Love and Logic

Putting Parents At Ease

Click here to access the Love and Logic reading from the staff training on March 4th. Please use the comment space below to share strategies that work well in your classroom. 

Audio Version Here

Great parents love their kids. Great teachers love their students. This love makes them great at what they do. This affection can also lead to parent-teacher conferences where fur gets ruffled and sparks fly.

Listen.
Don't try to fix it before fixing your ears on the other person's concerns. Listening with sincere empathy and understanding is the single most important skill for working with anyone who is caught up in emotion. Promoting this involves having some key phrases we can fall back upon when we feel attacked:

•	Tell me more.
•	Help me understand.
•	How long have you felt this way?
•	What would you like to see here?

Each of the above is designed to get the other person talking. The more they talk, the better.

Take notes and read them back to the other person.
To prove that we've listened, it's helpful to jot down verbatim what the other person is saying. Don't summarize. Don't paraphrase. Take the time to write down exactly what the other person is saying. This demonstrates our commitment to listen. Oftentimes, it's also helpful for the other person to hear how crazy they may be sounding. Note: "Crazy" doesn't mean the person is mentally unstable. It simply means they are crazy in love with their kids or their students.

Have the child do most of the work.
Who is this conference really about? The child should do most of the thinking and working. This happens most effectively when teachers coach children to share their progress with the parent, as well as some possible solutions for improving it. Parents are also wise to ask most of the questions of their child…rather than of their child's teacher.

Maintain clear roles.
Parents can't run the classroom for teachers, and teachers can't run the home for parents. Wise educators describe what they will be doing to help in their classroom, instead of loading the parent with additional duties at home. Likewise, wise parents describe what they will be doing at home, instead of dictating loads of additional duties for the teacher.

When parents focus their energy on parenting well, and teachers focus their energy on teaching well, kids tend to excel. In contrast, when they try to control each other, things get ugly.

Thanks for reading! Our goal is to help as many families as possible.

Dr. Charles Fay