Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. This is part two of how to have a difficult conversation with a teacher that works. Last week we looked at preparing and the importance of preparing for these meetings so that we find our own voice, so that we're not winging it when we're in the meeting, that we feel good and feel solid even before we enter into the room.
The next part is focusing on, now, today, on how to actually be in the meeting itself. And there's four specific steps that I want to mention, and they're very carefully ordered and these are quite well refined steps, actually. Because I've been in, it's countless, it's really fair to say thousands, I guess, of meetings over the years with very dear parents and teachers.
And these four steps that I'm going to just run by you now are very well used. This is a well-trodden, tried and tested process. So the first thing that one can do as a parent coming into the meeting is just keep a handle on what your hopes are for the meeting.
Do you remember last week I mentioned, really think about what your hopes are for the meeting. And I also mentioned, if you can, if you possibly can, carry a small gratitude into the meeting. And this is a great way to start.
First of all, with a gratitude. However small, because the situation might not be going very well, right? So you may have to reach for it, and it may not be possible. I understand that, of course.
But if at all possible, a gratitude towards the teacher, towards the school, a memory of a fun thing that happened earlier in the year or some time ago. But starting with a small gratitude is a fine way to start a meeting. The second is to very early on ask the people assembled there if it would be okay with them if you expressed what your hope is for the meeting.
Now your hope might be for really great communication. It's always good if you express your hope in a positive sense. And it might be that this meeting will end with a practical plan, for example.
Or that your hope is that we can address the situation that's come up, but remember that your son or daughter has many skills and is really a beautiful child. And to keep that present. Expressing a hope like this is something that opens people's hearts quite often.
And if you feel you can do this without being overly dominant and pushy, you might even ask the teacher for what her or their hopes, his hopes, might be as well. Say, you know, that's my hope that we end with a practical plan. Would it be okay to ask what your hope might be too? Starting in that way starts, well, with a hope, right? It starts with looking forward.
It starts with something that is moving us into the future. A hope is always future-oriented. Because often when we have conversations about problems in any realm, in this case with the school, it's important not just to get caught up in the past, but to also have right at the get-go something that is forward-looking.
One of the other little things that you may or may not feel comfortable doing is bringing a little something along that is like an icon, like a little special something that reminds you of your son or daughter. It might be a shell they found on the beach. It might be a lovely painting that they brought home from school.
Anything, an artifact from school that they brought home, that again really warms a teacher's heart, you know, because they feel appreciated and seen. And just pop that on the table or on the floor between you or wherever. But if it's possible, see if you can, if it feels right, just put that little painting or that little something or rather they made in shop class.
And just say, this really reminds me of my son, you know, when he was doing really well at school and also when he was in flow. And you understand, and you might say to a teacher, I understand that things can not always flow, but would you mind if I just put this on the table? Because I want to keep track of that. Now you may or may not feel confident to do that, but the parents who have done that, it's helped a lot to do that.
After stating your hopes for the meeting, I find it very important not to jump too soon to brainstorming or practical plans. The second step after hopes and appreciations and gratitudes, just simple ones, not overdone, but just simple little gratitudes, is to ask for perspectives and to ask the teacher, you know, I'm really interested to hear your perspective on what's happening. May I ask, what's going well at school and also what's challenging? Is that okay to ask you that? Because no one wants to word this carefully and not dominate a meeting.
And then just listen carefully to the teacher's perspective. And then when that's done, the perspective of what's going well and what's not going well, just stick to that, just go into a listening space, into a receiving space. Even if the information that's coming out, you don't share that perspective, it's okay.
It's so important to understand that the world is big enough for varying perspectives and to not see that as a differing opinion or an opposing opinion that needs to be pushed back against. And this is where a lot of meetings can start to move into a lovely flow when a teacher feels that their perspective is actually being received and not being pushed back on. And understand as a parent that that is a teacher's perspective and it's valid and it's okay, even if it doesn't align with yours.
And then give your perspective of what's going well at home, actually, and what's going not so well at home. And one does this because we can learn a lot from each other if we'll just listen to each other and not feel the need to defend, because it's very normal and natural for a parent to want to defend their child. Believe me, I know that, of course.
But if we listen in carefully to a teacher's perspective, it encourages them to listen in carefully to our perspective of what's going well at home. You might say, you know, my son or my daughter, she just loves animal care. When she gets home, she's beautiful with the two or three animals we have at home.
And she'd fill the home with animals if we would let her, but she's so dear. Now that might come as a really, like the teacher didn't know that, that this child is in a caring, when given a chance to care, that really comes out. And you might even say she's very, very quiet when she's doing that for a long time.
Now the teacher is dealing with her blurting out and perhaps being verbally impulsive. And you see there's a lot of things that a teacher can learn. And the sort of wheels of a teacher's mind might be turning thinking, hmm, oh, so when she is in more of a caring role, she quietens on down.
Huh. And so that will lead to all kinds of ideas. But right now, basically, all we're trying to do in this step is not only just listen to each other's perspectives, but get over something that's fundamental and that fundamentally derails parent-teacher meetings.
And it's this. A teacher will give a perspective about the problems that are coming up for a child. And a parent might push back against them and say, oh, well, you don't know my child.
You know, she's, I know her best. And a teacher might be thinking, because of the pushback that they're receiving, well, you actually don't know this child very well. You want to spend a day in my shoes.
And there's this sort of quiet battle over who knows the child best. You see, no one knows a child better than a parent in a family constellation. No one.
But no one knows a child better than a teacher in a classroom constellation. And what a great team we can be if we recognize that and not feel we need to compete with each other about who knows the child best. It's a question of constellation.
It's a question of environment. And we can either battle our way, you know, to who knows a child best, or we can understand that and appreciate that in each other. And sometimes you can just say that right out loud, just like that.
Then after that, the third step, so there's been hopes and gratitudes, then perspectives. Step number three is brainstorming. Brainstorming things at school that might be helpful and brainstorming things at home that will be helpful.
And here I like to focus on what a child loves to do and do more of that. It's not turning away from what they're not good at. It's actually doing more of what they are good at so we build their confidence up, their sense of place, their sense of competence, that then we can start to work with the issues.
And often the issues dissipate when a child in a classroom, for example, does things that she's better at and the teacher can facilitate that. And then there's less need for her. In this case, the example I gave was to be verbally impulsive, to blurt out, to be attention-seeking.
That's often because she's almost fighting for a sense of place. Many of you will know this from my book, Soul of Discipline, that I don't believe in disobedience. I've never met a disobedient child in my life.
I've only ever met a disoriented one. And I don't mean that just as semantics. I truly mean that after years and years and years of school counseling, family counseling, it's disorientation.
So if we focus on what will orient a child, it's often what they love to do. And we try and give that more at home and more at school because their behavior is signaling to us that something needs to change. Really, at the end of the day, behavior is just communication.
That's it. That's all it is. Behavior is communication.
And our job is to figure out what's being communicated. So that's the third step, is the brainstorming. No good ideas, no bad ideas, just ideas.
Ideas of what might help. It might be, for example, that a child in the 6th grade who's, let's say she was very dear with animals in this care situation that I mentioned. It might be that the 6th grade teacher says, well, you know what, would she be, I think she might really thrive if she was to go into the 1st grade to help them at times, help with, because she's such a good reader, that maybe she could go to 1st grade and help the younger children with their reading.
And maybe, and then as a parent you might say, that would be brilliant, but she might feel singled out. The teacher might say, oh, well, I could start doing that with small groups in general, because often teachers are perfectly willing to do something that is really primarily for one child, but for everyone, you know, or at least for small groups. And so this is where the brainstorming gets really interesting.
The step after that, this last step, is grounding these ideas. Like who's going to do what, and when, and how. And at this stage, it's really good to make this fit on what I think of as the do-ability scale.
There could be some great ideas, like I was mentioning before, I think it was sensory integration in the previous diary entry, but that's going to take some time to set up. So maybe that certainly, you know, begin to sort of work towards that, but that might take two, three, four weeks to get the appointment, or even beyond. And what's more, the school might even have someone that they would recommend that they know is really good at working with young children, if it's a younger one.
And so now we're really not only doable, but we're helping each other out with contacts. So it's grounded, what, and when, and who, and a practical plan is made. Now the last step in this is the follow-up.
Bring your calendar in with you, and make a date for a follow-up meeting. Something usually in the order of three to four weeks is good. It could be sooner if the issue is severe.
It could be six weeks if it's not so severe. Some teachers are even open to sending a once-a-week little note home of progress made. That, I love it when teachers will do that.
It could even be a third person in the school, someone who could do that for a teacher, someone in the administration or in the care team in the school. It's lovely to get those brief little reports. But what you can do that is totally within your circle of control and influence is send a note to the teacher just once a week, brief, really it needs to be brief, about how you're doing at home, the two or three ideas that you generated and what you're doing at home.
This will often stimulate a teacher to write back about the things that are going well at school. But you can, within your circle of control, send that note to the teacher, just pop a note or an email with no expectations. It's a free thing, but it shows the teacher that you're following up and thinking about it, and a little gratitude for the meeting that you had doesn't hurt either.
Very often a teacher will reciprocate to that, but it's not necessarily expected. It's great if it happens, and it's even better if the school will help facilitate that. So there we are.
There are the steps, just again in wrapping up now, first preparing, carrying that teacher and the school in as best possible light as you can, and then coming into a meeting and beginning with hopes, thinking about your hope ahead of time, but speaking about hopes, then perspectives, asking for what's going well at home, what's going well at school, what's challenging in each environment, then brainstorming ideas, and then finally grounding it and setting up a follow-up meeting. Just in closing, one of the things, one of the frameworks that's helpful to remember in this meeting, this four-step meeting process, is gratitudes and hopes, it's kind of like creating warmth. So first of all we light the fire and have warmth.
The second comes light and air, where you let light in, you share perspectives, and that's shedding light from all its different angles and refractions. So warmth, then light. Brainstorming is like movement, it's like water.
So now we move into that kind of movement phase, and then lastly we ground things, and it's like earth, earthing, grounding. So we move from warmth to light and air, to water, to earth. The four steps of a successful meeting, any meeting, but in this situation, with teachers.
Ah, that's a lot, slightly longer diary entry, because there was so much to cover. If you can absorb this, and even make little notes of it, and this process going into a meeting, so many parents, it really is, so many parents have commented how this offers a road map of success, and I sure hope this helps you too. Okay, bye bye for now.
