Work is not so good...

I knew teaching special ed would be challenging. Just like the rest of the job though, it isn't the actual teaching or the students. It's the parents, and the meetings. Yesterday the two combined and the result was my spending two hours after school twiddling my thumbs while the special ed coordinator listened to some parents bitch about how we're not doing right by their son. Very little of it was about how their son is kind of a creep and has no sense of personal responsibility whatsoever about his education. His mom kept saying things like, "You guys just don't understand how hard life is for him" and "It's really hard parenting him" and "You guys just don't know how hard it is for him to learn."
WHATEVER. Parenting is hard, period. Learning is hard too. Both require effort.
At the end of the meeting, she gave me a copy of an article she printed off the internet titled "How to teach children with ADD." I could barely conceal my contempt. I wish I could hand her an article that goes something like "How not to turn your kid into a dependent asshole" or "How to take responsibility for your own shit instead of trying to put it on everyone around you." The sad part is that the kid is far more capable than his parents allow him to be. If he had to take responsibility for his actions, he would be working at or near grade level. As it is, he doesn't have to do his own homework, he doesn't have to take responsibility for his part in his education, and he gets to blame me every time he doesn't understand his math. Whether he so much as had a pencil in his hand while I was teaching, or followed along while I showed him how to do the problems, is irrelevant.
The end result is I left home before the sun came up yesterday, and didn't get home until after it was dark. I still had to get dinner on the table and finish up my lesson plans for today. (I got my planning period taken away yesterday because of an assembly that I was required to attend.) I don't get paid enough to live this kind of life. Today I have another meeting after school, the same kind as yesterday. I already know this kid's father, and the way he pores over each individual assignment in my gradebook and questions me about each one. I went to school for this??