Child care professional Kara can tell when a parent of one of her toddlers is deployed simply by the increase in tantrums and clinging and the loss of skills like potty training.
What’s happening here? The short answer is stress. Kara’s toddlers are communicating (sometimes very loudly) that they are experiencing changes to their small world that they don’t understand, have no control over, and don’t know what to do about. Their bodies and brains are reacting with the …
Welcoming a deployed parent home is such an exciting time for a military family! Even very young children catch the excitement of anticipating a long-awaited homecoming. But once the exhilaration of reunion day passes, the family begins the long, slow, often challenging, and always emotional experience of reconnecting and reestablishing life with their service member at home. Child care professionals who work with military families can play a critical supporting role as children and parents alike go through the …
If we want children to thrive in child care settings, then it makes sense to intentionally build positive relationships with the adults who play the largest roles in the children’s daily lives: their parents*. Good communication is essential for building those relationships, but good communication doesn’t just happen. As child care professionals, we must be reflective and intentional about achieving effective parent-provider relationships through good communication.
Below are seven steps that child care professionals can take to set the stage …
Supporting young children in child care includes helping to strengthen parent-child relationships. Many families who enroll their children in child care may be young, inexperienced parents. First-time fathers in particular may need extra encouragement as they establish relationships with their young children, and that’s a role child care providers are well suited for, yet often overlook.
Supporting father involvement with children may be especially important for child care programs that include military families. These families face the possible absence of …
Child care providers know that if there’s one thing about military family life that’s predictable, it’s that it is unpredictable! Change happens. A lot. These changes usually affect children from military families in very significant ways that they neither control nor fully understand. Whether it’s a parent going far away or the return of parent, or a move to whole new place – the impact is enormous. Coping with such significant change is a monumental task for very young children. …
As a child care provider, you know the importance of familiar routines for young children. They like to know when and what to expect. This is especially true for military children. Every child experiences changes as part of normal life. But as someone who provides child care for military families, you know that the changes common to military children are super-sized:
The separation of deployment is hard on everyone in a military family. But it’s especially difficult for families with young children because young children don’t understand or, worse yet, misunderstand the circumstances surrounding the separation. Deployment is difficult for the deployed parent because young children, especially infants and toddlers, grow and change so much in such a short period of time. Missing this exciting period of growth contributes to feelings of being disconnected and fears that the parent won’t …
Child care providers are in a unique position to notice if a child is not developing through typical stages or milestones. If there is a possibility that a child has a developmental delay, child care providers have the responsibility to discuss their concerns with the child’s family right away.
Children develop very quickly. If a child has a special need that affects her development, it is best not to take a “wait and see” approach. Getting professional help early for …
