carers is vital, and particularly so when a child has emerging SEN. Dr
Kay Mathieson provides guidance on what to think about.
From admission to moving on, our conversations with parents and carers are central to maintaining positive relationships between setting and home. For each child, the quality of this communication is very important and even more so if they have an emerging special educational need (SEN).
'Practitioners will usually report that they have very positive relationships with parents. On the other hand, asked which area of their practice causes most concern, they will often reply that it is "relationships with parents".' (Mathieson, 2015:84)
This raises three key questions:
- What leads us to feel anxious about our conversations with parents and carers?
- Why in particular are conversations about SEN described as 'difficult'?
- What can we do about it?
TALKING TO PARENTS AND CARERS
The length of our relationship with a family can range from about six weeks, where a childcare place maybe linked to a training course, to four years. The quality of this relationship is influenced by its length, but also the intensity of communication.
Most childcare settings have daily contact with parents as children are dropped off and collected, with more formal discussions perhaps monthly, six-weekly or termly to share evidence of the child's progress. Whatever the detail of this pattern in your setting, some families will have much more involvement with you than others who, for a variety of reasons, are not able to take up the contact offered.
Thinking about current relationships with parents, it may be useful to consider these questions:
- In what way does the parent demonstrate they are relaxed in your setting?
- To what extent has the parent asked for advice or help with problem solving?
- To what extent have you asked the parent for advice or help with problem solving?
- How confident would you feel in a conversation with this parent if they raised a justifiable complaint?
- How confident would you feel in a conversation with this parent if you had concerns about their child's progress?
It is likely that you will respond more positively about the parents who you understand and have known longest.
Getting to know parents is part of our professional role; if we have only six weeks to accomplish this, we must consider how to do this most effectively for the benefit of the child.
The admission process is crucial in setting the tone and expectations of the relationship. For example, key messages need to be communicated recognising the challenges of such a short-term placement and also the opportunity to share understanding about a child's progress.
Professionally, we understand that we see each child from a different perspective to the parent. Our priorities are shorter term - parents continue to worry about their children long after they are adults - while technically our involvement ends with their fifth birthday. We see the child in a relatively consistent environment, including numbers of adults and children. Parents see their children across a much wider variety of contexts and situations.
Practitioner perspectives are informed most notably by their training, qualifications and amount of time spent observing and thinking about children's development. The emotional involvement is also very different. Practitioners who are also parents frequently comment that dealing with your own child is not the same as supporting a key child. These and many other differences contri- bute to our varying confidence levels in our relationships with parents. As a parent, each stage of a child's development holds new challenges and joys, as feelings of confidence ebb and flow, sometimes on a daily basis.
TALKING ABOUT EMERGING SEN
All conversations with parents take place in the context of a relationship that, ideally, will have been professionally considered and sensitively built up during the time the child has been attending the setting.
When practitioners recognise that there is a concern about a child's progress, they often also feel anxious. The issue becomes: 'How do I tell the parent things are not going well?' rather than sharing observation and evidence of learning as has been the case to date. We also think about our accountability in terms of early identification and accessing appropriate support. The emotions entwined in this thinking strongly influence how we communicate with parents.
From a parent's perspective, however we signal the need for a more in-depth conversation, unspoken worries may focus on whether a child is 'normal' or finding a way to 'fix' things, making the child 'perform' as you expect, or even that you will withdraw the child's place. As a parent, hearing your concern may leave me unsure what my role is and if I have the ability to deal with the situation.
For both parents and practitioners, this cocktail of emotions can turn a straightforward conversation into a worrying, even frightening, discussion. Understanding the parent's perspective and the range of emotions they may be experiencing is important in making partnership with parents a reality. As a rough guide, parents have reported to me feeling the following emotions when practitioners discuss concerns about their child's progress:
- Upset - 'I thought everything was going well and he seemed to be enjoying his time at nursery.'
Angry - 'I didn't know anything about the concerns at nursery; it came out of the blue!'
Sad - 'I thought they meant my child was not normal and would need a special school.'
Frightened - 'I didn't know what they meant or whether I would be able to do the best for my child.'
Worried - 'I thought they were trying to say they didn't want him to come to the setting any more.'
Anxious - 'I didn't know what would happen next; they talked about making referrals to other agencies - I didn't know what this would involve or what they expected me to do.'
Relieved - 'I had been worried for ages that she was not progressing like other children I knew, but I didn't want to mention it in case they thought I was an overanxious parent making a fuss.'
Happy - 'So good that her key worker and I were thinking the same about her language and that we compared examples over a few weeks; also great that there were things we could do to help.'
BUILDING CONFIDENCE
Having professional conversations is a skill developed and enhanced as we reflect on our ability to communicate intended messages and to accurately read another's response. Given that we are all different and each situation unique, this is an ongoing learning process for us all. Being able to work as a team, sharing expertise and supporting each other's learning helps to maximise our progress.
This can take the form of:
- talking through the key messages we need to communicate in a future conversation or meeting
- rehearsing how we might articulate the message
- considering with a colleague the variety of ways the message might be received
- collecting appropriate information from observations, evidence of progress, including from parents so the interpretation and implications can be considered together
- reflecting after the discussion or meeting on what went well, how you would do it differently next time, and what your specific learning has been.
The confidence gained through this process of conscious thinking will reduce anxiety, develop skills and deepen understanding of the parent's perspective. For the parents, it will help to ensure that the discussion is:
- proportional to the level of concern
- part of the normal setting pattern of conversations with parents
- linking daily conversations with more in-depth opportunities for discussion
- building a picture over time about patterns of progress, effective strategies and their impact
- focused on giving the child the 'best possible chance' of making progress.
The first step toward feeling more confident about having so-called 'difficult' conversations is to reflect carefully on how we establish and maintain positive relationships with all parents. In particular, exploring a parent's aspirations for their child can offer a sound foundation for partnership working as you set out how you can both contribute to making these aspirations a reality.
MORE INFORMATION
Inclusion in the EYFS by K Mathieson (2015), Open University Press
'Supporting Parenting', Early Childhood in Focus 5, by M Woodhead and John Oates (eds) (2010), Open University Press (available from www.bernardvanleer.org)
Working with Parents by C Digman and S Soan (2008), Sage.