Supporting Grandparents who raise Grandchildren

According to Decker, Decker, Freeman, and Knopf (2009), in spite of the fact that families continue to work together with one shared goal- to give all children opportunities to pursue their dreams and achieve success. For me, this an important practice. I feel that every child learns in their own way. However, you need to keep in mind of the challenges that families are faced with. With the fall of our economy, increased drug use, and other challenges, as early childhood educators we need to nurture, guide, and work with families. As educators, we need to collaborate with families to meet the needs of each child.
With our program, at the beginning of the year we do home visits. The purpose of the home visit is for the child to become familiar with his/her teacher. For all children, this is their first learning experience. Therefore, the home visit helps the children to feel comfortable sharing their space with unfamiliar adults. This usually makes transition smoother for the child.
In addition, we have three rating periods- fall, winter, and spring. For each rating period, there is a parent/teacher conference. For the fall conference, we set goals for the child and parent. In addition the parent will share any questions or concerns they may have with their child. At times, there are grandmothers, grandfathers, uncles, or aunty's that may come to the conference. Many times parents are not able to get off from work. Therefore, we may share some of the information with the adult. However, I do a telephone conference with the parent.
For our program, we have mandatory parent meetings in the evenings. This is to accommodate working parents. For the past few years, it has been very successful.
If we do have further concerns for a child, our program offers additional support. We now has a full-time counselor. The counselor will work one-to-one with the child and families. This is new for us, but since we have had a counselor, it has been such great help for the parents.
More and more, I see grandparents taking the role as parents. There are personal reasons because of this. However, as educators we need work with our kupuna and kokua. With kokua it maybe reminding them of daily routines, upcoming events, and going the extra mile. As a result, it will make the classroom a better learning environment for all families.