A Practical Guide To Working With Parents

Working with parents is a key competence required in all areas of child-care employment and this much-needed resource provides thorough coverage of this important area. Unlike other books, this guide offers a comprehensive yet truly practical approach to all aspects of working with parents and is a valuable addition to the best-selling Practical Guide series.

*Finalist for Best Overall Non-Fiction and Best Parenting & Family Book in the 2020 International Book Awards!* What to Say to Kids When Nothing Seems to Work offers parents an effective, step-by-step guide to some of the most common struggles for kids aged 5–12. Written by mental health professionals with over 30 years’ experience listening to kids’ thoughts and feelings, this book provides a framework to explore new ways of responding to your child that will help them calm down faster and boost their resilience to stress. With a dose of humor and plenty of real-life examples, the authors will guide you to "build a bridge" into your child’s world to make sense of their emotions and behavior. Sample scenarios and scripts are provided for you to customize based on your caregiving style and your child’s personality. These are then followed by concrete support strategies to help you manage current and future situations in a way that leaves everyone feeling better. Chapters are organized by common kid-related issues so you can quickly find what’s relevant to you. Suitable for parents, grandparents, and other caregivers of children and pre-teens, as well as professionals working closely with families, What to Say to Kids When Nothing Seems to Work is an accessible resource for efficiently navigating the twists, turns, and sometimes total chaos of life with kids.

This definitive resource provides a comprehensive range of activities and materials enabling you to equip your staff with the knowledge, confidence and skills they need to collaborate effectively with parents as part of their early years practice. Packed with practical, reflective and team-based activities and templates, How to Develop Partnerships with Parents offers evidence-based information on working successfully with parents, and provides a range of materials to meet the specific training and development needs of your staff. Chapters emphasise the benefits of working closely with families, and acknowledge the particular needs of parents with children at various stages of development, and with SEND. Information and activities are presented in a unique, accessible format, meaning you can quickly access the materials most relevant for your staff and setting, to provide effective training and ensure that staff members can build outstanding working relationships with parents, collaborating with families to the benefit of the child. With downloadable resources, activities and opportunities for reflection throughout, this will be essential reading for Early Years managers, students and practitioners, trainers and co-ordinators.

Becoming a Digital Parent is a practical, readable guide that will help all parents have confidence to successfully navigate technology with their children. It accessibly presents evidence-based guidance to offer an overview of the digital landscape, empowering parents to embrace opportunities whilst keeping children responsible and safe online. Covering a range of topics including developmental stages, screen time, bed time, gaming, digital identities, and helpful parenting apps and resources, Carrie Rogers-Whitehead explores the challenges and opportunities involved in parenting in the digital age. With advice for parents of babies through to teenagers, each chapter includes an explanation of the latest research, interviews with parents and experts, and helpful case studies gathered by the author during her extensive experience of working directly with parents and children. This book will show parents how to communicate better with their children, create a family technology plan, put in place intervention strategies when things happen, and take advantage of the benefits technology can afford us. Becoming a Digital Parent is ideal for all parents looking to effectively navigate the technological world, and the range of professionals who work with them.

Millions of parents take their child to the hospital each year for stitches, outpatient surgery, or longer stays for serious illnesses. Your Child in the Hospital: A Practical Guide for Parents is packed with sensible tips and home-grown wisdom that will make any visit to the hospital easier. It explains how cope with procedures, plan for surgery, communicate with doctors and nurses, and deal with insurance companies. Woven throughout the text are dozens of practical and encouraging stories from parents who have been through the experience of having a child in the hospital. This new edition contains a packing list, hospital journal for children, and helpful resources for parents.

Young children live in the here and now. If adults are to make a real difference to their learning they need to seize the moments when children first show curiosity, and support their next steps immediately. This book embraces the concept of planning "in the moment" and emphasises the critical role of the adult in promoting child-led learning, giving early years practitioners the confidence and insight to work and plan in the moment, and enabling the children in their care to live, learn, play and develop in the here and now. Planning in the Moment with Young Children maintains a strong link to practice, providing numerous examples of how practitioners can integrate spontaneous planning and rich adult–child interactions into their everyday practice and early years curricula. From timetabling to setting clear rules, creating enabling environments, keeping records and making use of a variety of materials, the book demonstrates the multitude of ways in which practitioners can encourage child autonomy and respond to the unique needs of each child. Examples from practice are rooted in theory, fully contextualised, and exemplified by original documentation sourced from the author’s own experiences and from a wide variety of settings. Key features include: over 180 full colour photographs to illustrate practice; photocopiable pages including planning sheets, documentation and activity sheets; advice on working with parents, individual children and groups; tailored guidance on working with children at different stages of development from birth to age 6 years; relevance to a range of settings, including childminders, pre-schools, nurseries and schools. When children are allowed to select where, with what, and how to play, they are truly invested in their play, they become deeply involved and make dramatic progress. This book is an outstanding testament to a responsive and child-led way of working in early years environments. Practitioners will be guided, inspired and supported to work spontaneously and reactively – planning as they go and celebrating the results!