BTS 2025/6: Top 3 Proven Tips to Avoid Parent-Teacher Conflict

 Okay, here we go. This is episode four in our back to school series year 20 25, 20 26, and we are talking all things. Ugh. Let me put it this way. If you have ever gotten an email from a parent that made your stomach drop, this is your episode, right? If you've ever thought, why are they coming at me like that?

Don't they know I care about their kid? You know, you are not alone, and I promise you it doesn't have to feel like that. Okay? There are some ways, some simple ways, and the beginning of the year is the perfect time to do it, and here's the truth. Strong communication with parents. It isn't about perfect scripts.

It's about trust, and trust doesn't come from you, you know, people pleasing and having all the answers. It comes from clarity, it comes from consistency, it comes from emotional intelligence. So I promise you in this week's episodes, I am going to get honest about some of these things, and we're really not taught them in the credential programs, right?

How to build strong relationships with the adults. Behind the students, right? We're gonna talk about simple shifts that can help reduce misunderstandings, how to respond in an emotionally re mature way instead of reacting about this incredible power of validation, which would diffuse most things. And this really good strategy to build goodwill early so that you're not constantly putting out fires later.

So I promise you it's gonna be actionable. There's gonna be things that you can say that you can do that. Once I tell you, you'll be like, oh, that's so obvious. Why haven't I been doing that? It will help, I promise. I am telling you. And over 20 years in the classroom, I can count on, on like three fingers.

Parents that I've ever really had an issue with and you know. There were probably things about that I could have handled better on reflection. So anyway, learn from my mistakes. I got all the goods. It's gonna be right here after the intro. See you on the inside. Welcome to the Teacher Self-Care and Life Balance podcast, where we focus all things personal development to help teachers feel empowered to thrive inside and outside of the classroom.

If you are passionate about education. But tired of it taking over your whole life. You have found your new home in the podcast universe. You'll love it here. I'm Grace Stevens, your host, and let's get going with today's show. Okay, so I'm going to point out something here. There is one big caveat to all of this.

All the advice I'm gonna give is rock solid, I promise you. But I am willing to concede that I had an easier ride with parents right off the bat for a couple of reasons. Okay. One is that I was older. By the time I came to teaching, I was in my late thirties, almost 40. Okay. I know there's a wealth of difference between parents showing up and the teacher is almost 40 and parents showing up and the teacher is 22.

Okay. I have seen brand new teachers get so bullied and so intimidated and so pushed around and so condescended to by teach by parents, excuse me. And it really is a thing. Okay, so. One, I was older. Two, I had already worked for many years with adults in different capacities and management roles in all kinds of roles.

So I knew how to deal with adults. Okay. Some of us don't. If we've only ever been to school, then we go through the teacher credentialing program. We've never really had experienced customer service or managing people, managing teams. Kind of collaborating with people. If you've never had that experience, you know that's gonna be a bit tougher working with parents.

So I was older, I had a lot of experience, and let's be honest, just a lot of confidence about talking to and with, and collaborating with and partnering with people. And then the third thing is I had already. I've al, I already had experience with children. I have my own children. I could say to a parent, okay, well, as a parent, so then that's something we have in common, okay?

So if you are a brand spanking new teacher, you are young and you do not have children yet. You know what? I understand you are gonna have a tougher time, but all that means is you need to double down on everything I say today. Okay? Double down, triple down. And here's where I'm gonna tell you that optics matter.

Absolutely 100% should they matter? Mm. But do they? Yes. Parents are gonna judge you. Back to school night is the first time they're probably gonna see you. They are gonna judge you on what you are wearing and what your room looks like. Do you seem organized? Do you look like you've got it together? It doesn't matter.

Your walls don't need to be perfect, but your presentation does. You do need to have some kind of you know, script, not script, but like some kind of presentation as to what the information that you are going to present. You need to look organized, you need to be dressed very professionally, even if your campus culture is a little bit more casual during the school year.

Anytime, you know, you're gonna run into parents as best as possible, you should really be wearing, you know, putting your best foot forward and being very well groomed, and I know that some people are gonna come at me and say, how important is that at the end of the day? Well, here's the question. Do you want parents to automatically kind of challenge you or do you want them to already kind of respect and feel like, oh yeah, this, this girl's got it together, this guy's got it together.

Right? We these. Parents are trusting you with their child. Their baby. The most important thing in life to them is probably their children. And you are gonna spend more hours per day with them for the school year than they are so. It is very understandable that they would have high expectations of you.

Okay, so that's the first thing. Just understand that. So if you are young and you are new, and understand that parents might try and push you around a little bit more. Find a mentor on campus who can help you out Anytime you think there might be a situation that might not turn out great, have somebody else be a witness in the room.

Okay. So I'm just gonna put that out there and then we're gonna keep it all upbeat. Okay. But you, it's especially important if you are new to teaching and you are younger, that you double down, triple down on all the advice I'm gonna give here. Okay. Alright, so let's move on to the good stuff. Let's move on to.

If you listen here, here's my goal. I want to teach you some basic things to help you reduce misunderstandings and conflicts, build trust and good will earlier in the year, and then communicate, you know, confidently and professionally. Okay. It's gonna all make things much easier. As always. I am going to really start with, start with some mindset, but first off, I don't need to convince anybody, right, why this is important.

But maybe if you're brand new to teaching and you dunno how stressful it is to get the pit in the stomach when you get the email from the parent. That, you know, the parent only heard the kid's side of the story, right? They don't have the whole picture either, right? So, and they're probably being defensive.

'cause again, this is their child, the most precious thing in the world to them, right? And that's why parents, you know, go or Mama Bear on us. As they should. There's always a part of me that when I see a parent advocating for their child, even if I might not appreciate the way they're going about it, you know, there's part of me that makes me feel, well, they're advocating for their child.

I'm glad about that, at least. Okay. But you know, the worst thing is to have misunderstandings and tension and conflict with parents. Not only does it cause a lot of stress and anxiety, but it just really, it wastes so much time and energy, right? So we wanna get it right. All right, so here's the thing.

First off, you know, these are all skills we can learn. If we're not comfortable as we should be with parents and communicating, it's okay. These skills will come over time. You can learn them. But here's the big mindset piece. First of all, I think communicating in general. With anybody. Some of us have lost these skills with our families, with our partners, with our friends.

It, you know, we are listening to kind of share information or to prove a point. And what we should be doing is approaching. Conversations with curiosity and thinking, what can I learn? What can I learn about this person? What can I learn about this situation that I didn't already know? So that's the first thing.

I'm gonna encourage you and that you know me. Harping back to Dr. Steven Covey. Granddaddy of all things personal development. You know, his very first book, seven Habits of Highly Effective People. One of those habits was seek first to understand before you seek to be understood. Okay, so try and understand where the other person is coming from first before you try and be understood.

Okay? So don't be listening, thinking about what am I gonna say to counteract this point, to defend myself, to get my point across. Listen with the idea that you are going. To learn something. Okay? So that's the first mindset, right? And then the other mindset, that's gonna be a winner. Now, next, the next episode in this series it should be, it'll be coming out tomorrow, actually, not even next week.

I've been cramming them out. This week is about the top mindsets that we should have, and so I'll talk a lot more about it in the next episode. But here's the mindset that will always help you out, which is assume. The best intention. I call that my golden ticket mindset, the Willy Wonka mindset, because if you assume people are doing the best they can with the skills they have, with the information they have, and in the situation in which they find themselves right, assume.

The best intentions. Okay. And, and that is an important part when I add that piece in, saying with the information they have, remember, you know, children are not really reliable narrators, shall we say, when they go home and tell their parent the situation. It's a very one-sided view, okay? And if we get to the bottom of what.

The parent has, has heard or learned or thinks has happened, and I'm gonna give you strategies for that. And a few easy things to remember to say to, to get to the bottom of that. Then, hey, no wonder they're coming at you. Right? It's a but we gotta, we gotta validate first before we put our point across.

Okay? All right. Now let's start with the very, very basics, which is communication, especially at the beginning of the year. The first thing you need to do is what are your rules of engagement with parents? Now, you should listened to the episode that I recorded about your complete boundary plan, right? I believe that was episode 101 or episode a hundred.

Your complete boundary plan. What are your boundaries around? Parents. Okay. So what are your rules of engagement with parents? Do you let people come see you bef before school starts? Do you have a 24 hour turnaround on replying to people? Do you let parents know that if they email you after four 30, they won't hear back probably until the next morning?

Right? What do you require? An appointment. To meet with you, all those things. You should have a very clear idea in your mind of your communication preferences to use a classroom communication app. How should parents contact you? When should they contact you? When should they expect a response? All those things, and the perfect time, of course, to address all of that and communicate all of that.

Is at open house. If parents don't come to open house or if you're a high school and you don't do that kind of thing, then make sure that whoever didn't come, you send home the information with their child and follow up with an email. Make sure that parents got it. I usually had parents sign something so that they knew this was I talked about in the boundary plan with the risk of you looking inflexible.

Instead of saying, my policy is, or this is how I operate, you're gonna say the classroom policy is. Okay, just take yourself out. The equation, the classroom policy is if emails come in after four 30, you probably won't get a response until the next morning. If it is something urgent during the school day, obviously I'm teaching.

You need to contact the front desk. Alright? So communicate all of that. Now that should be obvious, but a lot of times it would solve a lot of problems. If a parent shows up before school, they got up extra early. And it is hard to get children out the door in the morning, trust me, I know this. Right? If they got up extra early and got out super early because they wanted to meet with you before school because their student, their child told.

Them that like, oh no, Mrs. S is always at school early and lo and behold, the parent shows up and I don't see people before school. If that were my particular policy, imagine how annoyed that parent would be. Right. Same as if they got off work early to come and pick their child up for school and wanted to talk to me at the gate.

And my policy was, I don't do conferences at the gate. Confidentiality reasons, all kinds of reasons. Have meetings scheduled after school. Wanna have appropriate time to sit and talk to somebody if they didn't know that the classroom policy was. Please let me know if you're coming by and we will schedule time.

There is. Convenient for both of us, or we could zoom. Everybody's able to do that now, right? That's a new word in our vocabulary. It's a new way of operating. Most parents have smartphones. Okay? So if, if they don't know that, of course they're annoyed, right? But if you have. Communicated your policies, your procedures, your kind of operating terms and conditions that we communicate via, you know, class Dojo or whatever.

Then that would get rid of a lot of the stuff, okay? A lot of the problems right there is that you have communicated firstly, you know, so don't just leave it to fate. Maybe it's something you haven't thought about. Why? What are my policies? Two that you have communicated the policies, and three, really importantly, that you enforce them consistently.

Okay? Consistently. That means if it's the parent you don't know or the parent that you love, because you've had three of their children already, you have the same policy otherwise. You are opening yourself up to be accused of playing favorites, and then that is just gonna be a big old, just, it's gonna be stressful for everybody, okay?

It's not gonna work out well for you. Trust me. The jerk parents, were gonna be just like students. They're gonna say, she doesn't like me. She has favorites, right? Consistent policies. Okay. All right, so that's the first thing is take care that you communicate at the beginning of the year what your communication guidelines are.

All right? So that's the first thing. The second thing, now here is another piece of what I'm gonna say. You know, Willy Wonka's Golden Ticket Here is. I'm going to give you this framework to think about relationships because this is indeed a relationship that you're entering into with the parents. Now, this can literally transform all your relationships.

We're gonna keep it school focused with colleagues, with parents, but even in your private life, and this is this idea of emotional. Bank accounts. All right. Emotional bank accounts. So an emotional bank account is a metaphor that describes the amount of trust that has been built in a relationship. Right.

How safe does this person feel with you? It's just like a bank account. You can't immediately go to the bank and start withdrawing money. You need to make some deposits first, and this is what we need to think about with parents. We need to find at the beginning of the year some easy deposits to make with parents so that trust is established and goodwill and safety is established before we need to make.

Any withdrawals. So now what would the withdrawal be? Well, a withdrawal will be you ask him for something or you calling them about their child. Okay? That's the biggest withdrawal for, you gotta call the parent and say, Hey, Johnny's misbehaving, or This has been going down, or whatever. Right? That's a huge withdrawal, right?

You want to have a relationship and trust and goodwill built with that. Parent before you need to make those types of phone calls. Or maybe before you need to, oh, it's field trips. It's a lot of kids. As soon as we got back into school, was fundraising already, like, oh my gosh, they just spent all this money on the school supply list.

We sent 'em and now we're asking 'em for money already. We better have some goodwill established first. Right? So it's obvious what the withdrawals are, but what are some ways we can make deposits? Okay, that's something that you really need to think about. Okay, so one of the first ways is of course, communicating your plan, making it easy and predictable, and having a system for how parents communicate with you so that they have confidence that if they do need you, you will get back to them.

Okay, so that comes down to everything I've already talked about. It depends, you know, when I taught little children, it was very common. Taught in a small community that the class lists would be put up the day before school started. At four o'clock. And so the reason for that was, I assume, is the office did not want to deal with parents calling in and asking for teachers to be changed.

Like, I don't want, we don't want, she doesn't wanna be in this class. My son doesn't wanna be in that class. Right. The office just didn't even wanna deal with it. And I remember that the principal would come around and he would tell us about. About three o'clock and he would say, Hey, you should all leave before the class lists come up.

I didn't really like that. I was the, the teacher that stayed so that, you know, what if a kid walked by and wanted to look in the room or the parent just wanted to say hi to me, I did not mind. I was always happy to welcome them and then when technology, you know, got better, remembering that, you know, I was teaching at the early.

Two thousands all the way through 20, the end of 2022. Certainly the last few years, what I would do, as soon as I got my class list, many of the students were already on a classroom communication app. 'cause I took fourth grade. So school-wide, many of the teachers had the same classroom communication app which happened to be Class Dojo, cute little app.

And what I would do is I would make a quick video. Tour of the classroom and just say, Hey, you're gonna be in my class. I'm super excited to have you. Look, we have a Galaxy theme. Let me show you around the room here. Here's what your name tag's gonna look like, blah, blah, blah. Like just four minutes a video, and send it to all the parents and say, Hey, if your child's, you know, nervous about coming to school tomorrow, here, you can show in the room you, they can, you know, learn about me before they show up tomorrow.

And that really was, you know, a very. Easy lift for me. I'm not about making more work for myself, but with parents, I will tell you it is a question of, it's kind of the same as putting out your classroom rules. Pay me now or pay me later. If you don't take time at the beginning of the year to communicate properly and consistently with parents.

It will be a problem all year. Wrong, just like you, you know, you let your kids run to lunch and instead of getting them all, all in a straight line and practicing and practicing those procedures. Yeah. Is it painful the first week to keep practicing procedures? Yes, but you know what's more painful?

There's 180 days of school to stand there yelling for the next 179 of them. Stan, don't run to lunch. Right. You know how it is. Okay. So with parents it is find some easy lifts, make some deposits. Okay. Before school even starts, I used to back, yeah. Back in the day, I would take my class list. Granted only had 25 students and for a week for the first, at the end of the day, I would call five parents and I would just say, Hey, I am so glad your child's in my class and whatever. My, the dream, of course, was to get the voicemail right? Remember we used to, ooh, answering machines, right? That was like the best thing. 'cause then you got credit for having made the call, but you actually didn't get stuck on the phone with the person.

So let's talk about that now. I know that sometimes we think, oh, technology, but in this particular instance, technology is your friend. It is now easier than ever to make deposits with parents. It is such an easy lift. Right. Let's talk of some ways we can do it. One, we could do the day maker calls, right?

Used to be a phone call and you could get risk getting stuck on the phone with someone. Now you can just send the email copy and paste what's a day maker call, or an email, or even a Class Dojo message that is, catch a kid doing something good. Right. Have a have some kind of system of tracking. You can find something lovely to say about every student.

Okay. You really can. And just take a minute to five, six. Students a day at the beginning of the year till you've kind of gone through everybody send a quick text message or a quick email to the parent, Hey, I'm really pleased with how such and such has been doing this or the other. Right? You can find something nice to say, right?

Build some good. Will. Another thing I like to do, again, my kids were young and it was kind of more fun, but with the, the class communication app that I had, which was ClassDojo, and I would stress to parents when they were back to school night, I would have them get out their smartphones Here, get out your phone.

Let's put the app on your phone right now if you don't already have it. This is the app we use, right? No discussion. This is just what we do. Just like we use Google Classroom or this is our textbook, this is our classroom app. Get it on there. And I would let parents know. Only people in this classroom can see anything I post on there.

Okay. It's not public. It's not out there in the ethers. Okay? And so the easiest thing for me was as we went through our day, not every day, but if we were doing something particularly exciting, let's go back to. Tics matter. We were doing a science experiment. We were doing something really we were in makerspace or we were really having fun in music that day.

We had out all the instruments. We were doing something fun in pe, snap a few photos, send it to the parents or the parents. We would have like a group kind of like scrapbook page there just so easy. Right Back in the day I had a class website that took so much time. This is so easy. You literally got your phone on you.

Anyway, take a snap, a few photos, send to parents. It builds goodwill. It lets them know that you are willing for them to see what is happening in school. It is building, you know, some good pr, right? Optics matter when the child goes home. And what'd you do at school today? Nothing. What did you learn?

Nothing. And they're just gonna, the, the one bad thing that happened, oh, miss got mad and she raised her voice, right? That's all they're gonna say. Like, counter that with some good stuff that's happening. Okay. Easy lifts. This is what I'm talking about. Not adding more to your plates, but finding some ways to.

Make some deposits, other deposits, just a quick text, email or something of appreciation. You know, if one kid came in with a, you know, one time we were running low, of course you're gonna relate to this running low on Kleenex and hand sanitizer and sent. An email to parents, Hey, if anybody is able to send in a couple of boxes of Kleenex or some hand sanitizer, that would be amazing.

You know? And the kid comes in with this, you know, massive Costco pack, bigger than them. You know, I would snap a photo of the kid holding the Kleenex and I would just send it to the parents, say, thank you so much, you are a lifesaver. That took 10 seconds. Okay. Acknowledge, appreciate, right. Just. Find some way to make some deposits.

Okay. I think I've said enough about that. Okay. You really, it's the best thing that you can do is to really look at relationships in terms of this emotional bank account, right? Am I overdraft? Have I made too many requests recently? Do I need to make some deposits before I can ask anything else of these parents?

Okay? Now, there are times, of course. Where you are going to have to make withdrawals, right? And so here's where your mindsets come in, okay? Remembering that this is the most precious thing they have in the world that you're talking about. Okay? So if somebody is defensive and coming at you, you should have boundaries and help you a little bit with that in a second.

But do understand this is where they're coming from and just have this attitude of, yes, not that you're gonna be immediately defensive, but that. Foster a partnership attitude, solution oriented language. Okay. Just here's an idea. All right. Here's the two things that will help you with this. One is this incredible power of validation.

Okay, we're gonna talk about that. It is a basic human need lot of research about if people can feel validated, then, you know, a lot of litigation in all areas could have been avoided if only people had felt that somebody had listened to them. Not even apologize, but listen to them. Okay? So I'm gonna coach you a little bit about how you can validate parents.

And then the other thing is, I. What I always found was most helpful, especially if I was initiating it. If I had to make the call, I always had a request of the parent, okay? Because if you don't make a request of the parent, you are just calling to complain. Okay? So here's how it would usually go. For me, I would call and I would say, hi, Mrs.

Smith, this is Miss ses from blank, blank, blank. First of all, I wanna assure you, Johnny is fine. Okay, because the people are gonna panic. Why is the school calling? Okay. First off, Johnny is fine. Just want a few minutes of your time. I'm gonna ask you to do two things for me. The first is, please let Johnny know that I called.

Okay, so that's the first thing that's really easy, right? I mean, the parent was probably gonna go tell the kid anyway. Why is your teacher calling me? Okay? Because probably you already told the student, I'm gonna call your mom later. So you wanna make sure that they know you followed up with that. And then I'm gonna.

Make another request, whatever's appropriate. Please, could you speak to him about this or please could you get his side of the story with this and then get back to me? Okay? Make a request. Give them something to do. Don't just call and dump on them because that just sounds like you are calling to whine about their kid.

Okay? So years of parent phone calls have taught me that first, I assure them their child is safe. Secondly, I care about Johnny's success. Right, and here's what I want you to do, or here's the situation I'm calling about and here's my request of you. Okay? So say those words. They're safe. And I'm calling because I care about his success.

I care about him being a valued part of this classroom community, right? You need to really make sure you point that out, all right? That's if you are initiating the call, but what, when somebody is coming at you. They're coming in hot and heavy. They're coming in all mama bear, right? You know what that looks like?

They got some bad information, shall we say. Or maybe it's good information. Maybe something really, you know, did come up. But here are. Some tactics for this. First off, you know, avoid absolutes, right? No, always or never. Your child always shows up late, your child, never hands in their homework, like that's just not true, right?

Avoid the absolutes. Okay? No surprises. Don't call a parent when they have 20 missing assignments. Okay. The time to let them know, yes, they should be looking. We send them notices, we send them automated emails. They should look in the grade book. Yes. All those things completely understand that. However, the fact is, at a certain point in time, unless you live in some magical school district with magical students, you don't have to approach a parent with the fact that their child is not pulling their weight.

Don't wait till they're 20. Assignments deep in arrears. Okay. Round around around five. Okay. Something that is manageable that they can actually get caught up on. Otherwise, it just seems unmanageable. Right? And be aware of your tone. I mean, it's wonderful. You know, we always would, would learn, hopefully you learn this, that, you know, 10% is the word you use and 90% of communication is your body language.

Okay. Are your arms closed? Are your arms folded? Are you scowling? Right? You know, body language. Now, a lot of times, especially on the phone is you, you can't see someone's body language, but you can listen to their tone. Okay, so be aware of your tone. Condescending and superior is not a good look. And then of course, be aware if it's an email or a message on a communication app.

There is no, there is so much room for miscommunication. So a very good rule is. Always, if you are feeling that you are having to respond to somebody and you wanna make sure that your response isn't coming off as abrupt or defensive, you know, have someone else look at it, run it by your teacher bestie, be like, Hey, if you just got this email, what would you think?

Okay. And the other thing is, of course, and this is just basic professional standards, you maintain confidentiality. It's nobody's business, okay? And don't be talking about that kid in the lunchroom to your colleagues when you are at the gate. Other parents are around. Just, you know, be aware, even if you're not talking about their child, if you're talking about a child, it just, it, it doesn't.

It really doesn't reflect well on you. They don't think, right? Ooh, they're busy talking about other people's children. Are they talking about my child? Okay. So just be aware of your surroundings. Okay, so let's go to this basic piece of validation, because this is a piece I think most people miss, and it can reduce stress.

Conflict. Yeah, litigation. You know, we live in a very litigious society here, and what we really want. Is more productive problem solving, right? It can really help it. You know, when you are defensive with someone and you haven't validated them, it's very easy for them to go into fight or flight mode, okay?

And then you really have to set boundaries, right? When a parent is just going at you and they don't feel heard, so they're gonna literally yell, no, because you didn't hear 'em, because you weren't validating and acknowledging that you heard their concern. Right. You, you heard their words. It's not like you couldn't hear 'em 'cause they spoke softly, but you, they weren't feeling that you heard what their concern was.

And that's when people start getting hostile and loud. And that's when maybe you do need to set a boundary. I don't know if you know Jefferson Fisher. He, he's been huge on pic, TikTok. He really blew up. He's a lawyer who sits in his car and gives these little sound bites of three ways to such and such.

And it's all about communication. And something that sticks with me that he says is, I can't hear you when you're yelling. Right. And that actually is true. I mean, he just says it like that. I can't hear you when you're yelling. But the truth is, when you start to feel attacked, you cannot, that, that your prefrontal cortex, your decision making, your executive functioning shuts down once you're in fight or flight mode, right?

You can't hear and reason. And it's the same for parents. So if something is getting outta hand, it is no longer productive. It is best to draw a boundary and say. We seem a little heated right now, or I can't hear you when you are talking to me that loudly and that aggressively, I'm suggesting we reconvene and take this up over email or text, or have another meeting when we both calm down.

Right? You're gonna have to set a boundary, otherwise it's just gonna be non-productive. Okay? But what we wanna do is learn how to validate people so that they move from defensiveness into collaboration. People don't always need you to fix their problem. They want to feel heard. Right. When you validate someone's feelings, you just really help deescalate tension and just create this space for more productive conversations.

So what does it mean to validate somebody? You know, we know how to validate students, right? Validation. Some people right, don't understand this validation is acknowledg. It's not necessarily agreement. You don't have to agree with the person at all, but you do have to acknowledge the way they feel and that given what they know or what they've heard, like it might, it's real for them.

Okay, so here's some examples, right? One way you can validate somebody is reflect their emotion. You can say, wow, it sounds like this situation was very stressful for you. Or, I can see you're very passionate about this. Okay. That is a neutral statement. It's validating, it's kind of polite. It means that they're kind of probably going at you.

Okay. Look, I can see this is really important to you. I can see that this has caused you a lot of stress, right? It's just a neutral statement that shows you are listening without making a judgment. Okay? So that's one way to validate someone, and you can show that you're listening without argument. Right.

You can say that makes sense, right? You've put some thought into this, or I hear what you've saying, what you're saying, and you do have some real concerns. Okay. Especially if a child has gone home and thought, do you know the hot ones? Or if a, a parent thinks their kid's being bullied or unfairly treated, right, of course that parent's gonna come up.

So really, so prove that you're listening with without arguing. You can say things like that makes sense. I can see you. You have some real concerns here. You're not saying they're right, you're acknowledging their point. Okay? Again, you don't have to agree with somebody, but you do need to make them feel validated.

Another way is to normalize their feelings, right? Well, I completely understand why you would find that upsetting, right? If this is what my child, as a parent, if my child had come home and told me that, I would be real concerned too. Okay. You're normalizing their feelings. I think most parents would feel the same way in this situation.

Okay? It reduces feelings of isolation, melts, people feel seen, makes people feel, especially if you can say, as a parent, if you are a parent, right? They, they, they get it. You, you fight in the same battle. We're on the same team. And then, so when you are gonna validate people, letting them know they're heard, and then instead of before you race.

Into defending yourself defense mode, you're gonna ask more questions to show understanding. Can you tell me more about what's been most frustrating? Right. What's been the hardest part of this for you? Just ask questions. Get to understand the need beneath the need, okay? And it's gonna shift the conversation from conflict to problem solving, right?

Ideally, you want to gain consensus. You know what? What is a solution you wanna see right now? What are some ideas you think might help? How can we work together given that we have the same goal that your child is safe and productive at school? What can we do together? Okay. All right, so that's three things there.

I don't wanna make this episode too long, but if you did those things, if you had a plan, you communicated that plan, you followed through on that plan consistently. That's the first thing that would get rid of a whole bunch of drama. Next, if you. Take on this idea that every relationship is an emotional bank account.

This whole idea of needing to make deposits before you make withdrawals. You might be familiar with the research that says some says for every three positives, you need three positives before you. Say a negative and some research says five positives before a negative. And that's for everything. That's for classroom management.

That's for all kinds of things, right? Don't just focus on the negative, but in this particular example, make sure you are making easy lift deposits with parents before you have to make withdrawals. That will go a long way. And then the third piece. Is validate, validate, validate. You don't need to agree with people.

You are not giving them like the green light that they're right, but you are acknowledging that their concern is valid and you have heard it. Okay. And that's good for all relationships. All relationships. Okay. Listen again, I can count on one hand the number of kind of, I used to get the redneck. When I get upset at people or I'm starting to get agitated, I get a redneck.

My coworkers usually know that. And there was really only a couple of times where I could say, oh, I've gone into a coworker's room afterwards, and they're like, oh no, you've got the redneck, what's happening? Like, oh my gosh. It really, considering how many hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of parents I worked with and when I went back and looked at the situation, I can see that those situations where I did get the redneck, I had, you know, there were things I could have done.

To handle it differently. Not, I'm not saying that the, the, you know, the parents were all easy. Some of them, you know, they were unreasonable. But I can't, you know, I can't control other people's behavior. I can only control my own. And so I would always reflect afterwards and say, oh, what was my point, part in that?

Could I have done that differently? And you know, I'm a mature adult now. I've been working at relationships with all types of people for a very long time. I am glad that I have improved my skills. So it is a skillset. It is something you can actually do. All right, well, I hope that every parent you have this year is a huge fan of yours and that they are your champion and that they, you know, so, so many rewarding.

Relationships with parents over the years really have brought me so much joy and I feel that that is an opportunity not only to really get to know new kids every year. I always love getting to know new parents too. All right. Okay. Plenty there for you to chew on. You know, if you ever have any questions or thoughts or comments, you can always reach out to me.

You know what? I am not that busy that I don't answer my own mail. You can reach me at grace@gracestevens.com. That's easy, right? And that's it. Until next time, listen to the next episode. It's about fantastic mindsets and it is not just for educators. These mindsets are good for everybody. It is a shorter episode, but don't, don't take its length to to assume that it is, you know.

Less valuable. It's a good one. All right, so until the next episode, create your own power, bring your own sunshine, and good luck with those relationships. I.