Lecture
The forms of partnership interaction with the family in a preschool institution may be the following: individual (questionnaires, surveys
of parents, conversations, consultations, tours of the group, visiting the family,
parents visiting the group, observation of children's activity, mini-meetings during drop-off and pick-up of children, individual notebooks, notes, cards, etc.).
Collective: group and general parent meetings, consultations, questionnaires, round tables, evenings of questions and answers, lectures,
lecture series, conferences, a school for young parents, disputes, seminars,
practical seminars, open-door days, clubs (a club of connoisseurs, a club
of nature lovers and defenders, a grandmothers' club, an erudites' club, etc.),
evenings (a family evening, a professions evening, dance evenings, parent
concerts, etc.), live entertainment events with the participation of children and parents (sports festivals) and others; an oral journal (for example, «Summer and
Your Child»), quizzes, etc.
visual and written: information stands (parent
corners, folding screens), exhibitions, photo displays, exhibitions of children's work, children's author exhibitions, folding folders, handwritten journals, a chronicle
of the group, family albums from the experience of raising children, books for parents
(«About You and For You», etc.), monthly bulletins, announcements, requests,
current information, and messages about what will be done with the children, etc.
Methods of studying the family are the following: observing the communication between parents and children, surveying parents, talking with them, visiting families at home,
analyzing children's drawings on themes: «My House», «My Family», questionnaires.
However, there is also a certain specificity. For example, in groups of early age, in working with the parents of third-year-of-life children,
special attention is given to individual forms of interaction with
the family.
Contemporary approaches require partnership relations between the institution
and the family.
The system of work with the family of a child with special psychophysical developmental needs (SPPDN) includes: preparing the staff of educational institutions to interact with parents;
acquainting parents with the results of the diagnosis of the child's psychophysical
development; studying and correcting parents' social-psychological attitudes; acquainting parents with the content of the correctional-pedagogical work; teaching parents specific methods
and techniques for conducting correctional sessions with the child, and adequate
ways of communicating and behaving with him or her; raising the pedagogical competence of parents, and actively involving parents in preparing and holding celebrations and leisure activities.
Early involvement of parents in correctional work with the child
makes it possible, in most cases, to ease the parents' experience, to change their attitude toward raising a child with problems,
and also to develop adequate ways of interacting with their little one.
The forms of work of the speech therapist with parents fall into three main groups:
individual: conversations; consultations; practical workshops; attending
sessions; keeping notebooks for homework assignments; group (collective): parent meetings; evenings of questions and answers; round table
sessions; training sessions; joint celebrations and entertainment;
open-door days; schools for parents; parent conferences;
family (home) pedagogical councils; business games, practical seminars;
clubs for parents and children and others; visual-informational: exhibitions of children's work; photo exhibitions; advertising of books and articles from newspapers and magazines; an information bank; stands; folding folders; libraries; thematic exhibitions; a sanitary bulletin; information baskets (a box, crates), parent mail; memos; advertising booklets, leaflets,
posters, videos; a helpline, a bank of tips, etc.
In choosing forms of work, the speech therapist needs to implement an individual approach to the parents and to the children. At the initial stages
of interaction, individual forms of work are used: demonstrating to the mother methods of working with the child, taking notes on individual sessions, doing homework assignments, and having the mother read specialized literature recommended by the speech therapist.
The stages of individual counseling of parents in the setting of special institutions are presented in the studies of T.N. Volkovskaya,
E.A. Strebeleva, I.V. Filipovich, and others. At the first stage (the diagnostic one), trusting relationships are established with the parents (interviews, conversation, and experimental psychological techniques are used
where necessary).
The second stage is conducted based on the results of the child's examination. At this
stage, the speech therapist informs the parents about the state of the child's speech
and, more generally, mental development, explains the measures of assistance taking into account the structure of the defect, and plans subsequent meetings for the purpose of discussing the dynamics of the child's progress under correctional treatment.
At the third stage of counseling, which relates to the correctional work proper, the following tasks are addressed: raising the level of parents' pedagogical competence through broadening
their circle of knowledge in the field of defectology; involving parents in the system
of providing correctional assistance. The most effective forms of interaction between the speech therapist and parents are: joint discussions with parents of the course and results of the correctional work; the working out of
recommendations for overcoming negative tendencies in the child's development;
conducting individual workshops for teaching parents (articulatory, breathing, and voice exercises, etc.).
The fourth stage (the final one) is of an advisory character.
A positive result of this stage will be a change in the parents' attitude
toward accepting the child's particulars.
One of the effective forms of work with parents is consultations. The improvement of psychological-pedagogical knowledge aimed at
overcoming children's speech disorders is carried out through individual and group trainings for parents. The choice of group
forms of interaction between the speech therapist and parents is determined by their degree of readiness for cooperation. Thus, a group form of work with parents who have low motivation may be recommended from
the second half of the school year onward. One of the widespread group
forms of work with parents is parent meetings. For example,
the first parent meeting at a preschool institution is held at the end of September. At this meeting, the speech therapist covers the following issues: the necessity of special instruction for children with speech disorders,
analyzes the results of the children's speech examination (indicating
the general difficulties, while during individual conversations informing the parents of the results of their own child's examination); reports on the organization
and content of the work over the course of the year; informs about the adoption of additional measures where there are disorders accompanying the main defect
(observation and treatment in the case of muscle-tone disorders, diseases
of the organs of vision, hearing, etc.).
Practical seminars for parents are interconnected with group
consultations and help form the practical skills necessary for parents.
The homework notebook contains material on which parents practice pronunciation (syllables, words, tongue twisters, poems,
riddles, stories). The notebook contains exercises that develop articulatory motor skills, speech breathing, voice, etc. At first, the assignments given for home are gone over in detail with the children and parents.
It is important for parents to focus attention on completing these assignments and
to encourage the child's desire to do them.
The stands for parents are put together by the speech therapist together with other specialists, updating the material at least once a month. On
the stand there may be material on developing children's sound pronunciation, improving the grammatical means of speech, developing
cognitive processes, recommendations for parents on preventing
and overcoming speech disorders, games and exercises, current information for parents, etc.
A particular feature of family-school interaction under conditions of integrated instruction is that parents play a central role in
decisions concerning the provision of correctional-pedagogical
assistance to their child. They are informed, consulted, their participation
is insisted upon, and their help is accepted unconditionally. The system of work with the family
for providing psychological and methodological support presupposes
several stages: preparing the school's own teachers for interacting
with parents raising children with developmental disorders; conducting a psychological-pedagogical diagnosis of the psychophysical development
of students with the parents' consent; acquainting parents with the results
obtained; studying the social living conditions of the family and the nature of parent-child relations; acquainting parents with the content and
orientation of the correctional-pedagogical support provided in the
educational institution; counseling parents and training them
in providing correctional-pedagogical assistance to children at home; involving parents in the process of implementing the correctional-educational program for the upbringing, instruction, and development of the child.
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