A Puzzling Parent/Teacher Conference

Below is part of an email I sent my daughter. The child in the following email is new to our school. He has a large blended family and a step - sibling in 6th grade, whom he has never lived with. These children are not allowed to play together because my student, "Justin" (not his real name) has been a bully and too rough. Justin's mother has been mad at our school because the study team denied her request for granting a 504 plan to her child who has an insulin pump.



"My conferences went very well. The only sad thing was the conference of Justin, the diabetic boy, who had been such a pill since the first of the year. I had advised his mother at the beginning of the year that he needed to change his attitude, and miraculously he did a 180 degree turn around especially since he has learned to love reading. I had emailed the mom about three weeks ago to tell her that Justin's attitude and academics were improving enormously. You remember that I always ask the kids to come along with their parents to the conference. She told me he was scared to come! I told her that was surprising as I had told him that it was going to be a very good conference. At the conference I told the mom that in all my years of teaching I had never seen a child's attitude toward school change so much. Here's what is so weird, and I do not know what to make of it, she didn't react at all. Her indifference was deafening. This is the same woman who was willing to do (and I hate this term, too) whatever it takes to see that her son get his 504 plan. I told her too, that since the attitude change his diabetes was much more under control. Her supposed great interest in her child's health absolutely was not there. It was cold, cold, cold; like an over-the-top character from a Mary Higgins Clark novel, but this was real. "



Why would this mother not be happy for her child?