Parent participation

At paeds prac at a community development centre, I ran 2 classes for children having difficulty with their gross motor skills like kicking, jumping and passing a ball. Like most things, gross motor skills require daily practice, and 2 sessions per week wouldn't be enough for a child to master a skill. One of the difficult parts about treating children in pre primary and year 1 is you can't just prescribe to the child a home exercise program and expect them to do it by themselves. Instead the responsibility is with the parents to cut out a small part of their day for play time with their child.

I would like to share some strategies which I used to good effect over my time doing paeds.
(1) Formal written program: For a few children who had complex family situations, such as their parents were no longer together, in foster care or being cared for by a faimly member it is not possible to liase directly with the parent of the child. I sent a formal written program home to these parents and carers outline what is being doing during the group and some tips for play at home. I requested that they fill in a grid at the back of the program outline what they were doing and if any difficulties or questions arose.

(2) Parent participation in the classes: During the class I directly called upon parents who had previously having difficulty playing with their children. This gave them the opposrtunity to supervise a balance beam activity or rocker board which allows them to get the feel and take a few ideas away from the class.

(3) Checking homework: Each week a good strategy I used was to check the child's "homework". This was in a grid similiar to the above which wasn't aimed at competition between the children but more so as a motivator during the week for both the parent and child.

The above 3 strategies worked really well for me during clinic. At the very beginning of prac I solely using repetition each week to the child and parent to practice the skills which wasn't really hitting home. So i put into practice some of these strategies based on the child's case and their worked really well. As most of you know already paeds can be a difficult area to work in, so hopefully if you are going to work in paeds or have an upcoming prac in paeds you can use some of these strategies to improve the outcome for the child, so they can all have fun participating well in sport at school and in the community.