AITA for posting my kid’s teacher’s email on social media after she backtracked about lying about my son?

In a bustling middle school, where vending machines dish out hot broth, a father’s attempt to clear his son’s name spirals into a social media storm. When his 7th-grader falls ill with a fever, a history teacher’s email accuses the boy of faking it with a clever soup trick. But as pneumonia sets in, her denial of the claim pushes a dad to share her words online, sparking a heated debate. This Reddit tale dives into the clash of parental loyalty and professional accountability.

The father’s post, born of frustration with a teacher’s hypocrisy, lights up Facebook, drawing both support and ire. It’s a story that tugs at the heart of any parent who’s fought to defend their child’s truth, leaving us to question where the line lies between righting a wrong and airing private grievances.

‘AITA for posting my kid’s teacher’s email on social media after she backtracked about lying about my son?’

My son is in the 7th grade and has this history teacher named 'Ms. Lipston.' I have both my BA and Master's in US History so I was excited that my son finally got to take the same classes that I loved. I tried to build a relationship with Ms. Lipston, but she was pretty cold. Fine.

Not all teachers want to see or deal with any parents. I get it. Before the break, I got a call from the school nurse that my son was ill. He had a high fever and needed to go home. I picked him up and as a courtesy, I emailed his teachers letting them know he was ill and going home. I was shocked when Ms.

Lipston emailed me and said that my son was not sick. She said that his fever was from his drinking hot soup (yes, the have a vending machine that serves hot broth) and then going to the nurse knowing that the thermometer reading would be high, thus he gets to go home for the day, right before the 2 week Xmas break.

Now, my son is no dumbass, but if this were true then I got to give props to my son for thinking of something so genius and give props to Ms. Lipston for knowing what's up. I took my son to urgent care and they examined him. They said he was coming down with the flu. He wasn't faking anything.

And then he got really sick with pneumonia and needed to go back to urgent care for medication. I replied back to Ms. Lipston a week later (a week into the break) that as it turns out, he really was sick. I made a joke that I hope she didn't get it. She wrote back that she never said that he wasn't sick.

I reread the email she sent...yes she did. So I wrote back to get more information about this thing with my son drinking hot soup and made it clear that I wasn't upset, but was curious. I would have been fine if she admitted she made a mistake or even a joke about it. I am not some p**cho dad.

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I just wanted to make sure SHE knew my son wasn't faking it. She replied that she never specifically said that my son was being manipulative. That did p**s me off because she is the teacher who lectures students about integrity and owning up to your mistakes and she is doing the opposite.

I wanted to make sure I wasn't crazy, so I posted her original email and her responses to me on FB. I didn't give her name, but some parents figured it out. I guess it got back to her because the principal asked to schedule a meeting with me.. ​

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EDIT: For everyone saying that I should have taken up the issue with the teacher. That is EXACTLY what I was trying to do. I wasn't being a d**k, abrasive, defensive, mean or angry. And actually I couldn't have cared less about her making a mistake.

My biggest issue is that she often incorporates themes of ethics and integrity into the lessons plans which I appreciate so it bothered me greatly that she thinks my son is a liar or dishonest. I was trying to either correct her that my son wasn't lying and/or get more information as to this whole soup situation.. ​

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As a parent, it concerns me yet not something worth the time (at least in my opinion) to file a complaint. I know the principal is every parent's best friend and the teachers have mixed feelings about him. If I brought this to his attention, I have no doubts it would have caused her some trouble which is what I did NOT want to do.

Anyways, this was more of a communication issue between me and the teacher and less of a classroom problem.. ​ I wanted to know if I was crazy one which is why I posted it on FB without her name. People made their comments. I assumed another parent figured out who the teacher was and tipped her off about the post. She's furious about it. Someone said she's doing 'damage control.'. ​

EDIT 2: Here's my clapback to the Reddit teachers calling me the a**hole. I hope you can find the humor in my being told to find something else better to do when you're probably posting in the classroom.. ​. EDIT 3: Saying you're a teacher doesn't make your argument any more valid.. ​

EDIT 4: People who are saying that she might be a b**ch to my son to get back at me are wrong. She's already a b**ch to everyone.. ​ EDIT 5: I got another email for the principal because he wants to meet first thing on Monday, before my son goes to her class.

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I asked him what was the purpose of the meeting and he said there was no meeting - more like a 'mediation' - it had to do with something I posted on FB and she is apparently 'distraught.' I asked if she was 'distraught' over her calling my son a liar or the post and he said we'll discuss Monday.

He wants to meet with me first, then all three and then a meeting with her. He asked me to take the post down until we meet. As a courtesy, I will take it down pending the 'mediation.'. ​ EDIT: So I had this mediation with the principal and explained my intentions. He agreed with me more than what he needed to.

Then Ms. Lipston came in and was all over the map. She didn't do herself any favors. She kept on trying to 'one-up' me over the posting of her emails. For example, she said I 'leaked' them LOL. I told her that I respected that she had some fire in her belly for someone with such a cold personality,

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but unless she was going to admit that she was wrong and apologized then I'm reposting those emails. Principal intervened and chewed her out. She turned as bright as a tomato. Then he excused her.

He asked me NOT to repost because it would be harder to reprimand her 'officially' later on as he wanted to make it more administrative than personal. At the end of the day, she posted a notice on her class website that she was going to be out all week LOL.

This schoolyard saga exposes the fragile trust between parents and educators. The teacher’s quick accusation of faking illness, followed by her denial, reflects a broader issue: miscommunication in educational settings. A 2022 study by the National Education Association found 55% of parents report strained teacher relationships due to poor communication . The father’s decision to post emails publicly, while controversial, stemmed from a need to validate his son’s experience.

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Dr. John Duffy, a parenting expert, notes, “Transparency builds trust, but public shaming can escalate conflicts unnecessarily” . The teacher’s refusal to acknowledge her error, especially given her lessons on integrity, eroded trust. The father’s measured emails sought clarity, but her deflections fueled his frustration. Posting online, though, risked escalating a private matter, potentially affecting his son’s classroom dynamic.

A better approach might have been a direct meeting with the principal first, as now mediated. The father could document concerns calmly and push for teacher training on empathy and accountability.

Check out how the community responded:

The Reddit crowd rolled in with a lively mix of cheers and jabs, ready to dissect this classroom drama. Here’s the unfiltered scoop:

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Jimmytaco33 − YTA. For some reason, I feel like we're not getting the full picture here.

milee30 − ESH but you the most. She shouldn't lie, obviously. But by putting this on FB, you assured there wouldn't be a way to resolve this positively. You publicly embarrassed her and all but guaranteed some sort of future blowback.

The worst part is the blowback won't be towards you but will instead impact your son, who had nothing to do with this. You may be 'right', but you just caused your son some future problems that were entirely avoidable.

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[Reddit User] − YTA. If you had an issue, you should have handled it with the teacher, then took it to the next step with the principal afterwards if it bothered you that much. I see no reason why you felt the need to post it on social media, like what do you have to gain from this?. FYI, anyone who needs to clarify and reassure people that they AREN'T a 'p**cho dad' probably is one.

FloatingWallaby − YTA: as a teacher, seriously: 1) Posting private communications on FB is trash. How would you feel if we posted your kid's emails to us? She was likely emailing you to alert you that she knew he had been having hot soup, and maybe he was not acting ill,

and she was trying to give you a heads up? 2) As a teacher, these are the things that make our jobs horrible. So now you have trolled her on social media, without understanding her perspective- she will have to meet with her principal,

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and deal with a whole lot of drama because-again, for all you know- she was trying to give you a heads up that your kid might be faking it (I have absolutely seen kids pull moves like this). I am going to warn you right now...you officially have a reputation in that entire school among the staff because you are 'that' parent.

EDIT: In response to OP's disgusting second edit- neither I, nor I would hazard a guess, the vast majority of the teachers on here, was posting during classroom time. My post was long after I had left work for the day (week, really), and more important- that edit suggested that OP has a real issue with all teachers, and I think he is leaving out a TON of information.

tatertotted2 − YTA How wonderful for this teacher, getting emails from a parent halfway through their holiday break, arguing about a forgotten exchange over soup. Double fun-she hears that her email exchanges are being blasted on social media.

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What a relaxing break!. Now she gets to look forward to dealing with your shenanigans when she returns to work. Why were you so fixated that you couldn't wait until after break to contact her? Did you think this woman was spending her time off wringing her hands in delight over how she accused a kid of faking illness?.

She's trying to keep track of how many 7th graders? I would have gone with something like this as the kids were returning to school, so she knew he was sick and there was no escalation. 'Ms Lipston, Unfortunately Joseph was rather ill over the holiday break.

I want to give you a heads up that he's still bouncing back from pneumonia and may not be himself in class. Please feel free to reach out with any concerns.. I hope you enjoyed your time off and the kids aren't too crazy while getting back into routine.. Regards,. Joseph's Father'. You seem like a lot of fun, though.

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LaminatedLaminar − ESH but I really want an update after the meeting!

Whammo3000 − INFO: what exactly did she say about him drinking soup? It could be the case that he really did drink soup, she wasn’t sure if that was what made his temperature go up, and emailed you to let you know that there was a possibility he was faking, not saying ‘hello 100% sure your son was faking’

GroundhogNight − This isn’t for OP but for all you commenters:. You have a problem with defending authority figures and are triggered by social media. A teacher isn’t automatically right because they’re a teacher.

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The truth is, teachers and cops are similar in that the job breeds a certain degree of dehumanization and bitterness that leads to lashing out against the people you’re supposed to teach/protect. The same way there are horrendous stories about cops abusing power, there are stories about teachers abusing power.

And a lot of the time the school administration sweeps it under the rug. The best policy for the school is to pretend it never happened. Because if they take action against the teacher, the union and other teachers get upset. It’s often the same reason they don’t do anything about bullying or other serious issues.

They want to pretend everything is okay. There’s no good reason for the teacher to send an email saying the kid had soup in order to fake a high temperature. If the kid wanted to go home, so what? She doesn’t know what he’s dealing with. And if he’s really sick...then what?

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There’s no defense of her then denying having sent the email. All she had to say was she’s sorry to hear OP’s son was sick and hope he feels better soon. Denying the previous email is bizarre. And Facebook is often not a huge network. Most people keep their profile private.

Most people are friends with a few hundred people. It’s not an open system like Twitter and IG. Why can’t OP share this with friends and family? Would you think twice about telling your friends at work what happened? Or texting friends about it? If OP communicates with friends and family on FB, why can’t he post about this?

You’ll defend a teacher’s right to lie about something but attack OP because most people side with authority figures because we think authority figures inherently mean well. But they’re often just messed up and f**ked people just like everyone else. The issue is they have authority and they use it for b**lshit.

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And if you’re thinking “Man, this guy has a problem with authority.” Damn right. You know why? Because I had a bunch of s**tty teachers who did s**tty things. For example, I talked a lot. And I’d get my work done quick and be bored with nothing else to do.

But I was otherwise a good kid. Always all As and a B or two. Nice to people. Just talkative. My 4th grade teacher, two weeks into the school year, walked up to me one day and said, “Your mom thinks you’re a little angel, but I know what you’re really like.”

My 5th grade science teacher told us one day that the next day we didn’t need to bring anything to class. Nothing at all. No books. No paper. Someone specifically asked if we needed pencils and she said no. What happened when we got there the next day? She told us to take notes.

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When we said we didn’t have any pencils or paper because she told us we didn’t need anything she yelled at us and said she never said that. Yes, she was like 70 years old and often angry. We had another teacher who thought kids needed adversity. So if you were an A student he purposefully graded you so you got a B.

He was also the volleyball coach and the team was really good. So he could get away with it. I had one teacher who didn’t like that I read novels after I finished my class work. She actively mocked me for it. Never mind she was the AP f**king English teacher.

I took health class in the summer because it was three weeks long and meant I got an extra study hall during the school year. I would read a novel during breaks or when I finished class work and had nothing else to do. One day during a 10 min break the teacher said to me, “Hey, GroundhogNight, you have a choice.

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You can put the book away and be part of the class. Or you can go home.” I had nearly a 100% in the class. I participated. I joked. I didn’t really have friends in the class but I’d chit chat sometimes. So I just f**king left and came back the next day.

My Spanish teacher cared more about gossip than teaching us. She was the only teacher for Spanish 2, 3, and 4. She’d just put on movies, give a worksheet, and that was it. But she was super clique-y. If she liked you, you could use the hall pass for however long. You could retake quizzes.

All this stuff. But if you said or did something she didn’t like, she’d make fun of you, grade you harshly, etc. I had an art teacher who was a wealthy divorcee who spent a lot of time buying stuffy on eBay. She’d give us an assignment like “self portrait” and then sit on the computer.

But she’d also get bored and “help” people by just doing sections of their project. So one day she did the nose and eye brows on my acrylic self portrait. Drew them. Shaded them. Colored them. When I got the project back, I had an 84. I asked her why it was so low and she said specifically cited the nose didn’t look right and the coloring of the eyebrows was sloppy.

It goes on and on and on. I had a college math professor who didn’t know calculus. He had been an oration major at Brown. But for some reason my university, which was ranked top 30 in the country and #1 in my state, hired him to teach the freshman math classes, which were all about calc.

He would spend 40 min of the 50 min class trying to solve the example problems from the book chapter. When we would attempt to help he would tell us he needed to figure it out on his own. One day a girl said “Professor, it would really help us if you learned the material before trying to teach it to us.” His response, “I wish I had time,

but my research work takes up too much of my bandwidth.” I could go year by f**king year, starting in first grade (because my kindergarten teacher was awesome) and list off so many of the absurd things my teachers did to me and others and in general. It’s unending.

So before you take the side of the teacher, remember how f**ked up teachers can be. Look at this thread! Many of the teachers who chimed in said some of the meanest and most ridiculous comments in the entire thread. Thank you for attending my TED talk.

sluttypidgeon − YTA for taking this to social media. This teacher rubbed you the wrong way when she didn’t want to be BFFs with you and you’ve had a bad taste in your mouth about her since. Ps your middle school age son is highly likely to be mortified if this gets back to his peers.

[Reddit User] − NTA. If you posted her emails on reddit all the people calling you TA would upvote it, have a laugh and move on without calling you out. F**k this sub sometimes

Redditors split on the father’s move—some praised his defense of his son, others slammed the social media post as reckless. Teachers weighed in, warning of blowback, while parents cheered the callout. But do these fiery takes capture the full story, or are they just stirring the pot?

This story simmers with the tension of a parent’s love clashing with a teacher’s misstep. The father’s choice to post emails defended his son but stirred a hornet’s nest, raising questions about trust and tact in school disputes. As the principal steps in, the path to resolution remains murky. How would you handle a teacher wrongly accusing your child? Drop your thoughts below and let’s keep the conversation brewing!

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