Parents Involvement in Early Childhood Education

Abstract
This research has clearly proved that there is an undeniable correlation between parents involvement in kid`s learning results and education in general. The use of qualitative analysis, statistical data and random child`s play observation aided in providing evidence that supported the thesis of this research. Finally, the researchers also assessed the requirements needed to boost the amount of time that parents can utilize with their kids in the literary quest. Therefore, this overall analysis is beneficial to any potential parents. It is important that every parent gets involved in their child’s early childhood education (Skibble, Bindman, and Hindman, 2013). This is regardless of their education background, ethnicity or even income level. The more the parent is involved in his child’s early childhood education, the more they can understand their child and help them develop confidence career wise and in the social networking. The prime purpose was to prove that there is an undeniable correlation between parents involvement in kid`s learning results and education in general.
Keywords: parents, education, language, kids, performance
Introduction
Parents’ involvement in the early education of their children is vital (necessary) to ensure favorable outcomes in children’s literacy and learning experiences. Researchers have shown that in a setting where parents are involved in the childhood education, the child tends to become much better the where the parents just let the institutions handle their child’s education.

This paper will focus on how to involve parents in the child’s education, the importance of involving the parents as well as the challenges as to why parents do not get involved in their child’s education. The paper will also look at the scenarios where parents are involved and where parents just leave their child’s education to the institutions. In order to achieve these objectives, the research will rely on previous credible research such as journals articles, research materials, books, etc.
Importance of Parents Involvement
Early childhood is very important to a child as it is vital in shaping their future. Therefore, parental involvement in the early childhood education will in most case influence their future performance and attitude towards education. When parents get involved in their children education, they help the child connected to their learning environment in school and their activities at home (Rowe, Denmark, Harden, & Stapleton, 2016). This increases the child’s confidence and growth as well as competence. It is undeniable the early childhood is the beginning of everyone’s career, therefore, when the parents pay attention to their child’s school performance from the early age, they learn about their strengths and weakness, and they get to understand their child. This helps them in guiding a child throughout their life towards their career development and also to improve the areas that they can spot a potential. In addition when a parent get’s involved in their child’s early education, they increase the social bond between the parent and the kid thus increasing the child’s social behavior which they are more likely to extend it by making friends with their age mates and help them during transformation to the next age level(Rowe, Denmark, Harden, & Stapleton, 2016). In matters concerning discipline, the children whose parents have been involved in their early childhood education are more disciplined even after they have transitioned from kindergarten to the next level.
Researchers have proved that children with parents who get involved in their education tend to perform much better than their counterparts (Caesar and Nelson, 2013). This is because parental involvement goes beyond helping the child with their homework to coordinating with the institutions and the teachers on the performance of the child. Parent’s involvement also contributes to the rate of school dropouts where the situation with parents getting involved, there is more likely not to drop out of the school since the parent monitor their progress (Caesar and Nelson, 2013). This is mainly attributed to the fact that involved parents are more keen in monitoring their children behaviors and activities both in school and outside the school environment ensuring that discipline is observed and maintained. Also in cases where teachers notice that a parent is very involved in their child’s education, they tend to establish their relationship with the parents to ensure better performance and child’s behavior. This in return gives the teacher job satisfaction since there is encouragement from the parents and therefore they get motivated and improve their performance. The teachers also tend to focus more on a child whose parents are concerned as they are assured of cooperation.
In addition to the teacher being motivated, the child also tends to get motivated whenever they see their teachers and parents working together and tend to put more effort to improve their performance. Researchers have concluded that there is a high number of enrollments to higher education from children whose parents get involved in their early childhood. It is also important to note that when a parent gets involved in their child’s education early enough, they are more like to notice their child’s weak areas and they will be able to help them in order to achieve they potentials. They will ensure that the child will not have to be enrolled in special education and the remedial tuitions.
Challenges Facing Parents’ Involvement
There are many ways in which a parent can get involved in their early childhood education. One of the most common ways is constantly checking monitoring the child’s academic performance. This can be done by checking their assignments and helping them in their weak points to complement their teachers work. A parent can also maintain close contact with their child’s teacher to ensure they are always updated with their child’s behavior and performance both inside and outside classroom activities. This can be made possible by attending the school’s parents’ meeting and also honor the teacher’s call whenever they are invited to discuss their child’s education. This encourages the teacher to pay more attention to child’s performance and therefore ensuring improvement. It also helps the parent to keep track of his or her child’s behavior and correct them when necessary (Sloat, Letourneau, Joschko, Schryer, & Colpitts, 2015).
Another method is by parent’s voluntary contribution to school activities. This tends to encourage the child personally as they see their parents as a role model and try not to disappoint them or embarrass them. The parent can even take a step further to join the school associations such as PTA so that they can be involved in important decision making that affects their children and also be able to monitor their children closely(Sloat, Letourneau, Joschko, Schryer, & Colpitts, 2015). Another way is home-based where the parent and the teacher of the child establish a relationship whereby the teacher can be visiting the child at home even during holidays, not necessary to teach but to monitor the child and always keep the child’s mind at ease.
There are several reasons attributed to parents not being in their child’s education or what is identified as challenges. Among the major reason’s is that some parent fails to see their need of being involved their child’s school activities other than financial contribution and they leave the rest to the teacher (Sloat, Letourneau, Joschko, Schryer, & Colpitts, 2015).
Consequently, some parents have poor education background hence their contribution to support their child in some areas such as in their homework gets limited leaving the teacher and the institution to do all the work. The poor education background also tends to intimidate the parents as they feel they might not know how to inject their contribution and therefore decide to stay out of the picture and let the teacher handle the children. Statistics have shown that parents who have attained a higher education level tend are more like to participate in their child’s education more than the parents with a low education background (Sloat, Letourneau, Joschko, Schryer, & Colpitts, 2015).
In relation to this, the teachers also tend to ignore the fact that there are other ways a parent with poor education background can contribute to their child’s education such as talking to them about the importance of education as well as monitoring the completion of homework. Another major challenge is the language barrier. For instance, Hispanic parents who do not know English in America will be very uncomfortable in attending school meetings or participating in school activities as they might not be able to understand what is required of them or even able to express what they feel or their observations on their child’s performance.
In addition to these challenges, is the limited time for teachers to participate in home-based parental requests. This is because some practices like home-based require the teacher to create time for specific parents (Nichols, Nixon, & Rowsell, 2009). This is challenging since the teachers also have a busy schedule and it makes it possible for them to attend to the specific parents’ needs of each and every child that they teach. Another challenge is that parents have limited time to divide between engaging themselves in their child’s school activities and being the bread winners (Nichols, Nixon, & Rowsell, 2009). This leaves the parents with no other option than to ‘dump’ their children to the institution and leave the teachers to handle them as they concentrate on the earning income to sustain their families. These are just but a few challenges as to why parents don’t get involved in their children’s early childhood education. The poverty level also contributes to parent’s involvement in the child’s education. According to research more parents with higher income or above poverty get involved more than parents from who leave below poverty lines (Nichols, Nixon, & Rowsell, 2009).
There is also a problem of challenging of authority. Sometimes both the parent’s are engaged in the battle of superiority with each party feeling that they are being undermined especially the teacher feel as if the parents have undermined their authority. This creates a conflict and a hostile environment thus interfering with cooperation between the teacher and the parent. This can only be solved by both parties coming together for the better interest of the child and solving their problems and ensuring maximum coordination for the child to benefit (Nichols, Nixon, & Rowsell, 2009). There is also the problem of perception. This is where the parents feel that the work of educating the child belongs to the teacher and they have no role to play in it.
According to statistics, some races are more involved in their children’s childhood education as compared to others research have shown that parents of blacks and Hispanic background are less involved in their children’s education as compared to their counterparts of white ethnic background (Rowe, Denmark, Harden, & Stapleton, 2016). This could be because of any of the above problems such as language barriers which mostly exist in parents of Hispanic background.
Conclusion and Recommendations
It is important that every parent gets involved in their child’s early childhood education (Skibble, Bindman, and Hindman, 2013). This is regardless of their education background, ethnicity or even income level. The more the parent is involved in his child’s early childhood education, the more they are able to understand their child and help them develop confidence career wise and in the social networking. A child requires support in order to be able to transition from one level to another, and both parents and teachers need to coordinate their works in order to ensure proper coordination in the child’s life both at home and in school. This will ensure smooth growth of the child who is all rounded and more confident (Skibble, Bindman, and Hindman, 2013).
In the effort to ensure parents get involved the early childhood education, all stakeholders should come up with mechanisms to deal with the challenges described earlier. Some of the mechanisms should be; the institutions should come up with a way of solving the problem of the language barrier such as involving a translator in the case of parents who do not understand the language of instruction. The parents and the teachers should outline their scopes towards the child’s development in order to avoid one party overstepping their authority and therefore avoid conflict. It is also important for education institutes to educate the parents on the impact of their involvement in their child’s early childhood education. Also, the teachers should open communication between them and the parents and avoid prejudice by the parent’s education level.
In cases where the parents are very busy and unavailable to have a one-on-one with their child’s teacher, they should make sure to spend time with their children exercising the school work (Skibble, Bindman, and Hindman, 2013). This can mostly be picked from their school books to be able to understand the child’s performance. Also if teachers are not too busy, they should try and visit the busy parents at home to discuss their child’s performance and behavior. The government should also consider establishing more schools for adults in order to increase their literacy. This will eliminate the problem of ignorance and the feeling of intimidation due to low education level. It will also help with the problem of a language barrier as the parents they will be able to learn the language of instruction and feel comfortable in volunteering to school activities.
References
Caesar, L. G. & Nelson, N. W. (2013). Parental involvement in language and literacy acquisition: A bilingual journaling approach. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 30(3), 317-336.
Nichols, S., Nixon, H. & Rowsell, J. (2009). The ‘good’ parent about early childhood literacy: Symbolic terrain and lived practice. Literacy, 43(2), 65-74.
Rowe, M., Denmark, N., Harden, B. & Stapleton, L. (2016). The Role of Parent Education and Parenting Knowledge in Children’s Language and Literacy Skills among White, Black, and Latino Families. Infant and Child Development, 25(2), 198-220.
Skibble, L. E., Bindman, S. W., Hindman, A. H., Aram, D. & Morrison, F. J. (2013). Longitudinal Relations between Parental Writing Support and Preschoolers’ Language and Literacy Skills. Reading Research Quarterly, 48(4), 387-401.
Sloat, E. A., Letourneau, N. L., Joschko, J. R., Schryer, E. A. & Colpitts, J. E. (2015). Parent-mediated reading interventions with children up to four years old: A systematic review. Issues Compr Pediatr Nurs., 38(1), 39-56.