Parental partnership – a team effort

Whether you're a speech-language pathologist, occupational therapist, psychoeducator, special education teacher, educator, or even a teacher, parental partnership maximizes the effectiveness of your work. Of course, the methods and context will vary depending on your profession. Nevertheless, keeping this approach at the heart of everything you do is truly essential for maximizing learning outcomes. This applies equally to monolingual, bilingual, multilingual, and allophone children, but what does that mean in real life?

We will begin by defining parental partnership:

Parental support is a helpful, collaborative and reciprocal approach, where the coach and the parent engage in a dynamic process to establish goals and develop solutions together in order to facilitate the achievement of goals, develop self-directed learning, and parental personal growth.

One could draw a parallel with a sports team: if everyone knows what they have to do but doesn't communicate with their teammates, the result won't be what was expected, even if each athlete doubles their individual training. So the idea of ​​parental partnership is to integrate the child's social and/or academic adjustment, the reciprocal relationship between the therapist and the parent, as well as the well-being and quality of life of the family, while keeping the expertise of both the parent and the coach at the heart of the discussions.

So, to begin, it's essential to establish a relationship of trust and reciprocity with the parents, and this always starts with a conversation. At the first meeting between the coach and the parent, the interview process is key to communication and, more specifically, to understanding the needs, through a motivational interview. This interview process includes important principles for the coach to remember:

• Resist: It can be tempting to want to "change" or "correct" the child. Avoid arguing too strongly for these changes, which can have the opposite effect.
• Listening: Active listening is just as important as the information you provide.
• Includes: the reasons why the parent wants to make changes, as these will provide motivation to support those changes
• Empowering Parents: Communicates the possibility of change and supports the parent's choice as well as their autonomy in the support process.

Then there are principles of adult learning (andragogy) that must be kept in mind when entrusting power to parents:

• The need for knowledge: the adult/parent must understand the reason for the approach and intervention: be clear in explaining the why
• Motivation: The adult/parent must be motivated to help their child. It's important to explain how the skills acquired will benefit the child and the family. Their commitment must be voluntary.
• Preparation: The parent is ready to achieve the goals and understands the benefits of the partnership approach. Several psychological and physiological characteristics can influence their ability to learn and their readiness.
• Experience: The parent's own experiences will be a source of knowledge to be incorporated into the coaching. The coach can draw upon this knowledge. The parent's critical thinking skills are developed in this way.
• Self-management: Allow room for changes to objectives. Parents like to be able to influence the what, when, and where learning takes place. That's why it's a dynamic process.
• Guidance: The adult must put their knowledge into practice immediately, and the coach must enable them to do so.

There are many other elements to consider for a successful therapeutic alliance. Stay tuned for upcoming posts to learn more, and leave your comments to share your favorite parenting strategies.