1. Single moms are the problem. Only 9 percent of low-income, urban moms have been single throughout their child’s first five years. Thirty-five percent were married to, or in a relationship with, the child’s father for that entire time.*

2. Absent dads are the problem. Sixty percent of low-income dads see at least one of their children daily. Another 16 percent see their children weekly.*

3. Black dads are the problem. Among men who don’t live with their children, black fathers are more likely than white or Hispanic dads to have a daily presence in their kids’ lives.

4. Poor people are lazy. In 2004, there was at least one adult with a job in 60 percent of families on food stamps that had both kids and a nondisabled, working-age adult.

5. If you’re not officially poor, you’re doing okay. The federal poverty line for a family of two parents and two children in 2012 was $23,283. Basic needs cost at least twice that in 615 of America’s cities and regions.

6. Go to college, get out of poverty. In 2012, about 1.1 million people who made less than $25,000 a year, worked full time, and were heads of household had a bachelor’s degree.**

7. We’re winning the war on poverty. The number of households with children living on less than $2 a day per person has grown 160 percent since 1996, to 1.65 million families in 2011.

8. The days of old ladies eating cat food are over. The share of elderly single women living in extreme poverty jumped 31 percent from 2011 to 2012.

9. The homeless are drunk street people. One in 45 kids in the United States experiences homelessness each year. In New York City alone, 22,000 children are homeless.

10. Handouts are bankrupting us. In 2012, total welfare funding was 0.47 percent of thefederal budget.

*Source: Analysis by Dr. Laura Tach at Cornell University.

**Source: Census

This week I thought we could think about ways to encourage families to support  early math concepts at home with some simple ideas that anyone can do.

Everyday chores may be horribly boring to the adults who do them (ME!) but children can find joy in the same tasks if they are approached as fun, participatory games.  Take laundry.  For me, this is the worst of the worst.  The never-ending piles of dirty clothes, followed by the never-ending piles of clean clothes that need to be put away followed by the never-ending pile of dirty clothes.  It is a cycle that never ends.  Even when all of the baskets are empty and everything is put away, it only lasts a moment – not even long enough to appreciate it.

The following ideas can be incorporated into a parent newsletter.  Be sure to let them know that encouraging early math skills at home is easier than they think.

There is so much math in laundry, you just have to find it.  

From the dirty clothes pile, have your children find all of the white clothes and pile them together.  Then ask them to find all of the jeans, and make another pile.  This act of sorting can be made more fun if you hide three baskets around the room, with one example of each kind of clothing at the bottom (jeans, whites, and everything else) so they have to find the place each kind of clothing belongs.  This might be very hard, since you are asking them to think of more than one attribute at a time. For younger children, just divide the clothes into two categories.

Once the clothes are clean, have the children find the matching socks and show them how to roll them together.  Then have them practice their aim, by tossing them back into the basket.  This simple activity encourages matching skills, aiming skills, spatial knowledge,  attribute definition, and sorting.  This also means that you don’t have to find the matching socks.  See, it makes your life easier.

Putting away laundry can also be fun.  Set the basket with all of the clean clothes near the bedrooms.  Make sure that the children know and can identify everyone’s beds.  Then, give each child an item of clothing and have them determine who it belongs to.  Once they have it figured out, time them as they run to the owner’s bed to deposit the item of clothing there.  Do this activity before you fold anything, since everything will come unfolded during the game.  Once the clothes are distributed on each bed, have the children determine who has the most clothes, who has the least, who has the biggest, and who has the smallest.  If they aren’t sure about sizes, have them bring items from two beds back and compare them so they can see definitively which items are bigger or smaller.

Over the next few weeks, I am going to describe other simple daily tasks that can encourage early math skills.  What I like about many of these is that the home provider can also try many of these ideas out.  Let us know if you do.

For some practitioners it is the adult relationships that are difficult.  Navigating adult personalities and work styles can be tiring and irksome especially when you are trying to meet the needs of several small children all at the same time.  Although we can quibble and quarrel with our colleagues, we must maintain healthy and appropriate relationships with families at all times. Professionals understand that children do not exist in a vacuum.  They come to us from a deeply complex context that includes their families, their communities, and the larger sphere of their cultures.  Ensuring that all parents feel welcome and included in their children’s program is the job of the teacher and/or the director.

The first and maybe most important way to commit to a culture of inclusivity is to have an “Open-Door Policy” and to make sure that families are aware of it.  It is equally important that if a family member does “drop in” that you make them feel welcome.  Over the years, I have been in programs that have official open-door policies on paper, but in reality they don’t make families feel welcome.  If you are going to talk-the-talk, you have to walk-the-walk.

Most families will not drop in or stop by primarily because they can’t.  Their children are in child care because the parents have to work so it is not realistic to think that you will have a program filled with random adults.  You won’t.

So how do you encourage volunteer participation in your program?  Some programs require a minimum number of volunteer hours throughout the year through fundraising or classroom participation.  Others have no requirements but invite families to participate when they are able.  You should also pay attention to the fact that different families have different access to resources.  Some people have some money. Some people have some time. Some people have some skills. Some people have extremely limited resources but they have an interest in being involved and they simply don’t know how.

Tap into those resources and use them wisely.  Help the families with limited resources to find ways to be included.  Invite them to arrive 15 minutes early so they can read with their child before work.  Orient families to the program and communicate with them while they are there.  Help families whose home language is different than English to feel welcome by inviting them to participate in activities that don’t require a lot of speaking or reading and writing.

Most of all, don’t get in the habit of continually inviting the same people over and over.  You may end up with a group of volunteers who feel like they are overworked, and a group who feel increasingly disenfranchised from the program.

Family child care and home based child care may be more affordable for many people, but that is not a foregone conclusion.  There are many reasons why there is so much variability in the costs of child care.

1.  Geography, age, and the quality of services.

2.  Programs that take advantage of available subsidies.

3.  Tax Credits

4.  Multi-child discounts

5.  Extended hours/flexible hours

Child care directors should become well-versed in helping their families understand the ins and outs of the costs of child care.  Making programming more affordable for the clients does not necessarily reduce profits.  Knowing about and maximizing available subsidies, educating parents on tax credits, allowing for flexible programming, and offering multi-child discounts may make a center the most popular place around.  A full program complete with happy families is always going to be richer than all others.

Remember, for a lot of young families, you may be the ONLY friendly face they see all day. You are a daily presence that should help parents (or other caretakers) feel good, feel secure and feel like they are being supported in raising their families.

Informal communication lays the foundation for a trusting relationship.  It is through the informal moments that families learn to trust you and believe that you are on their side.  Without this part of the communication process, formal communication can be very difficult.  (Let’s talk about formal communication next week!)

Make time for these interactions.  Be sure to meet and greet the family members in the morning.  Ask about them, their health, their other children.  Take notice of the things going on in their lives and ask about them.

A smile goes a long way.

However….

The first word that comes to mind (or should come to mind) when thinking about communicating with families is RESPECT. Time and again, we hear, “Parents are their child’s first teacher”.  They are and they should be respected as such.

I also operate under the premise that ALL parents love their children as much as I love mine.  With that in mind, I try to be understanding of different parenting styles, ways to rear and guide children and expressions of love and care.  Each time I encounter a parent doing something differently than I might do it, I say to myself, “There are many right ways.” This is not always easy, as I worry about children, but most parental (nearly all) actions come out of love and having  their child’s best interests at heart.

As we explore ideas of family communication, I would love to hear how you find success in creating a dialogue with the parents and family members of the children in your center.