Family Engagement in Early Childhood Education
When families involve themselves with the early childhood professionals in an interactive aim of building a good relationship, this refers to as family engagement. It is a respectful, mutual, and responsive process to the family tradition and language that requires a lot of time and attention to ensure learning and care for the children. For instance, the professionals work with the parents on planning ways to support the children. It is through this engagement that the parent-child relationship is sustained, thus ensuring the healthy development of the child, and well-being now and in the future years. This work seeks to discuss family engagement as an issue in early childhood education.
The United States of America has fallen in the world ranking for science college graduates; this has engineered more attention to early childhood education because any successful life has to have a strong foundation. Researchers have shown that currently, children to those parents that participate in early childhood educational partnership perform better than the children with parents that are inactive to such programs. This is seen in children aged 3-6 years, and this progress is seen in language comprehension, understanding in books, and several other concepts. Besides, they have also shown greater self-esteem matched to the children of the non-participating parents. The research also shows that parental engagement can also advance the school in broad-spectrum. Both the families and early childhood professionals involve each other through communication and collaborative activities with families
Failure of family engagement leads to the slow development of the child. It is caused by the parents having a busy schedule, language barriers, and lack of information between the school and the parents. It is an issue that should be taken into account by both the family and the early childhood professionals. The reason for this engagement is to ensure that the child is followed up and given the time and attention needed for healthy development. The children who are the victims of this issue are often of low self-esteem, poor academic performer, and have a slow cognitive development. At the early age of a child; lack of family engagement destabilizes the readiness of the child for school, ongoing academics, and lifetime success. The parents also do not feel competent in playing their role as parents. Additionally, the fact that these programs are expensive has discouraged family engagement programs.
Early childhood professionals and parents have a common goal of doing what is best for the children at that early school life. The meaningful ongoing engagement with different families is of considerable significance to the bi-directional childcare to the home relationship, and it results in the shared purpose and to the advantage to the child. The partnership makes family members and parents feel recognized for the know-how on their child, and this may bring about the interest in collaborating with the programs. Active family engagement enhances the trust, safety, and caring that impact the well-being of the family and the child.
Family engagement is of importance to early care professionals. It brings about job satisfaction to the professionals, strengthening the staffs bond to the families through the interaction, thus creating their confidence to each other. The process enables the professionals to see the children the same way their parents do. It expands their understanding of the family and the child so that they can adjust family support and teaching accordingly. The partnership with families enables early care professionals to share their views on the challenging issue. For instance, they are conversing with the parents on the issue concerning the developing behavior of the child. Also, unity is promoted through the conferences organized with the programs that are attended by both the parents and the early childhood professional.
Family engagement is core to the cognitive development that happens in the preschool years. Research has shown that at the early childhood stages, there is a rapid brain development the leads to the building of the cognitive and the character skills. Through the active engagement, the children get enough support that ensures full potential to their development. It enhances the teaching of a child outside the classroom, thus creating a more positive experience to the child, thus improving their academic status. Parents can know what their children learn in school, and therefore, they can connect between what is leaned in both the classroom and at home. This is a critical factor to the child development hence supporting future learning.
In conclusion, family engagement is an issue that has proven to be of great importance and therefore requiring more time and attention to accomplish its objectives. The successful future of any child is determined at the initial ages before the child turns 8. It is a stage where the child develops mentally, socially, and emotionally and therefore so critical. This is a fact basing on the research on the impacts of quality early childhood educational experiences to the children lives.