Parents are a child’s best and longest lasting advocates. Parents with good communication skills can be even more effective advocates for their children.
- Advocating for Your Child Fact Sheet – English Family Matters
- Advocating for Your Child Fact Sheet – Arabic Family Matters
- Advocating for Your Child Fact Sheet – Spanish Family Matters
Being able to effectively communicate your child’s needs is another way for you to help your child develop and learn.
Parent and professional communication and effective partnerships do not “just happen.” It takes time, energy, and effort to build skills to communicate clearly and collaborate effectively. You can decide to become a more effective advocate for your child and then take the necessary steps to achieve this goal. It’s worth the effort.
There are several online resources available to learn collaborative techniques.
- A Michigan Family Guidebook English, Spanish, Arabic is available from Early On. You can request a printed booklet from your service coordinator.
- How to Effectively Communicate with Early Childhood Professionals
- Educating Our Children Together: A Sourcebook for Effective Family-School-Community Partnerships
- Communication in The Special Education Process
- Communicate using “Student Snapshot”
Key to clear communication with your Early On® Service Coordinator , teachers, therapists, doctors and nurses is keeping all your papers organized! Most parents find it very helpful to organize before it becomes a mountain of paperwork.
If a dispute every comes up in the future, it will be very important for you to have established a papertrail – document your contact with the school – conversations, meetings and other events.
More topics for parents of infants and toddlers can be found on our webpage dedicated to resources for Babies and Toddlers, or search the bigger A-Z list or contact us.
Skills for Effective Parent Advocacy
