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Book Your Place
Need a human? Email Clare@WhenTheAdultsChange.com
Our first 'How to coach parents in behaviour course' will be going live on 3rd June 2024. You can reserve your space now.
Our 'How To Coach Parents In Behaviour' course is designed to help you engage your communities in a way that will take relational practice beyond the school gates.
Many of us know that children need to be wrapped in relational practice. We see many schools trying to re-establish the social contract that exists between themselves and their communities.
We have seen this work and the outcomes are beautiful. Children are able to experience some consistencies across all areas of their lives. Learners become more resilient, more confident and more secure. We see improvements in their ability to regulate and increased engagement in teaching and learning.
The process isn't a rapid one and changes aren't made overnight. Schools need to take the same 'drip drip drip' approach that has made our training successful.
Our course will help you engage your families, influence the masses and support the few families that experience the greatest levels of distressed or diverse behaviours.
You will learn how to:
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Help your parent community understand your approach to behaviour
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Design and deliver training and workshops that will support your parents as they develop relational skills
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Encourage families to participate in the relational changes
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Develop an emotionally safe environment for parent/carer interactions
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Introduce your families to practical strategies that will help them create a calm and nurturing home environment
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Unite parents and staff in their approach to supporting learners with additional needs
We recommend that this course is attended by colleagues who will become the 'Parent Coaches' in your community. Your coaches don't need to be in your SLT or your pastoral team but should be confident relational practitioners and ideally will have their own experiences of caring for children and young people at home.
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Oatlands Infant School
Oatlands began their relational journey about 12 months ago. They offered a parent session at the point they launched their new behaviour policy; to help them understand the new approach and encourage them to take some of the practice beyond the school gates. We have delivered a number of workshops at different times of day and with slightly different themes; Understanding the new behaviour policy, Helping parents with behaviour etc.
Our most well attended session was on World Mental Health Day and focused on improving behaviours without harming your children's mental health. More recently we have opened the sessions up to the schools in our cluster so that the thread of relational practice can extend beyond the short time we have the children at Oatlands. There have been significant changes in the school culture; there is less chaotic adult behaviour at pick up and drop off; we often hear parents using Ready Respectful Safe and parents are more willing to talk about both behaviour and support. There is less 'my child has a SEN need and you need to do more' and less of 'what are you doing to punish that child'.
Our families were, on the whole, very welcoming of relational practice so workshops went straight to practical strategies: this is how we do it here, routines, stop shouting, scripts, take up time, positive noticing.
Epsom primary school
Epsom Primary wanted to start with their most disengaged families. We ran a day of dropins. The headteacher invited each family in personally with the promise of a book and a breakfast. Each family had a 30 minute session. Most families were known to social services; two families spoke very little English and were accompanied by a translator. We used each session to understand how parents were feeling about their children's behaviours and the strategies they were using to teach and adjust distressed behaviours at home. We used some of our own stories and experiences to help them feel comfortable in sharing. 'Being a parent is so hard'; 'every time the school calls I think what now' and then some softer inroad like 'I was so desperate for them not to screw their lives up', 'my whole life was governed by worry and guilt and shame; I had no idea what to do'
Our main objective for the sessions was to help each family understand that behaviours couldn't be punished out of children. We wanted them to think about the importance of calm adult behaviour and take up time, about the power of positive noticing and the importance of defining 'how we do it here'. We left them with a few scripts to try - I need you to, I noticed, that may be true and yet... plus building in 'that is/isn't how we do it here'.
The school has created a book club for the specific families they were trying to reach - not necessarily for them to read the book but a regular opportunity for them to come into school and meet with the pastoral lead to discuss the nuggets of each section.