Hello, and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. For the last couple of weeks, I've been visiting, as I often do, with a bunch of schools, helping parents and teachers strategize around children who need extra support to be at school and thrive. And there are a number of hallmarks to a successful conversation with a teacher as a parent.
And I want to run these by you today, because it can be difficult to get a call from a school, you know, about your child. Like a school doesn't often call to give you good news about your child, right? There could be something that's not going so well, something that has come up, and the school calls and asks if you can come in for a meeting. And all one's anxieties go up, right? It's perfectly normal, perfectly natural.
Or, on the other hand, something could not be going well at school, and your child tells you about it, and it's troubling to you, and you request a meeting with the teacher just to work things through, to find out what's going on. But what those two things both have in common is that our anxieties can often be a little triggered in those situations. Because it's not easy, right? As a parent, you're going into a school, and you're, in essence, playing an away game, if you know that sports metaphor, where a team goes to another team's town to play.
Now no school intends that. They don't want that. They want us as parents to feel welcomed.
They want us to feel a part of that school community. But nevertheless, it's a place that's not so familiar to you, particularly when you have a meeting, you're going to an unfamiliar room. You might be familiar with the parking lot, and the pickup, and maybe your child's classroom, but all of a sudden, you're going into a different place, and it's just really hard to keep our anxieties in check.
One of the main ways to deal with anxiety in any shape or form, but in this situation, through this lens, when one has to go into school for a meeting, is to have a bit of a road map. It's very securing to have a plan going into any unfamiliar situations where fears rise up a little bit, and to have that kind of road map, even just for yourself, prior to going into a meeting with a school, can help settle things down. And have you speak in a voice that's yours, if you know what I mean.
Because we can often get in situations, in meetings at school, where we're not really at our best, where our voice is nervous, or maybe overly assertive, or myriad different voices will come out of us. And even as we're speaking, we're thinking, oh gosh, this is not who I want to be in this meeting. It's not always like that, but boy, it can easily spill over into that realm.
So how can we be both on the ball, we're ready for the meeting, but also have inwardly be relaxed, and be really clear about where we stand, and how we can support our child. And I want to work through some of these steps, quite practically really, about how we can both prepare, and also be in the meeting. And then also, how we can follow up to be assured that things are being put into place, and things are going better.
So first of all, to go into a meeting like this, there's a little bit of preparation needed, both practically, but on a different level. On a higher level, if you're into visualization, meditation, anything like that, one of the things that you can do is really picture your child at school, with the teacher you're going to meet, and picture them at their best. Picture the teacher when she or he or they are doing really well together, and keep that picture alive.
Because often when we're going into a meeting at school, we're going to be talking about struggles, we're going to be talking about things that aren't going well. And one thing teachers really value is being valued. You know, they're doing a really tough job, and they're not in it for the money, unless they're delusional, right? They're doing one of the world's toughest jobs, of that I'm sure.
And when they come into a meeting, and they feel that the parent is, yes, certainly there to talk about some of the issues, but also recognizes that they're doing their best. And their best may or may not be, in our opinion, you know, all that's needed. But at least three nights or so before you go into a meeting with a teacher, see if, you know, before you go to sleep, just sit for a moment.
It only takes, you know, it's really 30 seconds, a minute. And just picture the teacher in their most caring capacity. And hold that inner visualization for just, yeah, a short time.
And try and do that repeatedly. You know, some people say, well, I do it for a week. Others say, I just, you know, can do it a little bit for one or two nights.
Whatever works for you. But I find at least three nights of just holding a picture for a minute or so about the teacher with my child. And have them be okay together.
Doesn't have to be fabulous or anything like that. But just have them be okay. That kind of gesture is, it's hard to put into words what that does.
But when you come into the meeting, and somehow, invisibly, you've been at least striving to see a balanced picture of the school and the teacher. I think there's an invisible something or other that a teacher can pick up. Because remember, they're coming into the meeting also, you know, hoping things will go well.
Busy day, working with, you know, often dozens of other children. And they're moving into that meeting with you. And I think it's fair to say many of them will have a radar that will be fairly well attuned.
Because they do these meetings often. And if we come into that meeting with a sense of underlying gratitude, if one can reach to that, it's a lofty aim. But a gratitude for the job that educators do.
That might also open a space for gratitude that the job that parents do. Gratitude kind of begets gratitude, really, doesn't it? And if you can start the meeting with that, just carrying that within your heart, I am convinced, actually, because I've been in the role of both parent and teacher, and school counselor, all these different roles, that there's something that comes into the room. The next thing is much more practical in preparation.
And that's researching things. Really looking, poking around the internet, looking at the books you might have, speaking with other people. If there are issues your child's experiencing at school, it's really helpful to do some reading about it, to be looking into it.
An example of that is quite recently, actually, I was in a meeting where a parent had informed themselves about sensory integration issues. Because the child was experiencing all kinds of what I know of as being sensory defensiveness, in that it was very hard for him to be with other children without pushing. And he was very unaware of the space he would sometimes take up, both with his voice, but particularly, practically, physically, he would take off his coat and, you know, kids were ducking, because he just was unaware of where he was in space.
But also, he was very defensive if people came into his space. He was hyper aware of his own and hypo aware of others. And the mother got a call about this concern the school were having about her first grade son's seeming sort of aggression towards others.
She did some research, looked around, and the more she could read, the more it seemed to her that this possibly could be at the core of it. She wasn't really sure. She wasn't a care professional in that way.
But because she'd done that research, it really did inform the conversation. And she didn't particularly come on strong about it. It was great to see her just saying, look, I don't know, but I've been reading.
And this seems to be, he is, he does push others, and I feel awful about it. But also, he doesn't like scratchy labels on, you know, from sweaters and such and socks. The little creases in socks really bug him.
And he has a real, real trouble with a number of issues that all seemed to cluster around him potentially needing some sensory integration or occupational therapy treatment. And she held that quietly and just put it out there as a question, which I was really impressed by this mum's preparedness. But also, she put it as a question rather than a statement.
The other way to like, so when you actually, you know, you're about to come into a meeting with teachers, think about what your hopes for the meeting will be. Not hopes for the, you know, next year or two or three, but just hopes for that meeting. Sit quietly and think, what are my hopes? What's my aim for this meeting? And then when you get into the meeting, and we'll talk more about that in a follow-up podcast, but when you get into the meeting, that's when that hope can be voiced.
And we'll come more to that in a follow-up to this little diary entry. So what we've talked about today has largely been about preparing for the meetings. Because we can often prepare for, like, if you're a musician, for example, you prepare, you practice.
For a concert, you, if we're, you know, a sports person, we prepare and train for, you know, an event, a concert, an event, whatever it is, no matter what walk of life we're in, we tend to prepare. The same is true for meetings. We need to prepare.
Yet so often, we go into those meetings, which are the most important things, right? And we think we can wing it. We can just wing it. And not so.
The preparation for these meetings can turn our anxiety into a direction, so that when we actually enter into the meeting, we're much more calm and centered, and can speak in our own voice, not in this sort of strange disembodied voice that we hear ourselves speaking in when there are tense meetings like this. Now, in the next Simplicity Diary, I'll follow up with the actual steps for the meeting itself. And we'll talk about four or five quite concrete steps for the meeting itself.
Okay, hope that was helpful. Bye-bye for now.
