How open communication with your child’s teacher can make all the difference

One of the easiest, yet often missed, ways of helping our child have a really successful experience at school is through open and honest communication with their teacher.

Have a think about it….

How well do you communicate with your child’s teacher?

How often do you check in with them or send them an email to let them know something about your child?

For many parents, I know the communication is fairly limited.

And the reasons for that are varied and complex – different understandings about our role as parents and what communication we “should” be having with our child’s teacher, what information the school wants to know, and concerns over being “that annoying parent”.

But here is the thing.

The best way to help our child have a great experience at school is to be in partnership with the school and more specifically, with their teacher. And the easiest way to do that is by having open communication with their teacher. This can be as simple as:

• Checking in every now and then on how our child is going (academically or socially), and
• Letting them know if anything is going on at home that might be impacting our child’s behaviour or learning at school.

A quick email does the trick, as does a hello and quick word at school drop off.

The more we share with the teacher, the better they can support our child. Both their learning and their social and emotional wellbeing at school.

Here’s an example.

A little while ago, my husband was dropping off our kids to school in the morning. The morning had been pretty standard – the usual morning rush of finding clean uniforms, realising the shoes aren’t polished, lunchboxes, notes signed, homework in their bags… you know the drill. I had noticed that our son was a bit quieter than usual but didn’t think too much of it, and the kids went off with my husband as usual.

Half an hour later my husband calls to tell me he had our son at work as he had gotten very emotional at school drop off and refused to go into school. My husband had tried to calm him and encourage him to go into school but he was so upset that my husband decided not to push him.

This in itself was a signal that our son was really off. Normally I am the softer touch and my husband is the “tough one” who would just turf him out of the car door! So I knew that our son must really not be feeling great.

I went into town to collect our son from my husband’s work and I sent an email to his teacher and the school front office.

Now, here’s the thing. I could have just said to the teacher “Hey Clare, just letting you know that George won’t be in today as he isn’t well.”

Pretty straight forward right. Easy, no need to go into further detail. And also prevents any judgements about the decision we made to keep him home.

But actually, I just went in completely honestly and explained that our son was feeling very emotional that particular morning and was refusing going to school and so we have kept him home for a rest day and some cuddles.

And guess what happened.

His teacher emailed back and said “Thanks so much for letting me know. He has seemed his normal self in class this week but if there is anything I can help with, please let me know. When he comes back to school I will make sure I check in with him and provide a bit of extra support. Let him know that me and the rest of the class will miss him today.”

Woah.

Now, I’ve had responses to “my child is sick” emails before (as I’m sure you have) and they are pretty standardly just “thanks for letting me know.”

This email response, however, this was supportive and understanding and lovely. And I felt like I had an ally. Someone who I was in partnership with. Someone to help my child, not only with his academic learning, but with his emotional experience of school as well.

And that came about because I opened up to the teacher. I shared with her what was actually going on. I treated her like a partner in my child’s education and wellbeing.