Positive Practice Relationships with Children and Their Families - Essay Example

KEY ELEMENTS OF ‘POSITIVE PRACTICE RELATIONSHIPS’ WITH CHILDREN AND THEIR FAMILIES By College Department 25 October 2014 Introduction The starting point for an effective collaboration between parents and children at any age is the relationship among them. Tassoni (2005) points out that children who feel appreciated enjoy being with their parents and have positive response. They are therefore more likely to have good behaviour and enjoy playing together. The positive practices can be categorised as collaborative, effective and reflective. They are all interrelated and designed to compliment each other. This study observes the relationship between the professionals, parents and children. Children need secure regions with which to take risks and explore the environment. According to Cohrssen, Church and Tayler, “close relationships enable early childhood professionals to better understand individual children and their broader cultural contexts” (n.d., p. 4). Accustomed engagement between a grown up and an infant is a feature of a responsive relationship. Responsive engagement comes inform of caring. According to Cohrssen, Church and Tayler, “throughout the early years, learning takes place in the context of relationships; the relationship between a teacher and a child may have a special influence on children’s development” (n.d., p. 7). The child teaching practice in this case begins from the parent and family member. Tassoni (2005) urges that for children to feel nurtured and valued, the way in which they are handled should change according to the child’s need. Physical environment The environment where we live and operate has a great impact in our lives. Equally for children, their living and operating environment has a great influence in their lives and must be ensured, safe and healthy. The child’s physical environment is full of potential and opportunities for them to learn about things, people and other children. This learning can inspire, encourage or challenge the child. It is therefore the duty of educators to make this environment comfortable and interesting to children, thus providing a rich opportunity for children to achieve experience, learn and develop. Early childhood assessment includes making observation, documenting and making other assessment strategies. According to Couchenour and Chrisman “effective teaching of young children begins with thoughtful, appreciative, systematic observation and documentation of each of the child’s unique qualities, strengths, and needs” (2013, p. 339). Proper observation gives proper insight on how children develop and respond to opportunities and challenges in their lives. In recent times, several efforts aiming at improving children’s school readiness and achievement have focused on improving partnership with parents and family members (The United States Department of Education Goal, 2010). There are various observations of parental involvement. In most cases, teachers regard parents as classroom assistants. Teachers need the participation of parents to promote interest and mutual support for children. In most cases, parents provide a continuous force in the learning process of children. Sometimes there are adults who provide care for their children and they are able to influence parents. Teachers are also held as very high enforcers in children’s lives. Apart from the parents who are the first and most important educators, the school and the circumstances surrounding the child have as impact on his growth and development. These circumstances should provide a steady environment in which children can ensure the continuity that promotes healthy development. There are several factors which ensure the continuity of a child’s development. These are appropriate curriculum, the parent, the school environment, community, and services as provided by the social agencies. Parents need the collaboration of the teachers to ensure that these components are in order. They guide the parent to understand the appropriate curricula, adopt appropriate guiding strategy, coordinate collaboration with the school, and make proper use of the school and communal social services. Furthermore, “diversity in value systems, cultural expectations, and beliefs must be considered” (Couchenour and Chrisman, 2013, p. 51). Family participation The participation of parents and other members of the family in the development of a child is very essential to not only the children, but also the teachers and any child development program in that it helps improve the child’s competence, effectiveness of the parents, as well as enrichment of the program. Many parents express interest by getting involved with the child at home and during the early child growth, while others need to be encouraged and get assisted to get involved in the child’s development. Therefore, there is a direct interlink between the support given to the parent and the one which the parent gives to the child. Although there could be programs enabling parents to gain access to resources, the personal effort given and entrusted into the child’s developmental path should not be underestimated. Supportive programs enable the parents to translate the positive relationship into a more valuable learning system for the children at home. Effectiveness of the parents The participation of parents forms a basis of developing parental care. The parent is made to feel that he is worth. This builds the self confidence especially to the less regarded people in the society. The rationale of involving parents in developmental programs is to enable them achieve experience in human services, which would otherwise provide social change. Parent’s involvement would also provide an opportunity to parents, to learn appropriate methods to cultivate development through involvement. Due to the concern of their children’s acquisition of skills, the parents in the process contribute the challenges found in the early child academics. Bredekamp (1987 cited in Barbour, n.d., n.p.) says that as the parents watch child programs, they get to understand that children learn best through active engagement in self inflicted activities. Barbour (n.d.) contributes to these sentiments by indicating that “through involvement with teachers, parents also can learn positive guidance techniques and appropriate strategies to promote learning at home.” Parent’s participation enriches child development in that they supplement the teacher’s resources by providing direct attention to individual children, and by getting involved in the long term programs. Their participation is most essential in ensuring that they form part of the program. They help distribute the available resources and form part of the decision making team. A part form augmenting parents into the program, parents form a kind of advocacy to teachers. They help to mobilise the community to provide the most conducive environment that enables teachers provide the best education to the children. Through directives from professionals, parents get encouraged to nurture their children. This increases the likelihood that a child gets proper education and success in life. Barbour says that “supporting families in child rearing begins by forming partnership based upon mutual respect, shared understanding, and cooperative decision making” (n.d.). When building supportive partnership, the key step is to form a basis of understanding parents. Their feelings and concerns are most essential. Just as the case of understanding children makes it possible to create a learning experience, making good understanding to parents’ eases response, regardless of family setup and background, as all families have strengths to nurture their children. Parents who value teachers and are willing to collaborate with them are more likely to be willing to share information which would provide observation and produce ideas that help all stakeholders have appropriate child response. The atmosphere that is friendlier promotes family participation. It highlights the importance of the parents as a critical part of the community. Barbour (n.d.) lists such commitments as friendly and helpful open door policy amongst many other projects as essentials for ensuring full parental participation in the school related projects. A wide range of opportunities should be provided to parents since not all parents are the same. It is worth ensuring that the parent feels like a volunteer. This ensures that with any amount of contribution given by the parents, it is effective and forms essentialities. It is also the duty of teachers or educators to share vital information with the community resource groups to ensure that there is continuity. Communication in relationship is vital and may take two forms; one way or two way. In a one way type of communication, parents are updated with required information, but limited support is required from them. In a two way communication, there is sharing of information and concerns. There is development of rapport, understanding and trust development, and all support the teachers’ efforts to involve the parents. It may be conducted at homes, through calls, visitation in schools and conferences. Development of positive relationship Relationship is very essential during the early development of a child. In the first three years, a child needs to develop psychologically. A young child learns to develop trust through the prediction of the caregiver and the developing relationship between them. Trust is viewed as a major component in development. During a child’s development, there are issues and conflicts that develop in relation to interpersonal experiences at any given stage. Resolutions to these conflicts have an impact to the development of the child. There is a component of trust and mistrust; when a child feels well taken cared of, he will take the world and the environment to be very much friendly and dependable and in the course of it, will trust the caregiver, but if the opposite occurs, that is, the child experiencing harsh interaction and irresponsible care, he will definitely develop mistrust to that particular environment. Trust and mistrust is developed during the first year after birth. When a child produces a smile and in response no one is smiling back, the child will learn that smiling does not produce a comfortable exchange. He may therefore have to stop smiling and instead, learn to mistrust the care giver. In another phase of a child’s development, conflict resolution is important as it promotes either the feeling of autonomy or shame. When a child interacts with the environment and in the process feels interaction through successes and discoveries, he will gain autonomy, but if a child is given restricted access to making explorations and is made to experience most things he comes across as wrong, then the child will develop a sense of shame and doubts. In this stage of a child’s development, culture is very crucial since different cultures come with varied autonomy. The status of an infant’s relationship with caregivers is a major concern as it contributes much to the health of the child’s development. The learning could occur either through a child’s exploration or relationship, but either forms an important basis for the development of a child. According to Friedman (2006 cited in U.S. Department of health and Human Services, 2010, p. 19), “there are remarkable extents to which nurturing environments and positive interactions build healthy brain architecture”. This gives the reasons as to why relationships form the heart of development and learning and make the role of caregivers more critical to the development of children. The parent and child relationship forms the central part relationship that supports a child’s development. Even if a child spends most of his time in child care services, parental care remains the most critical, with both parents playing an equal role in the development of the child. Another relationship that is beneficial to a child’s development is the parent to caregiver relationship. The importance occurs such that it provides the continuity across the setting of the child. It provides an open and on-going communication and the parent is given the information about the child. When such a relationship is positive, the parent will be able to access the information that he could not have obtained in a strained relationship. Caregiver versus caregiver relationship is also very important. Children are very sensitive to the relationships of those around them. Most of the time, caregivers are the ones around the children and therefore their relationships are the most important. A responsible relationship between the caregivers provides an emotionally safe environment for the child, but a strained environment would produce a negative effect and is most likely to affect the child. It is very essential that a caregiver becomes aware of the entire relationship network that is necessary for the development of the child. Childcare programs have proven through their strategies that they help reduce child abuse and neglect in families. The effects are available in the case whereby the strategies have been strengthened. All these scenarios have suggested that interactions between children and the caregivers form foundations of children learning and growth across all the domains, and begin from the instance when the children feel warmth and closeness while being fed from time to time. It evolves through on-going interactions. Children services Children services should be a means of nurturing visibility, inclusion, and the participation of children in the society. Such services include but are not limited to communal institutions and public spaces such as the social, cultural, political and cultural regions. Despite dominant positions, schools stand as modern children’s services. Although a school is not the only place to offer children services, it plays a very important role. However, it serves like other child care services. Such services break the attachment that had been created by the parent and the family members to the child. Ahnert and Lamp (2011) argues that continuous child care unbroken by separations is important in the development and maintenance of a child’s emotions and social behaviours. The non-parental child care involves separations. The concern is that it can damage primary attachment thus cause and advance effects on the social life of the child. Furthermore, the non-related child cares are less concerned, unlike the family members. Most of the elementary schools have female teachers to provide care to the children. In this case, the male children lack the care of the males and sometimes, children lack balanced care like the presence of both their parents (Click and Parker, 2011). However, there is a big advantage in school care if male and female caregivers are present. Some of the children may be coming from single parent families where they lack one parent. As the children develop in school set-ups, they will be able to fill the void that they had experienced in their homes. School care units also offer a big opportunity for a child to know more things that they could not have known under the care of family members. This is because school care is handled by a specialist who has been approved through several qualities. The environment of child day care has an effect on a child’s social and cognitive development. This issue has led to heated debates in academic and political scenes (Hershfield and Selman, 1997). Studies have shown that child day care has negative and disruptive effects (Caughy et al., 1994 cited in Hershfield and Selman, 1997). The argument is that the care so given to the child is different from the one given at the maternal home. Conclusion Families encounter many challenges. It is important for early childhood professionals to play their role of care giving and being educators. The support offered to parents mediate the stresses experienced by families in facilitating their abilities in nurturing children. Partnership between teachers and parents leads to mutual benefits, but more so to the children to whom they are being offered. Since children gain more experience in childcare services, the childcare services should be able to provide access to a variety of positive social relationships. In order that care environments are appropriately developed, caregiver-child ratio should be kept low. It is important that the parents demand for quality care. Caring for many children from varied backgrounds is different from caring for ones own child. Caregivers also need to be valued by the society and be provided with education, so that at least they ensure the continuity of the attachment of the child and the parent. References Ahnert, L. and Lamb, M. E., 2011. Child Care and its Impact on Young Children. [pdf] Free University, Germany: Encyclopaedia on Early Childhood Development. Available at: [Accessed 25 October 2014]. Barbour, A., n.d. Supporting Families: Children are the Winners. [online] Texas: Early Childhood News. Available at: [Accessed 25 October 2014]. Cohrssen, C., Church, A. and Tayler, C., n.d. Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework. [pdf].Melbourne Graduate School of Education Available at: [Accessed 25 October 2014]. Click, P. and Parker, J., 2011. Caring for School-age Children. Belmont: Cengage Learning. Couchenour, D. and Chrisman, K., 2013. Families, Schools and Communities: Together for Young Children. Boston: Cengage Learning. Hershfield, B. and Selman, K., 1997. Child Day Care. New Jersey: Transaction publishers. Tassoni, P., 2005. Children’s Care, Learning and Development Candidate Handbook. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. U.S. Department of health and Human Services, 2010. National Infant & Toddler Child Care Initiative. [online] Chapel Hill. Available at: [Accessed 25 October 2014]. Read More