Podcast

Michelle Fallon, Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultant, joins Priscilla Weigel to discuss the ways in which child care providers can promote healthy parent/child and family relationships and how the quality of the relationship between parents and providers can impact the child. 

Cindy Croft and Priscilla Weigel field questions from the parent of a preschooler. They explain how everyday activities are developing pre-literacy skills helping to prepare children for kindergarten.

This episode helps equip parents who are searching for child care options for children with unique needs. We discuss the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the supports related to the law, and how parents can begin building a relationship with potential child care providers by using open-ended questions to gather the information needed to set their child up for success.

In this podcast, Cindy and Priscilla encourage listeners to have confidence in your skills and abilities to provide an environment that gives children what they need based on developmentally appropriate practice rather than whatever the 'prevailing winds" may be. When it comes to the push for academics, we need to trust our early childhood education and training in what children need most to be successful learners in our environments. We also need to learn to articulate why our practices are part of 'readiness' for children along all their developmental domains.

In the final session in this series, Priscilla Weigel and Cindy Croft will offer insights into some of the responses that may come from a family when they are told there are red flags in their child’s development. As parents grapple with developmental information, they will need ongoing support and understanding from the early educator and program staff. We can be an important partner in a journey that is just beginning.

In part 3 of our series on Sharing Concerns with Families, Priscilla Weigel and Cindy Croft discuss the sensitive topic of talking to a family about their child’s development. This is often one of the hardest jobs an early educator will undertake but it is critically important for the child for whom early intervention can make a world of difference. We will talk about ways to share developmental information and continue building the important relationship between parent and caregiver.