Welcome!!! Please grab a snack and a drink and fill out your name tag. Remember to sign in.

1. Welcome!!!Please grab a snack and a drink and fill out your name tag. Remember to sign in.

2. Dealing With Difficult Parents 101 Tuesday, January 11, 2005 Tara Goulding and Eileen Barks Palm Valley Elementary

3. 4:00-Welcome, Icebreaker, Expectations. 4:10 - Talk to us!!! What are some of the situations that have brought you here. Share 4:20 - Discover Yourself and Your “Parents”. 4:50 - Strategies that you can use TODAY 5:15 Activity-role play 5:30 Situations 5:50- Wrap up and Reflect 6:00-Goodnight!!! Agenda

4. Talk to Us!! • What are some situations that you have encountered in your teaching careers?

5. “The mere formulation of a problem is often far more essential than its solution”By Albert Einstein

6. Who are you?Who are your parents? • “Seek first to understand, before you seek to be understood.” By Steven Covey • “Managing a difficult person means first managing yourself.”By Carol Tavris

7. Who are You? • Personality Games help identify the type of personality you are. (www.mef.to/html/roles.html) (True Colors) • It is important to know how you react in stressful and confrontational situations. • What kinds of negative aspects do you have?

8. Tips for dealing w/ negative aspects of yourself: • Learn to recognize when your defensive mechanisms come up. Realize that you are probably not really being attacked. • When you catch yourself feeling defensive, don’t react so quickly. • Learn how to listen when someone asks a question or makes a suggestion. • Ask people to re-state their question/comment/suggestion. • Try to understand what others are saying by repeating back what you think you heard. • Ask for more time to respond, then get back to them. This will give you time to work with the question/comment/ suggestion without the pressure of being on the spot. • Do consider that other people have good ideas that are just as valid as yours.

9. Tips continued… • Find someone who can help you work on this negative aspect of yourself-a good friend, coworker, teacher or counselor • If it is someone that you interact with regularly, ask them to let you know when you are being a jerk and call your attention to what you are doing. That will help you learn to see what situations and events trigger your insecurity. • Recognize that changing learned patterns of insecurity and defensiveness may take years of work. • Don’t give up on yourself. • Learn to understand your own personality and your unique strengths and weaknesses. • The effort to improve your ability to get along with others will be rewarded as you find more career opportunities open up for you.

10. Who are they? • Less respectful of authority • More educated about schools and view schools as another service to consume (media) • Cynical and distrustful • Activists • Increasingly disengaged from schools • Afraid child won’t measure up because of schools.

11. Overall View of Parents • 90+ percent of all parents do a good job raising their children. • 5% struggle • 100% of parents do the best they know how.

12. Remember--no matter how much the child bothers you, annoys you or how difficult he/she is in your classroom--That child is someone’s pride and joy; someone’s baby-and they are the best they have to send you.

13. What makes them difficult? • Always working from their negative side • Unaware of themselves and how they affect others. • Don’t realize how harmful actions are especially to their child. • Family configuration, family wealth, family stress. • Past negative experiences with schools. • Just plain angry and argumentative. • Most communications w/schools negative

14. Why are they Angry? • Failure to communicate • Circling the wagons • Stonewalling and spinelessness • Darned if you do and darned if you don’t-overreacting • Assumption, stereotypes, Educational jargon • Defensiveness • Breaking promises, Unwillingness to admit mistakes and apologize • Intimidation/control/power and blame • Condescension, rudeness, Dishonesty • Failure to give parents credit for understanding their child • Lack of respect for child and parents • Unprofessionalism

15. Why are they troubled? • Lack of student learning • Behavior problems • Erosion of values • Parental assault • Curricular issues • Teacher commitment

16. Why are they afraid? • Safety • Administrator/teacher retaliation • Unknown • Have to settle for poor schools

17. Why are they crazy? • School groupies • Abusive parents • Addicted • Dysfunctional and mentally ill • Complainers • Troublemakers • Whiners

18. “People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.” Anonymous

19. Putting learning into ACTION!Stop the action before it starts!!! • Start off on the right foot--make positive contacts before a negative one. • Use good communication skills- • the more upset the person, the slower and lower you speak. • Eye contact • Why Didn’t I know? / Keep the Parents Informed. • Get the parents on your side. • United front--Team effort • I-Messages

20. Use “I” messages • I messages come from the true feelings of a person. • People can relate and deal better with feelings then with name calling or accusations being brought on by strong feelings. • When they understand the feelings involved, then something positive can be done about it.

21. Your son is always out of his seat, bothering others and messing around. You need to do a better job of controlling him. I feel so frustrated when I am constantly reminding Johnny how to behave in class. What steps can we take to solve this problem? I-Message Example

22. I Message Phone Example Hi Mrs. Johnson, this is Mrs. Barks from Litchfield Elementary School. Do you have a minute to talk about Jordan? Great!! Here is what is going on in the classroom. I am feeling frustrated that she is not handing in her work. I know she does the work, I see her complete it. She is just forgetting to hand it in and she seems to find it in her desk later in the week. Do you think we could come up with a solution to try in the classroom that might help alleviate my frustrations.

23. Empathize Ask questions Lower the boom gently Welcome constructive criticism Cultural differences in communication Give options to parents Focus on the problems-not the personalities Shake hands and welcome. Sit eye to eye and knee to knee Listen (body lang.) Open your mind Keep calm, and remain confident (phone) Apologize-I am sorry that happened Strategies for defusing parents. Taming the Savage Beast

24. Don’t Interrupt--sit on your hands, bite your tongue Don’t change the subject--solve one item at a time Don’t focus on things beyond your control or things that can’t be changed Silent treatment might not work--but listening will Don’t come across as the know-it-all professional Don’t make promises that you can’t keep Flaming emails What Not to Do

25. What if the parent is right? • Admit mistakes • Fix the problem • Reach Consensus • Don’t hold grudges • Begin Again

26. Apology??? • If the parent is so adamant that they are right and you are wrong--then what? • In this situation will it hurt to admit defeat and move on to the solution stage? • This only will work in some situations--not every situation • Remember you are there for the kids--and if it will help with their learning--why not?

27. “No problem is so large or complex that it can’t be run away from.”By Charlie Brown

28. FUN Activity!!!