Working partnerships

Parents are a child's first and most enduring educators: our children eventually move on from our settings, but parents are a constant in their lives. Even those children who come to a setting for the whole working week still spend far more time at home than they do in our care.

It is tricky to create perfect partnerships with parents. Sometimes, parent partnerships feel a bit like the odd couples on Strictly Come Dancing. One person knows what he or she is doing; the other seems not to have much clue. Take care, though, if you are tempted to sit in judgment of your parent partners. Even if your partner is the worst dancer in the world, what he or she needs is support and advice, rather than criticism and disapproval. In a dance partnership, either both of you work together to try and win, or one drags the other down.

One of the key messages in our setting's last Ofsted inspection report was that we should give more advice to parents. (At times it can feel like Ofsted exists solely to tell us what to tell our parents about how to bring up their children.) Settings are told we must help parents learn how to talk to their children, offer advice on what to feed them, and ensure they get their children 'school ready' in plenty of time. But while giving advice is a good idea, there is a very fine line between supporting parents and patronising them. The majority of parents and carers do a good job. No one likes to be criticised or judged, not least by the person they are paying to provide a service.

When we want to improve a child's behaviour, we focus on the positive - we look at what is going right, not just at what is going wrong. We also make sure that we model the behaviour we want to receive. We can apply exactly the same technique to our dealings with parents. To build perfect partnerships, we need to keep our approach positive and supportive. And we must remember to ask parents how we can improve our settings, as well as telling them how they can improve their parenting.