At our nursery, consulting with parents starts before their child starts attending and is built on throughout their time with us. Our new 'parents group' has helped us gain better insights into what the parents are looking for.
Sometimes, what a parent expects conflicts with what you as the childcare professional believes is in the best interests of that child. We have guidelines for moving a child between groups, but we always look at each child as an individual and make the decision based on the key person's knowledge of the child alongside consultation with the parents. Recently we have had two very different experiences of parents' views on their child moving into the next group.
The first was a baby who we felt would benefit from moving into the toddler group. The mother seemed anxious about this and kept saying that she didn't feel she was ready. The key person spent time exploring this with her, and I spoke to the father, who agreed that Mum did seem to be very cautious and wanted to keep the child 'a baby' for as long as possible. He felt reassured that we had the child's best interests at heart and so was going to encourage Mum to talk to us some more about it.
On the other hand, a mother was concerned about her daughter not moving into pre-school along with some other children. The girl's key person felt strongly that she was not ready to make the move, primarily because she needed the security of a smaller group. Furthermore, we felt the mother's reasons for being so demanding were more about her than her daughter. I spoke to her and explained that although we were keen to work in partnership with her, our main concern was the outcomes for her daughter and that we really did not feel that these would be best achieved by moving her into a group that she was not ready for.
