A study of communication between childcare workers and parents found that it has the greatest effect when communication is:
- Ongoing and continuous
- Open and bi‐directional
- Support of parents is provided through education
That same study also found that communication is one of the largest challenges facing the childcare industry.
When communication is good, parents understand the value your child care center offers their family. They feel a part of something and build bonds with your center that reduce the likelihood that they’ll transfer to a new childcare.
But when communication is poor, it manifests as high turnover rates, larger enrollment expenses as you’re constantly recruiting new students and a lack of classroom continuity.
If communication feels like an insurmountable task, the problem likely stems from a lack of the proper tools and unclear policies and expectations for your staff and parents to follow.
Learn best practices for communicating with parents and tips for how to gain a competitive advantage in your community using the best childcare communication tools available.
The Importance of Communication
When a child goes from their home environment to your daycare center, they might not be able to share what’s going on with them. For example, a young child won’t tell you they are tired because they had a rough night of sleep. They might just be more irritable, fussy or disengaged.
Giving parents a seamless way to share those details can help childcare providers adapt to the child’s changing needs. The same is true as the child transitions back to care at home.
Communication between your center and the child’s parents can aid in the following.
- Understanding the Child’s Needs: A child’s needs can change due to environmental challenges, such as a malfunctioning fire alarm that went off overnight, a large family gathering over the weekend that left the child overstimulated, or the excitement of the child’s upcoming birthday or vacation. Just like adults have good days and bad days, so do children. Understanding those environmental factors can help a child’s care team adapt to meet the child where they are at that day.
- Building Trust: When parents first enroll their child in a new childcare center, they don’t know the teachers and staff. It takes time to trust those professionals with the most precious thing in their lives – their children. By communicating and sharing pertinent information about a child’s day, your team can build trust with parents no matter how long they’ve been enrolled at your center.
- Promoting Consistency: Differences in rules or consequences at home and at daycare can be confusing for young children. So can changes in messaging around fears, new experiences or tasks they haven’t done before. With clear communication, care can transition between parents and childcare providers seamlessly. Children will appreciate the consistent experience between their home and childcare. And so will their parents.
Challenges in Communication
Despite its importance, effective communication between childcare workers and parents can sometimes be challenging. Some common barriers include:
- Time Constraints: Taking time to communicate with parents can feel disruptive because it takes attention away from the children. When there are several children per childcare worker in a room, finding time to provide parents updates and respond to their messages is challenging. Automating some messages or allowing for batch messaging can help reduce time constraints.
- Differing Expectations: Communication is a broad term that means something different to everyone. Parents will come to your center with differing childcare experiences. Some might have high hopes for what you communicate while others will have minimal expectations for what you’ll share about a child’s day.
- Language and Cultural Differences: Communicating with parents where English is a second language might look a little different than it does with native speakers. Using simple language is important to ensure they understand your messages and can garner necessary insights. Cultural differences can also cause parents to misinterpret your messages or lead them to feel offended.
Strategies to Enhance Communication
To overcome these challenges and boost communication between childcare workers and parents, consider the following strategies:
- Regular Updates: Provide parents with frequent updates. For example, once you log a child’s lunch, allow the parents to see that if they pause for a bit during their workday and log into your childcare software. Within your staff handbook, establish a routine for providing regular updates. That way, all staff follow the same guidelines so that as children graduate to new classrooms, parents have the same experience.
- Use Technology: Technology can help streamline communication and take the burden off your team to speak directly with each parent during pickup, which is often one of the most hectic times of the day. Paper sheets with information about the child’s day are also more challenging for multiple caregivers to share and receive the message. For example, if one parent picks up the child, the other parent might never know what the child did that day.
- Open-Door Policy: Let parents know that they can stop in and discuss their child’s progress at any time. Allow them to observe classroom activities and better understand their child’s developmental progress firsthand.
- Parent-Teacher Conferences: Schedule regular parent-teacher conferences to discuss the child’s development. That way, parents aren’t working to interpret your daycare software messages. Instead, you can tell them exactly what it all means and how it relates to their child and their needs.
- Cultural Sensitivity: Train your staff on cultural sensitivity to reduce the chances that a message will offend or confuse a parent. This will also help celebrate the cultures and backgrounds that students come from to build a welcoming environment for everyone.
Conclusion
Boosting communication between childcare workers and parents is not just about exchanging information; it’s about building a partnership that supports the child’s overall well-being.
Want to see communication software designed specifically to meet a childcare’s needs? Schedule a free demo with iCare Software to learn how this leading software provides an integrated experience from enrollment to compliance with local regulations.