� at our school. These come in two forms; the generous donor parents and the constant presence in the school. The latter are usually moms and often gossip with the worst teachers, who LOVE them, but are a source of annoyance to the better teachers and many other �main-stream� parents.