Collaborative community relationships and parental involvement in child development

¶ … Collaborative Community Relationship Important

There are a variety of reasons as to why the collaborative community relationship is important in the development of a child. One of the most important of these reasons is the fact that the child can learn a lot about society -- and thereby spur his or her social development -- by interacting with various elements of a surrounding community (NEA 2008). Social skills may also be developed within the home environment -- to a certain extent. However, the limitations in the amount and types of people in a home setting are not nearly as prevalent in community settings. Thus, a child is able to learn how to interact with others in a community setting who are not necessarily like him or her in terms of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, etc.

Additionally, in community settings children are able to understand greater, over-arching elements of the world around them which might not necessarily come into play when they are simply at home or school. Children can learn valuable lessons about the vicissitudes of life, its unfairness, and other aspects of the human experience via interacting with strangers in community settings. They do not even necessarily have to interact with them in the conventional sense of talking or touching (playing) with them -- observation can play a valuable role in what children learn and how they incorporate that learning into their own lives as well.

It appears that the element of the communal association that may be important to a child than others is that which takes place in school settings. There is a certain amount of veracity in this assertion for the simple fact that children can readily interact (via conversation, touching, playing, and even learning) with their own peer group in this particular setting. Plus, there is an element of neutrality that abounds in the classroom environment which may not always exist when children are interacting with one another at home or perhaps in a playground. This fact -- that the classroom is a valuable resource for communal relationships with children is why it is valuable to involve parents in classroom activities as much as possible. Doing so enables children to interact with not only their peer group, but with other adults as well. Parents can be included by having volunteer days in which a finite number is allowed to "work" in the classroom for a day, assisting the teacher and witnessing fisrt-hand the education of their children. Parents can also volunteer as playground monitors and accompany classrooms on field trips.

In parent teacher conferences, it is essential for a pedagogue to emphasize the virtues of play to learn in order for parents to become cognizant of the variety of stimulation and didactic value that comes from children pleasurably engaging in entertaining activities with others (Ginsburg, 2007). The best way to convey this sentiment to parents is to tell them about the good that providing their children a plethora of settings in which to interact with others in different ways does. These boons not only include those related to social skills, such as the adoption of non-verbal communication cues, but also those pertaining to cognitive skills (Bergen, 2002) as children learn how to involve themselves with others and learn different facets of life.