Parents Newsletter Inspiration

[Guest terrydoo73]

About to print off my October Newsletter to distribute next Monday. Looking for some inspiration - parents are presently coming in at the end of our session and saying "where you a good boy today" and this is directed at us as workers! We want to get them away from the idea of good, bad or even naughty! It is really about trying to teach them as parents to ask appropriate questions that are relevant to their children and also in a sense how we can respond to this! We sort of feel that if we could show the parents to teach their chidlren about listening to us as adults and doing as we asked because at present we seem to have no respect as such! We have tried all the usual - "we don't x, y and z in playgroup", stop to get attention etc etc but think that if we can get parents on board too then it might work. Some days we go home exhausted and rehear ourselves saying these things over and over! Thought if there was some article or phrases we could use which are "polite" so as not to take offence!

[Helen]

If I've understood correctly you have two issues here; one is that you'd like to offer positive feedback to parents about their child's time at the setting that isn't always to do with behaviour, and the other is how to improve the behaviour of the children in your setting.

For the first point, perhaps starting to use phrases like "x concentrated for such a long time on his model today", or "y worked out how she could.......all by herself"; showing that what you value is effort and engagement in activities.

For the second point, it looks like you could do with some support on positive behaviour management. It is so difficult to get out of the negative "we don't do x....here" isn't it? What sort of training are you able to access?

We have a couple of articles here and here that might be helpful to you.

How do you feel your partnership with parents is working at the moment?

[Helen]

PS These leaflets might be useful too, in building partnership with parents and dealing with unwanted behaviour such as biting and kicking.

Partnership_with_Parents_Leaflet..docx

Biting leaflet.docx

[zigzag]

Thanks for the leaflets I have downloaded them as they look very useful.

[Cait]

Thanks Helen, bound to be something useful in there