What are some ways that you could include the childs family to help support the childs development?

Through relationships, children discover who they are and learn to understand others. Learn how you can help your infants and toddlers develop strong relationships with the people in their lives.

Relationship-building describes the process of establishing emotional connections with others, starting from birth, which are based on trust and intimacy. Through relationships, children discover who they are and learn to understand others. When young children experience people helping, understanding, and enjoying them, they approach the world with openness and enthusiasm, and they grow to be responsive and caring people.

Babies are born with a drive to relate to and connect with others, and they continue to develop the social skills necessary to form strong, healthy relationships throughout their lives:

• A newborn gazes at her mother’s face as she breastfeeds. She recognizes her mother as the special, loving person who is always there for her, and calms down almost immediately when her mother picks her up and holds her close. This baby is learning that she is loved and that she can trust others to care for her and treat her well.
• A 6-month-old laughs and laughs as his father holds a napkin over his face, and then drops it to say, “Peek-a-boo!” Whenever his father tries to put the napkin back on the table, the baby says, “eh, eh, eh” to let his father know he wants him will hold up that silly napkin again. This baby is learning that he can connect with a loved one through a fun activity like this one. He is discovering that spending time together is satisfying and pleasurable.
• A 20-month-old wants to cut his own fruit for snack. His grandmother says no. He stamps his feet and sobs. His grandmother tells him she has an idea: She gives him a dull butter knife and guides his hand to help him cut some melon. This toddler is learning that his interests and needs are important and what it feels like to be understood by another person.
• A 2 ½-year-old sees her brother fall off his bicycle and begin crying. She runs over and starts to rub his back, like she’s seen her mommy do. This toddler is learning how to empathize with, or understand, another’s feelings and experiences.

Below are some ideas for nurturing relationship-building skills in infants and toddlers.

Allow for Unstructured, Uninterrupted Time With Your Child Each Day

Let her be the leader in deciding what to play. Don’t multi-task during this special playtime—just be there with your child one-on-one. She will feel loved and special with your full attention. When you have to do turn to daily chores, you can stay connected with your toddler by talking with her or having her help with the activity, giving her “jobs” she can handle. With your baby, you can narrate what you’re doing and offer her interesting, related objects to keep her connected to you—like giving her a wooden spoon to play with while you’re cooking.

Let Your Child Know You’re Interested in His Activities

Show a sincere interest in your child—whatever he is doing. Your attention is what he desires and is thrilled to receive. You can show your interest by commenting on or describing what he is doing: “You are using so many beautiful colors to make that drawing.” Or, get involved by following his lead. If he is putting blocks in a container, see if he’ll take turns with you, or if you can build something together. This will also help him learn about the value and joy of back and forth play which is an important aspect of all successful relationships.

Encourage Children to Express Their Feelings in Age-Appropriate Ways

Forming positive, healthy relationships depends on the ability to show feelings appropriately and to recognize the feelings of others. Teach children acceptable ways to vent anger, like drawing an angry picture, running in the yard, or tossing a pillow on the floor. Label your own feelings, “I am happy because you helped me clean up,” or, “I am sad that Grandma had to fly home.” It is important for children to know that you have feelings too, but that there are ways to cope with them so you can feel better.

Respect Your Child’s Feelings

This teaches your child to trust her instincts. It can also help her work through powerful or difficult feelings and allow her to move on. Knowing you respect her feelings teaches your child empathy and respect for others, which are important elements in any relationship. Accepting her feelings, without minimizing them or making fun, also increases the chances that she will share more with you as she grows.

Play Games that Explore Feelings

Use puppets to act out a young child’s typical frustrations or fears, like having to share toys with a playmate, adjusting to a new baby, or separating from loved ones. Make drawings or hats for different emotions, and talk about pictures in books that communicate feelings. Also, watch what your child “tells” you during his play—it can be a window into his inner thoughts and feelings. For example, if your child dresses up in mommy clothes and acts out leaving her teddy bear at the babysitter’s house, she may be wondering about separations. You can help her think through these big ideas and feelings by playing along and perhaps reminding her that, while Teddy misses his mama, he knows his mama always comes back.

Provide Opportunities for Your Child to Develop Relationships With Peers

Children need practice in order to learn to share, take turns, resolve conflict, and feel the joy of friendship. Playing together gives children all of this—plus a chance for parents to connect with others adults, too! At this age, being present during play-dates is important as children often need help learning and practicing their new friendship skills. And it’s a good rule of thumb to keep playdates short for little ones—45 minutes-to-an-hour is about right for most toddlers. For older toddlers, you can use their playtime with peers to nurture relationship-building skills by:

• Suggesting, when appropriate, that children turn to peers for assistance or to get answers to their questions: “You are wondering how to get the little doll to sit in the high chair? Why don’t you ask Jeremy? I just saw him feeding her a few minutes ago.”
• Asking children to imagine how their behavior might affect others: “I see that you told Greta that she can’t play ball with you. How do you think that made her feel?”
• Encouraging children to work in groups or as teams, when appropriate: “Sam and DeShawn, could you please put the cars away? Then you can help me get your snack ready.”
• Helping children to see others’ points of view, which encourages empathy: “Casey is feeling sad because his mom had to go.”

Limit TV and Other “Screen Time”

Television takes time away from hanging out together—and time away from children playing, solving problems, interacting, and actively learning about the world around them. When your child does watch, you can enhance the experience by talking with your child about the show—what she thought it was about, which characters she liked and disliked, how it made her feel. You can also act out the story as she understood it, use puppets to tell the story, or make up your own story together.

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Great family participation is an important part of any successful early education program. Family participation helps to build trust and strong communication with families, which can help you increase family satisfaction, improve your retention and referrals to your center, and identify opportunities for improvement.

As a director, there are many ways to help parents become involved with their children’s learning and your childcare center. Here are ten ways to boost family participation at your center.

Some parents want to be involved in their child’s education, but don’t know much about child development or developmentally appropriate practices. Others may lack the confidence to ask you or your staff questions they may have. 

You can help educate parents by setting expectations at the beginning of the school year by outlining your learning goals through back-to-school night, new family orientation, a family handbook, or an introductory newsletter. 

Explaining what learning looks like (and doesn’t look like) is another way to ensure parents are aligned with your center’s approach to child development. It can sometimes feel like parents are overly focused on ‘academic’ content rather than developmental skills, and whether or not they realize it, they have expectations for what that will look like. For example, if worksheets are not part of your curriculum, it’s important to share that with parents and to explain why. Most adults just aren’t familiar with the foundational skills required for future activities like reading and writing.

Sending helpful resources and pointing parents toward trusted resources, such as info from the CDC and NAEYC,  will also ensure that you’re on the same page when it comes to their child’s development. 

Inviting local early childhood experts to come and speak to your parents can also help educate parents on how they can help with their children’s early childhood development. Some examples of early childhood experts include: 

• Kindergarten teacher to talk about school readiness
• Librarian to talk about effective read-aloud strategies 
• Speech therapists
• If any of the parents at your center are experts, ask them to share their knowledge! 

Don't worry about overcommunicating with parents or sounding condescending. You are the early education expert, and parents will want to hear what you have to say. You both have their child’s best interests at heart!

2. Use parent-teacher conferences to set learning goals together

Parent-teacher conferences are great ways to effectively collaborate with parents to come up with learning development goals for their children. It’s also important to continue the conversations discussed in your conferences throughout the year to align with parents on their child’s development. 

Some directors and teachers might find it helpful to collect parents’ questions and concerns ahead of the conference so teachers are prepared to provide information and solutions to them. 

To help facilitate a productive parent-teacher conference, here is a sample agenda: 

• Start and end by sharing positive comments about the child.
• Discuss family concerns or questions. 
• Work together to create learning goals for the student that you can revisit throughout the year. 
• Share take-home resources, such as tips on how to continue learning at home. 

3. Host fun and educational learning sessions for students and their families

Another way to boost family participation is to host learning sessions for students and their families. During these sessions, focus on specific developmental skills or academic topics. Focusing on specific topics or skills can help build trust, as you can demonstrate the educational value of your curriculum in a hands-on and exciting way. 

Some session ideas include:

• Paint pinecones using washable tempera paint and droppers/pipettes—exercises fine motor skills 
• Host a nature scavenger hunt—exercises problem-solving and social skills 
• Sing children’s favorite songs and have parents draw what’s happening in the lyrics—exercises language skills, creativity, and storytelling

These sessions don’t have to be long events—around thirty minutes is a great amount of time to show parents what their children are learning at your center. You may also consider scheduling these sessions to start right after pick-up time so it’s convenient for families to attend. 

For COVID safety, you can also host these events outdoors or over Zoom. If using Zoom or another online program, make sure you send a list of required items to parents ahead of time,  or send the children home with the items they’ll need for the activity. 

4. Regularly invite feedback from parents

Using feedback from parents and families is a great way to increase family participation. By implementing their feedback, they’ll feel that their needs are being met and their concerns are being addressed. Ideally, you should ask for feedback at least once or twice throughout each school year. Regular feedback will allow you to check in and see how things are going on the parent-side of your center, and will give you the chance to make improvements or changes if needed. 

There are many free tools available to help you gather feedback, such as SurveyMonkey or Google Forms. Some example questions to include are: 

• What are your favorite things about our program? 
• Are there specific areas where our program could improve?
• How satisfied are you with the communication between our center and home? Please explain.
• How satisfied are you with our program’s activities and curriculum? Please explain.
• Is there anything else we should know? 

5. Regularly showcase student work

It’s important to share childrens’ learning on a daily basis through photos and videos—not just during parent meetings! When sending photos and videos to parents, make sure to spell out what skills their child is learning during activities —the more specific you are with explaining skills, the easier it will be for parents to help their child develop these skills at home. 

With brightwheel, you can easily send messages and photos to families so they can get insight into their child’s day and skill development.

6. Leverage parents’ talents for volunteer opportunities

Volunteering is a great way to help parents feel more invested in your program, because they’re contributing to the success of it! Parents are more likely to agree to volunteer opportunities if you ask them for something they’re good at, so surveying parents about their talents and how they can contribute is a great way to increase family participation. 

Make sure to get creative with your volunteer requests to make parents feel included— everyone has a skill they can contribute! Some ideas for volunteers include:

• Preparing craft materials 
• Calling new families to welcome them 
• Organizing teacher appreciation activities
• Donating products or services for fundraisers 
• Recording videos of themselves reading to use during storytime

7. Send Regular Newsletters

Newsletters are a great way to keep parents informed with everything from changing policies to important reminders. You’ll also want to add a human touch to make them enticing to read— photos of activities, special outings, or the children are always a fun addition! 

Engaging topics to cover:

• Recent classroom activities and how they contributed to learning objectives
• Student kudos 
• At-home learning tips
• Teacher spotlights 
• Parents Hall of Fame—highlight parents who have helped out! 
• New student alerts and how to welcome them to your center
• Recipes from the classroom

What not to do in newsletters: 

• Make them  too long—you want parents to quickly get the important information they need
• Use text only
• Send them too infrequently—find the right cadence for you and your families 

Brightwheel’s newsletter feature makes sending newsletters a breeze. Administrators can build beautiful newsletters and send them to families with just a few clicks!

8. Host social events for families

Giving families a chance to meet each other and build relationships can help increase parent engagement by creating a fun, supportive atmosphere. We’ve heard from many centers that they have a lot of success with parent events at the beginning of the school year, especially if they have a lot of new families joining. 

Here are some ideas for family events: 

• Joint student birthday celebrations (can be quarterly or twice a year)
• Back-to-school picnics
• New family meet-and-greets 
• Holiday events

9. Help parents build community with each other

A strong sense of community within your center makes for happier parents, which leads to higher retention and more referrals. Community building doesn’t always come naturally to parents, so they’ll probably need a little nudge. 

Some ways to help parents build community include: 

• Providing family directories at the beginning of the school year to encourage them to reach out and connect with each other.  
• Encouraging families to set up playdates with each other, which can also help children continue developing important social and emotional skills outside of the classroom. 
• Starting a private Facebook group for families so they can share parenting resources, local family-friendly activities, and questions. 

10. Use a tool like brightwheel to strengthen communication and engagement

The more you communicate with parents about their child’s education, the more they’ll feel connected to your center and excited to continue their child’s development at home. Using a software like brightwheel encourages more communication and engagement between families and your center. By centralizing messaging, reminders, alerts, brightwheel helps ensure that families never miss important updates. You can also send photo and video updates to give parents a peek into their child’s day and insight into what skills their child is developing. 

At brightwheel, we’re so thankful for everything you do to support early learners and their families. We hope these ideas help strengthen family involvement so that you can continue to facilitate a positive learning environment inside (and outside!) your center.

Brightwheel is the complete solution for early education providers, enabling you to streamline your center’s operations and build a stand-out reputation. Brightwheel connects the most critical aspects of running your center—including sign in and out, parent communications, tuition billing, and licensing and compliance—in one easy-to-use tool, along with providing best-in-class customer support and coaching. Brightwheel is trusted by thousands of early education centers and millions of parents. Learn more at mybrightwheel.com.