A trusting partnership between practitioners and families enables practitioners to address challenging issues in a positive and constructive manner. As trust evolves from middle ground to firm ground, partnership-oriented practices such as enhanced communication, high expectations, respect, commitment, equality, and advocacy become the most sophisticated.
Watch the video to identify and reflect on examples of practices related to addressing challenging issues.
Video 4.7: Libby & Kim – Firm ground conversation
Libby, a teacher in a child care center, and Kim, a parent of a 4-year-old girl (Ella), have a conversation about working together and learning from one another. This conversation highlights making shared decisions. (running time: 5 min. 23 sec.)
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Libby:
I can.. I appreciate you… I know that you’re busy at the end of the day, at pickup time, and I appreciate you staying a little extra today all because something happened today that I want to let you know about, um, and we’re a little bit more concerned about this. Today she ran out the front gate of the school.
Kim:
Really !
Libby:
Yes. And you know for us which is why I asked if you could stay a little longer today because this has moved into a different territory for us.
Kim:
So was she really upset?
Libby:
And that was it. Instead of reacting with the crying that we’ve seen, then it moved to the next where she was just, “Well, I’m getting’ out of here” sort of thing. And she just took off out the front gate full of her emotion. And that was very scary for us needless to say. And so I want to try to explore with you a little bit more about what we can do to help her.
Kim:
OK.
Libby:
So, first of all, I’d like to find out from you if there are – you know – is there anything unusual or different at home that might bring this escalation of behavior about what we’ve seen recently, and particularly what happened today?
Kim:
You know, my husband… has a new part of his job and he has been traveling… about every other week he’ll travel for about 5 days..
Libby:
Ooooh!
Kim:
So it’s… we’ve just kind of fallen into it.
Libby:
Yes.
Kim:
So it’s been a lot, needless to say, with three kids, but I thought it was… we’re doing it, we’re doing it… and I didn’t realize, I guess, whether it was affecting her or not. Um, I guess there was so much going on but, yes, so he’s gone right now as a matter of fact – he left yesterday.
Libby:
Oh, he left yesterday.
Kim:
Yes. But I didn’t notice anything with it this morning but when I think back on it… yeah, yeah, she’s asked for him at nighttime and says that she really misses him and wants to sleep with his shirt..
Libby:
Oh, oh.
Kim:
…of his. It’s like an undershirt of something, and I give it to her to sleep with. I guess it could be really more than I thought.
Libby:
Well, Kim, that is extremely helpful to know that now there’s that additional piece on that she’s trying to carry emotionally and it just feels like it’s a lot that’s come together for her. Um, and so I’m feeling like it might be time that we try some things that we know how to do to help her, and I know you are doing the same thing at home. So what I want you to know is that these children are growing… they are. And there are smooth places for them and there are rocky places for them. And so what we want to do is to make sure we are helping them through these rocky times. And the teachers sometimes need help in that too. You know, we do.
And the school has a learning specialist and she’s on retainer for us and she’s there to come and help us when we need that. And that’s how I talked with the teachers today after school and everyone is really feeling like we’ve come to a point that we, the teachers, need that to happen. She’ll observe and then she’ll meet with us, and she’ll meet with you, too, ‘cuz we are a team, and that’s we want to have this team approach because we’re all the adults in her life. And so we want to make sure that – we talk a lot about circling the wagons. It’s like a corral—we’ll put her in the middle—and then we want to circle those wagons right now so that we can do all of us can work together and do what’s best for her.
Kim:
I mean, there’s that much going on with her that you think it’s really necessary?
Libby:
We do.
Kim:
OK
Libby:
We do. And I’ve talked with the teachers about that and everyone is in agreement that we’re.. this is where we need some further help right now. And that is available for you and your husband. Your family as well. I want to have permission from you to do this to help her. And then after the observation we’ll come together in a meeting—all of us—and then she’ll share her observations and her thoughts with us for the next step. And then we’ll get some guidance about how to help her more here at school and I think you’ll be able to get that for the home place too, as well.
Kim:
OK. I just… I wasn’t ready to hear this. I wasn’t expecting it. But if it’s going to help her, I think that, sure, we’ll definitely try it, and see.