Babies are communicators from birth and begin to develop their speech and language skills at home with their parents long before they come into contact with early years settings. Over 70 per cent of young children's lives are spent, not in a setting, but with their family and the wider community. This home learning environment operates beyond the child's day at the setting and provides continuity as the child transfers from one setting to another. Successful relationships between parents and educators are, therefore, very important.
All parents can enhance their child's development and learning and they all have the right to play a central role in making decisions about their child's care and education. Supporting parents so they can engage with, and be committed to, their children's speech, language and communication development is an essential part of enriching the whole language learning environment.
THREE STEPS TO ENGAGEMENT
Settings involved in Every Child A Talker (ECAT) have found it useful to think about three steps towards fully engaging with parents as partners.
Step one: informed and enthused. Raising awareness and sharing enthusiasm, as well as informing parents about activities and achievements within the setting and sharing knowledge and ideas, is a simple way to begin engaging parents.
Step two: consulted and valued.As Langston et al (2008) point out, 'Parents hold the key to their children's feelings, life story, behaviours, interests, ways of communicating, language and everything else about them.' Providing opportunities for parents to share all this knowledge, in ways that value their opinion, is very important.
Step three: engaged partners. Parents who are fully empowered and engaged are confident, pro-active partners alongside practitioners, supporting their child to develop speech, language and communication skills at home, in the setting and elsewhere.
PRACTICAL IDEAS
The Every Child A Talker guidance also offers practical ideas to support these three steps and secure the engagement of parents as partners across the EYFS.
They involve valuing each Unique Child and their family, fostering Positive Relationships between parents and children as well as between the setting and home, supporting the creation of Enabling Environments, and ensuring that active and creative Learning and Development takes place throughout the child's language learning environment. Here are some examples.
STEP ONE: INFORMED AND ENTHUSED
Use events such as coffee mornings, social evenings and open days as a starting point to share with parents the importance of communication. Make displays and send home leaflets, booklets, posters and other available promotional material, such as DVDs or fridge magnets. Discuss and share ideas with parents about what children are capable of and the importance of communication as a basic skill for life.
A Unique Child Inform parents about what communication skills should be broadly expected of their child at each age and stage. Celebrate each child's achievements in language development, making books together of 'Baby's First Words', which encourages parents to remember and celebrate their child's first words and the story behind them.
Positive Relationships Share with parents some ideas about what they can do to support children's language development. Share parent-child interaction tips and consider having a 'Tip of the week' system.
Access nationally available resources such as the I CAN Chatter Matters DVD, simple materials such as 'Your Baby is Amazing' from the Talk to Your Baby website and locally available resources from your local speech language therapy (SLT) service, early years advisers or your early language consultant.
Enabling Environments Ensure that your setting is a welcoming place for parents so that they feel positive about getting involved. Inform parents about the features of a good language learning environment by letting them know what improvements you are making and why.
Learning and Development Make sure that you communicate with parents about how you are working on communication and language. Make a list of the relevant vocabulary, songs, rhymes and stories, and share them with parents. Libraries can play a key role in supporting parents with storytelling and rhyme-time sessions. Contact your local library to find out when the sessions are available and advertise these in your setting. Visit www.bookstart.org.uk to get more information about the free book offers available to children.
STEP TWO: CONSULTED AND VALUED
Truly valuing the knowledge that parents have about their child's communication and effectively consulting with parents will involve finding ways to record progress at home and in the setting that are accessible to all. This may be in the form of a diary or it may involve e-mail contact for working parents or regular opportunities for one-to-one chats (with an interpreter if necessary). It may also include sharing photos or video clips between home and school and organising opportunities for feedback in other ways.
A Unique Child Allow parents to share their knowledge about how their child communicates by contributing to a 'communication profile'. This can include staff observations as well as photos and contributions from parents - for example, 'words my child knows', or 'what helps my child to understand?' This is especially important for children speaking English as an Additional Language or having difficulties communicating. Use the ECAT monitoring tool to summarise the information and to provide an overview of the child's progress.
Positive Relationships Find out what parents are already doing with their children at home to support communication, and make a display or leaflet that celebrates these existing skills and allows parents to share good ideas with each other.
Enabling Environments Ask parents for advice about new resources (toys, books, furniture) you purchase for your setting. This will help you to choose resources that are culturally appropriate and popular with parents and children, and will help parents to feel ownership of the setting.
Learning and Development Ask parents to comment on the play and learning opportunities provided in your setting. What things do their children enjoy? Ask them for suggestions of what they would like to see more and of what they would like to see less.
STEP THREE: ENGAGED PARTNERS
Parents who are fully engaged in their child's communication development will be thoughtful observers of their child and will be confident to share these observations with the setting. They will engage regularly in conversations and interactions with their child that support their language development. They will contribute to creative and active learning at home and, where possible, in the setting.
A Unique Child Involve parents in writing up records and planning for each child. Where possible, try to meet with parents often. Encourage an 'open door' policy among staff so that parents can request a meeting or drop in at any time.
Positive Relationships Parents who are confident supporters of their child's communication will be willing to reflect on their own skills, share skills and ideas with others, and continue to learn more. Encourage parents to take part in training that is already available and also to organise and request training for themselves. Support parents who suggest activities for getting involved in the National Year of Communication.
Enabling Environments Enable parents to access resources that can enrich the home environment, such as toy libraries or swap shops. Support parents to plan and organise trips to local places like the library or further afield.
Learning and Development Use the skills and knowledge of parents within the setting by asking parents to come along and lead a singing time or other activity. Some parents will find it difficult to attend the setting during the day, so also encourage an evening or weekend session.
These are just a few ideas and there are thousands of others.
OPEN DIALOGUE
It is all too easy for settings to claim that they are good at 'working with parents' when in reality, they are good at telling them what to do.
A children's centre in Kirklees wanted to get away from that approach and to engage with parents in open dialogue about children's learning.
They worked with families to develop a set of posters that show the children and their parents communicating in real situations. The posters carry clear, simple messages and refer to an aspect of learning from the EYFS.
One 'Dad and baby' poster, for example, has a photo of a dad lying on the kitchen floor at his child's level. The title is 'Look at my Dad and me!' This is followed by 'Dad got down to my level and we both emptied the kitchen cupboard!' This dad is acting as a role model for others who come to the centre. The posters communicate the message: 'It's about doing this together!'
ENGAGING FATHERS
Early involvement of fathers has important long-term benefits for children, but working with them may present a particular challenge for settings that have no male staff.
There are all sorts of social and cultural reasons why fathers may feel that early years settings are not places for them to linger or get involved, and just as many reasons why female practitioners may find it harder to communicate with fathers than mothers, but making the effort is important.
One pre-school in Bournemouth issued a 'reading challenge' to fathers, asking them if they knew that 80 per cent of fathers these days say they do not have time for bedtime stories and asking 'It can't be true, can it?' This led to a storysack project with fathers taking photos of themselves and their children reading together. The staff reported, 'Our fathers feel more part of the pre-school and some have even asked to join the "stay and play" group. One dad felt confident enough to offer to read a story to the whole group!
'Many dads, as well as mums, use the lending library that we have set up. It has also been great for us, as practitioners, to build relationships with parents and to see what a difference it can make when everybody works together.'
There is more information about the Kirklees and Bournemouth projects in the third instalment of the ECAT guidance for early language consultants and lead practitioners.
PARENTS' REACTIONS
Here are some comments from parents about getting themselves involved in early language and communication experiences.
'My husband went into the tent with him and they were hiding. They were laughing. He doesn't usually play much with him. They really enjoyed it.'
'It was great (ECAT meeting), lots of ideas like the sandbox beach. It stops me thinking this is too hard, let's just put the TV on.'
'They (the staff) cared that Daddy was here and he felt included. He was even mentioned in the story!'
'I really enjoyed coming home from work knowing that my son had brought a storysack home from pre-school for our bedtime story. Because I work it is very hard to visit him at school, but I felt that this project enabled school to come to me.'
'I understand how to ask questions. What is an open question and what is closed.'
'I am going to make my child a member of our local library and hopefully he will continue to enjoy books later in life as he does now.'
'Talking about how we learned nursery rhymes when we were little has made me realise I didn't do enough rhymes with my son. He loves doing them, so now we do them in the bath all the time.'
There is no one way to increase your partnership with parents. The way you do it will depend on many factors relating to yourself, your setting and the community in which you work. But if you commit to this way of valuing parents, it will have huge benefits for children and their families.
MORE INFORMATION:
Every Child A Talker guidance for early language lead practitioners can be downloaded from http://nationalstrategies.standards.dcsf.gov.uk/earlyyears.
Early Education (www.early-education.org.uk) offers a package of 13 free leaflets called 'Learning Together' to help parents of children up to age five, as well as students and practitioners. Also available is Chilvers, D (2006) Young children talking - The art of conversation and why children need to chatter.
The Family and Parenting Institute website (www.earlyhomelearning.org.uk) has parents' and practitioners' sections.
The Fatherhood Institute (www.fatherhoodinstitute.org) provides useful information and toolkits on how to engage fathers.
'Hello', the national year of communication is a campaign to increase understanding of the importance of good communication skills. Hello aims to make communication a priority for all children and young people in homes, settings and schools across the UK. Visit hello@thecommunicationtrust.org.uk.
The I CAN Talking Point website (www.talkingpoint.org.uk) has useful information for parents and practitioners.
Langston,A, Doherty, J and Todd, T (2008) Positive Relationships: Attachment and the key person (Nursery World, 8 October 2008)
PEAL (Parents, Early Years and Learning) training materials cover relationships, communication and partnership (www.peal.org.uk).
Talk to Your Baby (www.literacytrust.org.uk/talktoyourbaby) offers useful ideas and materials for parents. The 'Face to Face' research project report looks at key messages for parents on communicating with children.
The National Children's Bureau's Principles for engaging with families: A framework for local authorities and national organisations to evaluate and improveengagement with families is at www.ncb.org.uk/PDF/IMQU_FAMI_WEBREADY.pdf. This guidance has been produced with the Early Learning Partnership Parental Engagement Group (ELLPEG).
NB: In this article the term 'parents' includes not just birth parents but also other adults who may look after children, for example, other family members, guardians and foster carers