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“Good communication must be H.O.T. -- H.O.T. stands for honest, open, and two-way.” - Dan Oswald

Know

Close your eyes and picture the qualities you want in your communication with families. What do you notice about the words you use and the tone, pace, and feel of your everyday actions and routines? Ask yourself, “What am I doing to honor communication and relationships with families?” Your most important partner in this work is the children’s family. It’s helpful to find a common understanding, rhythm, and approach to family communication. The enrollment process is the beginning of this relationship. Future daily interactions are then supported by ongoing communication and systems and policies that invite multiple opportunities for communication and collaboration.

Throughout this lesson, the term family is used to refer to important people in children’s lives. These people can be parents, siblings, guardians, extended family members such as aunts or cousins, and other individuals who are involved in children’s lives.

Refer to the Family Engagement course for more extensive discussion on engaging and working with the families of children in your program.

Importance of Establishing Relationships and Communication with Families

Several studies show that positive relationships between caregivers, children, and families are essential to learning (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). Relationships can be built and strengthened through communication between caregivers and families that occurs during hellos and goodbyes as well as in more formal activities, such as a planned family meeting.

These opportunities require you, as a family child care provider, to be aware of such things as tone, choice of words, and nonverbal communication such as facial expressions and body language. When you are aware of these characteristics of communication, you can communicate in ways that are most supportive and respectful of families. Keep in mind that this may be the family’s first experience with a family child care program. Remember that even experienced providers will not know more about individual children than their families—this is important to have in mind when families are younger or seem less experienced than you are. Families will be eager to know how their child is doing, and you can support comfortable communication when you offer encouraging responses and ask for clarification if something is not understood.

You can also ensure that each moment offers sensitive communication, active listening, and opportunities for making connections. Developing relationships and communicating with families can help bridge the home and family child care setting. The Extension Alliance for Better Childcare recommends the following 7 steps caregivers can take to establish effective communication with parents:

1. Be interested. Show genuine interest in each family and convey that interest in each interaction.
2. Be humble. Although you may have years of caregiver experience and knowledge remember that the parent is the expert on their child. Our goal is to work with parents as a partner to support the well-being of their child.
3. Be respectful. It is important to maintain an attitude of respect for the parent’s role and for the culture, beliefs, values and experiences that shape their decisions. 
4. Be inviting. Let families know that their input is welcome. Look for opportunities to invite families to share and communicate with you. Ask questions that show you are interested and are paying attention. 
5. Be a good listener. Practice active listening skills to show that you are listening and invested in the conversation.  
6. Be positive. Find and share the positives about a child’s learning, behavior and experiences. Don’t communicate only when there is a problem or concern, or a need from a parent. This could damage the relationship and cause parents to avoid all communications.
7. Be creative. There are many ways to communicate with families. Newsletters text messages, bulletin boards to name a few. Take advantage of as many of these methods as necessary to meet the needs and preferences of families.

Building a successful partnership with families is beneficial to you, the child, and the family. Additionally:

• Programs that demonstrate and support partnering with families tend to have families that feel more confident and comfortable in supporting their children’s development (Wilcox & Weber, 2001).
• When services incorporate practices that promote partnerships with families, outcomes for families and children are improved, including parenting capabilities and positive child behavior and functioning (Dempsey & Keen, 2008; Dunst, Trivette & Hamby, 2008).

Listening and Responding with Purpose

When working with others, you must practice active listening. Listen closely to truly understand an individual’s position, interests, or motivation. Show that you hear and comprehend what is being said, and ask questions and clarify information to ensure you are both on the same page.

The book Families, Professionals, and Exceptionality lists several strategies crucial to active listening:

• Furthering responses. These are simple ways to let people know you are listening. Furthering responses include nodding your head, saying “Uh huh” or “What happened next?” and using the speaker’s words in brief encouraging statements.
• Restating the speaker’s message. This is also known as paraphrasing. You might say, “Let me see if I understand correctly…” and repeat what you heard in your own words.
• Reflecting the emotions of the speaker. An important part of communication is reading and reflecting emotions. You can show family members that you are listening and connecting with them by reflecting their emotions back to them. Simple phrases like, “I can tell that really upset you…” or “I can see that really pleased you…” can encourage the speaker to continue sharing.
• Asking open-ended questions. “What” and “how” questions are powerful, nonjudgmental ways to encourage family members to communicate with you. These questions indicate that you are engaged and actively listening. They also show that you want to hear the other person’s opinions. You might ask, “What happened with Sasha’s plan yesterday?” or “How is Davon doing with his asthma?”
• Summarizing the discussion. Any conversation should end with a summary and a plan. You might say, “So I heard you say…” and “Let’s review our next steps…”

Being clear and purposeful are important to communicate effectively during a conversation or a family conference, when working with community partners, or while giving a presentation. As a family child care provider, effective communication helps establish and maintain partnerships and relationships that support the children in your care. Your capable communication skills also serve as a model for children and youth.

Communication with Families of Children with Special Learning Needs

Establishing communication and meaningful relationships with families is a critical aspect of your work as a provider. Families of children with special learning needs may be simultaneously interacting with several different professionals from varying agencies or disciplines, so establishing strong relationships with them becomes even more important. Your role in helping families develop goals for their children and in coming up with ideas for achieving those goals can have a tremendous impact on their lives. You will work closely with your trainer, coach, or family child care administrator to help meet the needs of young children with special needs, but it is important for you to know some key terms.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), a federal education law, mandates the development of individualized education programs (IEPs) and individualized family service plans (IFSPs) for children who qualify for either special education or early intervention. IEPs are completed by the local school district and IFSPs are completed by the local early-intervention agency. Family child care professionals do not complete IEPs or IFSPs. However, you may be asked by the family to participate on the team for a child’s plan. Each IEP or IFSP describes the educational program designed by the team to meet the child’s unique needs and must contain specific information about the child as required by state and federal law.

For families new to this process, your role can be very important. Families may view you as their liaison or advocate to help them understand the system, access meaningful services, and set goals that can make a difference in their child’s life. 

Maintaining Ongoing Communication with Families

Sharing information about children in meaningful ways to families is critical to maintaining ongoing communication. Whenever possible, use data (e.g., observations, examples of children’s work, child assessments) to convey information about children with families. Data can help family members understand that the information you share with them is based on instances where you observed and generated information in an organized manner, as opposed to sharing personal views or opinions. As part of your work as a family child care provider, it is likely that you collect developmental information on children through assessments, and it is critical that families have access to that information. This fosters engagement and allows families to follow their child’s progress over time. Along the same lines, invite families to observe their children in your program. Schedule some time after the observation to talk about what family members noticed and address any questions they may have.

Families will also help set the pace for their communication with you. It is important to acknowledge it can take time for families to feel develop trust, feel safe, comfortable, and friendly. Different forms of communication or ways of communicating can play an important role in easing the process. A combination of communication styles, or forms, might work best to meet families’ needs. It’s also important to keep in mind there are likely to be a variety of factors that create challenges to communicating with families, such as conflicting belief systems or overwhelming family problems and crises. Take a moment to think about and list a few of the barriers that you have faced when communicating and building relationships with families. What methods of communication worked to break through the barriers? 

There may be times when you must have conversations with families about difficult issues. It is important to prepare for the conversation keeping in mind that your shared goal with the family is supporting the child.  A problem-solving approach will help you and parents work together to address concerns. This approach involves: 

• identifying the problem 
• collaborating with the family to brainstorm as many solutions as possible 
• jointly evaluating the pros and cons 
• deciding on a solution to try 
• putting the solution into action 
• reviewing the solution after a period of time. 

One of the keys to this approach is talking about concerns when they come up. Problems usually don’t go away by themselves. And if you leave them to escalate they might be more difficult to repair later. (Effective communication with parents: for professionals, 2018). 

Family Conferences

Family conferences are a great opportunity to engage in valuable conversations with family members about their children’s development and to address questions they may have. You can make this a meaningful experience for families by asking them to respond to or think about a few questions before coming to the conference. For example, you can ask them to think about their child’s most or least favorite aspects of their daily child care experience or about concerns they may have. These questions can serve as great conversation guides and can facilitate dialogue and the exchange of ideas during the conference. In the Learn section of this lesson, you can see an example of a brief questionnaire you can share with families prior to family conferences. By giving families some time to reflect on these simple questions before the conference, you are sending them the message that their input matters and that you value their point of view.

Involving Families in Children’s Communication and Language Development

Family members are children’s first teachers, and children learn to communicate by imitating parents, family members, and other significant adults in their home and community environments. Early interactions with family members can set the stage for effective communication and language development in young children. These are reasons why you should involve family members in young children’s communication and language development.

The interactions that children have with adults influence how they develop and learn. It has become increasingly clear that the more young children experience shared interactions and connection, the more effective they become as communicators.

Involving family members in young children’s development can also help you understand the diverse communication styles of children and families in your program. This is critical so that you can plan developmentally appropriate experiences for children and families, taking into consideration family backgrounds, traditions, unique needs, and preferences. At the same time, family involvement can help family members understand what and how their children are learning in your program and encourage them to support and promote high-quality communication in the home environment. Involving family members enables you to provide information, written resources, and models of effective ways to promote communication in young children’s lives. For example, you may provide recommendations or insights to families about supporting children’s requests for help, effective ways of talking about a child’s play, encouraging children to talk with each other as well as with other individuals, reading books with children, or supporting a child’s emergent writing, or a variety of other topics that help foster children’s development and the home-program connection.

Communicating with Families: Creating Partnerships

Families and providers need to work together to establish and maintain open lines of communication. There may often be barriers to maintaining communication between yourself and some families, and you will find that the right time to speak to family members may vary from family to family. For example, it may not be the appropriate time to try to discuss something that happened that day at pickup, when a family member is in a hurry. It is best to contact families in advance to more effectively discuss concerns or other topics. Choosing the right setting, time, and method of communication can strongly influence the outcome of your conversations with families. Consider these examples of ways to communicate with families (Council on Accreditation, 2015):

See

Do

Keeping relationships at the center of all your communication efforts with families can help create and maintain an environment where people are seen, heard, acknowledged, and celebrated for their strengths and who they are. How would you describe your approach to first interactions with families? Think about how your efforts immediately welcome families into your family child care program. In addition, consider the following:

• Review the documents used when enrolling a new child into the program. What other documents are shared with families? How are these documents shared? Think about the ways these documents are connected to the children and families’ strengths and memories as well as how they capture required information.
• Use photos of children and their families throughout your home, including as a way to identify special places for children’s personal belongings.
• Ask current families to help welcome new families. Invite all families to share their time or talents with the children in your program.
• Send home weekly notes or program newsletters about happenings in your program. Ideally, these should be written in the primary language of the children in your care.
• Establish ongoing communication between home and child care. Communication journals are a great way of doing this. These are usually sent home with each child and returned the following day. You can share noteworthy observations, moments, or events, and families can respond to these or share their own news, notes, or reflections. For children with special learning needs, communication journals can be an especially valuable tool in establishing consistency between home and family child care environments.
• Hold regularly scheduled family conferences where family members have opportunities to discuss goals, achievements, or concerns related to their children. Use positive language as you discuss each child’s strengths and needs during these times. If you have concerns, bring them up calmly and sensitively after talking about the child’s strengths.
• Invite family members to volunteer in your program or to share talents, special interests, or expertise.
• Invite families to talk about their children with special learning needs. For example, a family member may come in your program and talk about their child’s use of adaptive equipment, such as braces, a wheelchair, or a communication device. The family member may explain the use of equipment, and this could help children and other families understand aspects of the child’s life. This also promotes acceptance of differences.
• During arrival or dismissal times, show enthusiasm and welcome families as they drop off or pick up their children. Use these times as opportunities to communicate with family members and share brief comments about their children’s day in your program.