My mental state in an era where 'attendance is handled via app' has lost its escape route

In the last few years, paperless systems have advanced, and it's becoming the case that you can get by with just a smartphone for everything. Personally, I'm very grateful for this, but the other day, I realized something.

“My son didn't bring home the printout, so I didn't know there was a parent-teacher meeting today~”
—that excuse no longer works...

Yes, I hate parent-teacher meetings. I am absolutely terrible at that indescribable atmosphere.

Until now, I could smugly make excuses to my son, who hadn't brought home the printout, saying, “I can't go if you tell me at the last minute!”

Starting this year, attendance notifications have started coming directly to my smartphone app. I can no longer use that excuse.

I want to say, there are plenty of other printouts you could make paperless! For example, monthly schedules. Or annual schedules. Honestly, I'd even go so far as to say, if it's a printout other than for parent-teacher meeting attendance, anything is fine at this point!

I am now suffering from“Parent-Teacher Meeting Phobia.”

Among parent-teacher meetings, the class discussion session is what I dislike the most. It's fine if the homeroom teacher just talks about how the class and the children are doing. The problem is the torture of being asked, “Could everyone please share afew wordsabout your child at home?”

Perhaps some teachers don't do this, but in raising my three children, I have experienced this torture many times. Thanks to that, I've grown to completely dislike parent-teacher meetings.

To begin with, I'm shy and have stage fright, so when I'm told to speak in front of people, the blood rushes to my face until it feels like it's on fire, and I become short of breath. The moment everyone's “eyes” turn toward me at once, I panic.

Ignoring my nervousness, the other mothers speak so fluently that it's as if they had prepared a script for today. Sometimes, there are even pros who make the whole classroom burst into laughter. Some people even share such long “few words” that I want to beg them, “It's okay, you can just keep talking! Please, go on until we run out of time!!”

While waiting for my turn, I spin my wheels thinking about what to say, and in the end, I can't think of anything. And so, with my head spinning and trembling, I say something incoherent and give a forced smile. Of course, everyone is kind, so they return my forced smile with their own, but I don't care about that—I just want to go home quickly.

I thought that surely, having to do self-introductions or share a few words would only happen at the first and last parent-teacher meetings of the school year, so I felt relieved, but they consistently betray my expectations. They find some good-sounding reason, like “before summer vacation~.” Are they geniuses? Are they magicians?

So, I hate parent-teacher meetings. I even wish they would just make them YouTube videos. (If it were something like Zoom, I'm afraid they'd end up making me say a few words anyway.)

I am very much in favor of going paperless, so I sincerely hope they will also consider going “few-words-less.” Even something like “only for those who wish to speak” would be fine.

I hope that if there's some trigger in the future, I might overcome my parent-teacher meeting phobia. But in all likelihood, before that happens, the children will all outgrow the need for “parent-teacher meetings.”

For once, I cannot make the positive statement of “taking it one step at a time.” My apologies.

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