Ethical and Respectful Family Interactions

When we are effective communicators with families, we encourage respectful, open, and trustworthy interactions. Families are very diverse and may have questions that require thoughtful responses. As early childhood education professionals, we can help support and encourage them to continue interactions, even when doing so may be difficult.

Consider the following situations:

A family is worried that their child is being bullied on the playground.

A family is wondering why the children in the classroom are playing all the time rather than working.

A parent or guardian shares that he/she is in the process of going through a divorce.

A parent or guardian would like to know why there is testing in preschool.

A parent or guardian is concerned that his/her child is advanced for their age and is bored in the classroom.

For this discussion, imagine that you are an early childhood education professional and one of your families has voiced one of these concerns to you during a parent-teacher conference. Choose one of the above scenarios and develop a written response that you could use during the conference to address their concerns, offer additional information to support your response, and support open communication going forward. For this response, be sure to focus on effective communication skills, discussed in Chapters 8-10 of the Gestwicki text, as well as your own knowledge. You must use at least two outside resources to support your response. Please see the MAECEL Source Guide for support with locating sources