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How to Communicate Effectively with Parents: Five "Hard" Steps to Make the Experience Easier Let’s be honest. When we trained to become administrators in the field of education, no one told us just how hard it can be to communicate bad news to parents – especially in regards to student behavior, and discipline. Perhaps if we’d been warned, a few of us might not have completed our certificate courses, and might have gone on to other professions. But part of our job as site and district office education leaders is to communicate with parents and stakeholders about this sensitive issue – as difficult as that can be. In fact, it’s a critical part of what we do. Communicating, if done well, can be an instrumental strategy to encouraging greater parental involvement and support for programs in your school or district. Nothing important and critical is ever truly “easy,” so here are five “hard” steps to making communicating to parents more meaningful and rewarding for all parties involved. In the long run, these “hard” steps will make communicating bad news easier and more effective for you. Hard Step One: Begin with a Positive Opening Purpose: Your opening statement is really more than a greeting. It describes the school’s purpose which – from a parent’s perceptive – is to help their child get the skills needed to be successful in school, and eventually in the workplace. A positive opening can also highlight the successes the school has had – perhaps the high reputation it has achieved. It may help to point out that the key to that success has been the mutually understood guidelines for everyone working together – i.e. teachers, parents, students, administrators, support staff, parents. Impact: It helps the parent to ‘hear’ that this meeting should be viewed in context – that whatever issue is being discussed is with this positive overall goal in mind. This also communicates that the meeting isn’t ‘personal’, you aren’t a prosecutor, the meeting isn’t a ‘trial’, and your child probably hasn’t committed the ‘crime of the century’. It also sends a clear, positive message that your purpose as an administrator is to get their child ‘back on track,’ rather than ‘punish’ an offense. This helps the parent to feel less threatened, less vulnerable, and can help reduce what may be feelings of ‘failure’ with their child. This can help make the parent feel less defensive, and more receptive to the details surrounding the actual behavioral situation, and your messages to follow. Why Hard? It’s never fun or easy to deliver ‘bad news’, unless you actually like that sort of thing – in which case we need to talk about another profession for you to consider. You may have your own personal views on the issue, or your own bias, etc., and may want to editorialize regarding your viewpoint. It may even feel good to do so, momentarily. But it’s not your job. And more importantly, editorializing inevitably invites defensive behavior. So you have to check your own feelings, assumptions, and the urge to ‘just be yourself’ at the door. Instead, pursue what initially may feel very awkward: a ‘vague’, and perhaps even a ‘beating around the bush’ style. My suggestion? Feel all those things, and do it anyway! Hard Step Two: State the School’s Policy and Rationale Regarding the Issue Purpose: In this step you want to emphasize to the parent that the reason the school has been successful in helping students learn is because it has created important guidelines for working together, maximizing everyone’s performance – from teachers, to administrators, to students and parents. These guidelines include expectations for students as to how they must prepare, study, and yes, behave in class to maximize their own achievement – the primary purpose of the school. The key to this step is to put the behavior in the context of ‘INTERFERENCE’ – meaning that it’s not the behavior in itself that is the primary ‘problem’, but rather that the behavior interferes with their child’s ability to learn the skill being taught at the time of the behavior. After all, a student can’t be out of their seat, hitting another student, using profanity, or generally disrupting the class, and also learn two-digit multiplication, algebra, or computer skills at the same time. So the main reason you’re having this parent/administrator meeting is to ‘remove the interfering behavior,’ and get the child back on track, learning vital skills for their future. Impact: Of all the diffusing communication you’ll use in this process, this may very well be the most persuasive for the parent. It truly moves the conversation from anything approaching adversarial to one of cooperation, caring, and a search for solutions – and not a search for the nearest ‘jail facility’! Hard Step Three: State the Facts of Situation, without Editorializing Purpose: To present the details of the ‘interfering’ behavior as objectively and concisely as possible – ‘just the facts ma’am’, if you will. This allows you to ‘remove’ yourself as a competing source of frustration, anger, or defensiveness toward you by the parent. It is only when you begin to ‘interpret’ or judge the behavior that you give the parents a ‘valid’ reason for questioning your judgment or interpretation. Comments like “Billy seems to want to be the ‘class clown’ or ‘James feels he’s better than everyone else’ will only serve to inflame a parent – an excuse to transfer the topic of the conversation from the child to you. You want to avoid perceptions on the parent’s part that you ‘really doesn’t like my child’, ‘always picks on him’, ‘you never punish anybody else’, and so forth. Now guess who’s on the defensive? You got it – you! Impact: This approach allows the parent to hear the specific details surrounding the situation as ‘facts’ which ought to be incontrovertible, which can help lead the parent to the inescapable conclusion that ‘yes, my child did in FACT, do these things.’ Your demeanor is important. You should not present these facts as an ‘indictment,’ but rather as non-threatening, non-intimidating, neutral documentation of the ‘interfering’ behaviors that are negatively impacting the child’s learning. You are now viewed as a communicator of important information that affects a student’s learning – an objective, yet highly caring professional. Why Hard? It’s always really hard as professionals not to want to speculate on the causes of behavior. In fact, you may very well want to refer a child to other professionals who are trained to analyze behavior. On the other hand, when you present facts in a calm, neutral manner, these facts should ‘speak for themselves.’ Assuming that you’ve practiced hard steps one and two well, the parent will often reach a similar conclusion to the one that you have reached – that yes, the incident occurred just as the principal/assistant principal described. Note: If you’ve reached this point in your conference, and the parent hasn’t leaped to their feet, or have their hands around your neck, or displayed similar signs of defensive, acting-out behavior – you are home free. More importantly, you are well on your way to building a supportive long-term relationship with the parent – a vital accomplishment, and one with lasting values. Because veteran educators know that it is rare for a discipline ‘problem’ to be a one-time affair. It is not likely that this well handled conference will entirely ‘solve the problem.’ But it is a critical beginning as you continue other sound methods and course of action in the search for permanent solutions and genuine changes in behavior. Hard Step Four: State the Decision Regarding the Situation Purpose: To apply the facts in Step Three to the Policy in Step Two and hold the student accountable for their actions, and communicate to the parent that you are consistent in your responsibility. In other words, the consequences as outlined in the guidelines are ‘non-negotiable.’ As the administrator of a school, you want to hold all who work towards common goals accountable for their performance. The key is your ability to be consistent. It’s your biggest strength and challenge as a leader. Ideally, when these decisions about guidelines were made, they were made with input from key groups that have an interest in the school’s mission, including parents, community leaders and so forth. That way, when situations emerge where you must ‘enforce’ such guidelines, you are not perceived as the sole author, but as chief communicator for mutually agreed upon policies, practices, or procedures. Impact: The parent recognizes that the you are not the sole author of the bad news, and not even the ‘bearer of bad news’ (the ‘messenger’), but rather the professional communicator who is sharing information about policies that are well thought out, agreed upon by the community and ultimately designed with the parents’ input and ultimate interests in mind -- the goal being the successful education of children, including the parent’s child. This approach also removes any doubts whatsoever for the parent as to ‘where you stand,’ leaving no room for ‘negotiation’ -- i.e. ‘can’t we do something besides suspend my child for two days?’. The answer to that question should be a calm ‘Absolutely not.’ As a result, the parent will probably respect you for your consistency, and also recognize that you are a person of character who means what they say – and they’ll extrapolate that to include that you also mean you’ll do all that you say to help their child. In other words, you’re the ‘right person to run that school.’ Why Hard? Well, by now you’ve spent about 40 minutes ‘being nice’ in the parents mind, and perhaps yours. Now it’s time for the rubber to meet the road. Yes, your child is going to be suspended for two days – no ‘ifs, ands or buts.’ The parent may be nursing a wish (or perhaps misreading your ‘style’) in the hope that you might be open to some alternative to what the discipline code calls for this violation. No such luck. You may even feel that you’ve made so much progress in your communication style that maybe, just maybe, you might even reconsider your decision. Don’t. This decision was made prior to the meeting, and for all the right reasons. Your meeting was about communication, not negotiation. Hard Step Five: Offering Appropriate Help Purpose: To offer to review or clarify any section of the conversation so the parent is clear on what the school is trying to accomplish, why the school has guidelines for the situation relating to their child, the specifics of the situation and the decision being made. This step may include providing the parent with copies of both the guidelines, details, and facts related to the situation, along previously supplied tips for parents, etc. At the same time, this meeting is not an offer to invite the parent to share their deepest home life history, pending divorce, struggle with alcoholism, abuse and the like. In simplest terms, don’t invite yourself into the family. Think about it. When you ask the magic question “Is there anything going on at home that might explain this behavior?” or “Is there anything I can do to help?” This can be the ‘Be careful what you wish for” remark. Are you REALLY prepared for the parent who now feels they’ve found an ear, or even a ‘friend’, and begins to describe scenarios you are not prepared, or trained to engage in? If you ask “Anything I can do?” and you may get the response “Sure, how about babysitting my kids so I can go back to school? Know a good lawyer for my divorce? Can you get the ‘deadbeat’ dad to ‘pony up’ the child support?” This is beyond the scope of your responsibility, certainly for this meeting. Caveat? Do you remember the line “Be careful what you wish for? You just might get it? What you may discover is that because of your caring, yet professional communication style, a parent might actually invite YOU into the intimate details of their family life. In that case, you do have license to ‘hear’ details, and may find yourself ‘active listening’ to these sensitive issues. Remember, however, you’re on risky ground when you ‘prescribe’ solutions to these areas outside your domain as an educator – yet you may be able to suggest appropriate resources. Our best recommendation: take a breath. listen actively, make plans to talk again, research appropriate options – and at a later date share those options with the parent. Impact? You are a caring individual, a professional who knows their job, cares about the child, and offers to help (within reason). You want to be seen by the parent as someone who will share appropriate information compassionately, and most importantly, someone who respects the parent and the student. You want to invite the parent to join in the education of the child as a genuine partner, and maybe, just maybe, the child can achieve everyone’s goal – becoming a successful learner, with a positive future awaiting. And what about you? What have you accomplished? Maybe, by following this approach, you can come a little closer to achieving that which drew you to the profession to begin with – a genuine passion to make a difference in the lives of children. Now, along with that passion and desire, and with help from some really ‘hard steps,’ you’re that much closer. Editor's Note: EdBrief has published articles by two writers who have the same name, Steve Horowitz. To clear up any confusion, the author of this article is a retired educator with over 35 years of experience as a teacher, principal, district office administrator. His last position was with the LA County Office of Education’s Communications Division. He is currently a professor in the education departments at National University and the UCLA Extension Program in Southern California |
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