Technique 80 – Stay on top of what your child is doing at all times and keep a partnership with caregivers, teachers, babysitters, other parents, and anyone else who provides care for your child.

Parents supervise their children, and children also take the lead. As your child grows, he or she will have more activities outside the home with different children and in the care of others. This is a gradual and appropriate process. However, as long as you are in charge, be sure that you always know where your child is and what he or she is doing. Maintain your role as orchestra conductor. 

Here is a wonderful poem called Where is Johnny? by Ruth Reardon that appears in her book called Listening to the Littlest. Through rhyme, rhythm and song, she gives us a unique look at pre-school life from a child’s point of view. Enjoy!

Where is Johnny?

There he is, there he is—

Johnny put your hand up,

How are you?”

I sit in a circle…

And listen to my name,

All eyes on me—they wait for me

To raise my hand…

“Here I am.”

I am here; expected and belonging;

My class, my school, my teachers, and

My friends.

A step away from home,

A step into the world.

A world that knows my name

—and calls it—

“Here I am!”

—Ruth Reardon, Listening to the Littlest, 2000, p. 19. Reprinted with permission.

Excerpted from Constructive Parenting p. 91.

 

Constructive Parenting…

By the late 1990‘s children started to spend many of their waking hours in the care of others. Preschool, which had formerly been only for enrichment, started to become the norm and fill in for many children as the main part of their day. Researchers became concerned and looked into the situation for negative effects. What happened? They found out was that as long as the parents stayed involved and knew what was going on in the school setting, the children did fine.

January! the Month of the New Beginning

Stay happily connected to the teachers and caregivers in your child’s life!