Parenting Advice

At the ripe old age of 23 (almost 24) with no children, I often find myself in the situation of giving parenting advice. Although I do not have children of my own, I feel my parents did a good job and I babysat enough to see many different parenting styles and figure out how to deal with unruly children. Those children are now old enough to be reading this blog themselves...so I guess that does give me some right to give advice to parents. Many of these advice bits have been repeated and repeated at my parent conferences this year, but this was the most important. Please keep in mind that this conference was with a parent of a specials needs child. One who might need this more than any other kid in my room.

Today at a conference, I heard myself telling a parent what might work at home. I offered such advice as:
- Create a schedule that he has some leeway and can make his own decisions.
- Create a reward system, something he wants to earn at home using some object he can collect and keep track of his earnings.
- Create consequences for unwanted behavior and something he has to physical do himself to know he's accepting the consequence.
- Show patience and answer his questions. He needs to understand answers before he can move on.
- Don't use figurative language. He doesn't understand it and only makes him more frustrated.
- Have him play with other kids.
- Don't worry about academics, we want his social skills to develop so that he can understand feelings when he's reading about them.

I just find it funny that I was sitting in the conference with the parent, counselor, educational assistant, and speech teacher giving advice about what to do at home, when I have no children of my own. I know my dog appreciates schedules. She expects her food and potty breaks at certain times and becomes grumpy and restless if I am late. Aren't kids just like dogs?

Parent Conferences

This week we had two early release days so that we could have the afternoon for parent conferences. Seeing how most of my class is very well-behaved and almost on grade level, I wasn't too concerned. I had it planned out that they would share something with their parents they've done or like about the class and then we would talk about their goals and what they need to do.

Here they come...and I'm the smiling, happy teacher their kids hopefully talk about. I tell each of them how much I enjoy having their child in class, how they participate, they turn in their homework on time, and how respectful they are. It's almost the same spiel after spiel, differing a bit depending on how many multiplication facts they know and what difficulties they're having with reading, if any. Every student and parent get the same spiel about preparing for the writing TAKS test in late February and what will be expected by then.

Now, I do have a few students that have very talkative and playful personalities and those conferences were a bit more difficult. If I learned anything from my student teaching cooperative teacher, it is that you have to address the problem as it is. The issues that needed to be addressed were nothing new, their parents were aware. In fact, we talked about it like a real problem and how it was going to be fixed and what happens if it isn't. All of the parents were very supportive and understood the problems. They are going to talk about appropriate behavior in order to improve what's happening at school. It helps when the kids know the parents know what's going on and they will be concerned about it and keeping in touch.

Overall, I was very happy with the way the parent conferences turned out and I reassured them all they have wonderful kids and they are assets to our class.