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Students from diverse families who have different values, perspectives and cultures. As an educator, it is expected to understand the different culture of families as well as their culture. Parents will have high expectations on the educators, it is a challenge for the educator as she needs to understand different values, culture and background of the diverse family to fulfil the families’ expectation on educating their child. – Lim Wen Fei

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Challenges Faced by ECE Educators When Working With Families

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Challenges Faced by ECE Educators When Working With Families

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One of the challenges I faced when working together with parents was the fact that were not willing to meet me halfway or to even admit that there was a challenge that needed to be solved with their child, even when provided with reasonable evidence. Rather my concerns and advice would fall on deaf ear until it was too late.

So rather than coming to solve the problem, I had to grin and bear it will trying to help their child with the challenge with little to know assistance from parents at all.

- Arielle

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High expectations of parents towards child(ren) and teachers. Some parents fail to understand that every young child has their own pace of development, some of the parents compare one child's progress/development with another child. They also expect a lot from the teachers which is frustrating because teachers have many students to care for not only a specific child, alongside with parents not wanting to cooperate willingly and not respecting the teachers.
Many parents have their own demands in regards to their child's wants and needs which they want the teachers/school to follow on. At most times, some of the demands that are made are not suitable/appropriate for the child's development. Therefore, teachers provide suggestions but parents are not really willing to accept and make the necessary changes. - Roshni

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Challenges faced by ECE educators when working with families

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Challenges faced by ECE educators when working with families

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In my opinion, one of the challenges faced by ECE educators when working with families is parents have no enough time to communicate with the ECE. It is because most of the parent are dual working state nowadays. They have no enough time/ the right time for us to communicate the problem/status of their children. Therefore, ECE have a better understanding than their parents cause parents will have a lot of dependence on ECE. Also they may disturbing ECE's me-time for children's problem/status. For example texting them at 11pm for asking homework/status of the children.
-meighee-

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Challenges faced by early childhood educators when working with families

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Challenges faced by early childhood educators when working with families

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In my opinion, one of the challenges faced by ECE educators is it is quite difficult to meet every parents' demands. Sometimes parents may be demanding and difficult to please. They may expect for their child to receive special attention without realising the work it takes to give each child the time and attention they deserve. As a preschool teacher, we may be busy and may not always have the time or ability to every meet parents’ demands.

As an example, if most parents make special demands on teachers in order to take better care of their children, sometimes teachers may forget or neglect children who don't expect special attention.

--- Conie

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Challenges faced by ECE educators when working with families

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Challenges faced by ECE educators when working with families

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One of the challenges faced by teachers is the parent's willingness to cooperate with the teachers in school. Some parents expected their children to adapt all the basic skills and knowledge such as writing, reading, and learning another language in school. The parents expected the school teachers should be able to teach their children and the children should be able to know after the lessons. However, the parents who did not spend time teaching or guiding their children at home blamed the school for not teaching their children, or neglected their children that they are left behind. The parents do not realize that they actually neglected their children at home, or having less communication with their children. - Rui See

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Challenges faced by ECE educators when working with families

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Challenges faced by ECE educators when working with families

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When working with family, the biggest challenges that is faced is the lack of professional knowledge of ECE. In the recent society, most of the family are in dual working state; where both parents are working to earn a living. Even so, they expect the teachers to take special care for their children. And as teachers, we try our best to provide as many attention to each individual children, but for parents is not enough.

I once encountered a parent who's child was in the 4-years old class. This child have difficulty in reading, writing and mathematics. Even though it wasn't a disability, but he shows slow development. Thus, the class teacher would assign me to help him in reading, writing and mathematics assessment. One day, his mother dropped him off school, and told me that she want to talk to the class teacher. At first I thought I did something wrong and immediately informed the class teacher about this. Around 30 minutes later, the class teacher came back in and told me what the parent demanded her to do. The parent asked her to promote her child to the 5-years old ASAP, when the child just turn 4-years old. The teacher explained to the parent about the child's progress but the parent spoke a little louder saying that this teacher know nothing. Just for an additional information, the child just promoted to the 4-years old class a month or 2 ago.

- Claudia Choo

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Challenges faced by early childhood educators when working with families

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Challenges faced by early childhood educators when working with families

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Parents' expectations of their children differ from the school's philosophy of teaching and learning. Most parents care only about their child's grades and not about the development of the whole body and mind. Parents' relatively backward educational concepts stem from a lack of professional knowledge. For school teachers, there are activities that can be done to improve parents' educational philosophy. For example: cooperate with the school to run a parent school, conduct home visits and talks, recommend some scientific lectures and books on family education for parents, etc. The teacher should be a good listener, affirm the starting point of the student's parents, analyze the pros and cons of the parents' educational concept with the actual situation of the student, and then state his educational philosophy and what kind of growth this educational philosophy can bring to his child, to be reasonable and justified. Then regain the trust and support of the parents. - Soo Siao Teng

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Challenges faced by ECE educators when working with families 

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Challenges faced by ECE educators when working with families 

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Some parents expect too much from teachers, in a sense that they expect educators to act as if they were a "second parent". There are parents that need extra help with their children because they don't know how to control them and turn to the teacher to help discipline them. There are also cases where parents require their children to stay extra hours in school because they are busy working and cannot pick them up on time. Other than that, parents expect teachers to ensure that their children reach their age-appropriate targets for their development. However, a teacher can only do so much for their students. If a child is a little slow/ behind in their work, parents believe that it is because of the lack of quality of education from the school that this is happening. To sum up, parents expect teachers to groom their children into responsible and well disciplined persons, but parental involvement and guidance is just as important to ensure their children develop holistically.
- Vhania

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Challenges faced by early childhood educators when working with families (Uncooperative parent)

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Challenges faced by early childhood educators when working with families (Uncooperative parent)

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Parent not cooperating with the preschool teacher. Some of the parents have their own beliefs and already have a plan for their child's future. Therefore, they don’t expect their child needs to do well or do hard work at school. The child will often be absent from class or any additional program organized by the school. In addition, the teacher often updated the child's learning progress at school with the parent during monthly parent conferences, and the teacher had giving some suggestions to the parents on what the parent can do at home to help the child get improvement. However, the parent choose to ignore or did not carry out the method to help the child while still believing his child was still good at his young age. - Cing Ni

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Challenges faced by Early Childhood Educators when working with families 

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Challenges faced by Early Childhood Educators when working with families 

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One of the challenges faced by EC educators when working with families would be higher expectations of the educators. Many parents might expect educators to pay more attention to their children or a specific child and they would expect more from the educators. Other than that, the lack of cooperation given by the parents is one of the biggest challenges that an EC educator would face. In recent society, parents tend to be busy with their work and they might not be able to have effective communication with the educator. It will cause educators to not being able to get to know more about the child as well as educators would not be able to let the parents know about the problems that the child is facing. Also, parents might not have time to be involved in the activities that the school provided such as the parent-teacher association (PTA) meetings.

- Rebecca -

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Challenges faced by ECE educators when working with families

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Challenges faced by ECE educators when working with families

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Every parent has different thoughts, opinions, educational ideas, and expectations. It is hard for ECE educators to satisfy all parents and might bring negative impacts on the relationship between teachers and parents. For instance, parents will question or complain about teachers' teaching strategies, which might lead to arguments between parents and teachers. Besides that, nowadays, a lot of parents are busy with work and cannot participate in their children's learning. Hence, teachers can only use social media such as WhatsApp, Messenger, and others to deliver some information about children's academic performance to their parents, leading to a lack of face-to-face communication.

- Tan Jing Yi -

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Challenges (No 4: diverse families with differing backgrounds, values, child-rearing practices)

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Challenges (No 4: diverse families with differing backgrounds, values, child-rearing practices)

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This is also a case in which some parents do not want to go to school because they think that they are illiterate, feel not confident to talk or don’t know what to talk to teachers, and don’t know the school system. This is also why most parents use it as an excuse to neglect their children’s education. In addition, they are not aware of the significance of education so they just don’t care about it. Moreover, they also believe that only teachers have to be responsible for their kids’ education. If their kids don’t do well at school, they will blame the teacher. They don’t understand their responsibility towards their children’s learning. - Bella

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Challenges faced by early childhood educators when working with families

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Challenges faced by early childhood educators when working with families

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Family facing problems within the family structure. As we know, most parents are both participating in the labor force and there is a limited time for them to take care of their children. Therefore, they will take their parents over to live with them to take care of their children. I have seen behavioral and attitude problems with children who are dotingly cared for by their grandparents. Children who grow up in this family structure are accustomed to being accommodated, so if there is anyone who denies their will, they might behave badly. I had contact with a child who was taken care of by her grandparents previously and she always behave like a princess. She will scold her classmate who has different thoughts from her and also get angry easily with the teacher who denies her requirements. Besides that, she will feel shy and nervous when her mom comes to fetch her home because she seldom sees her mom at home and teachers need to comfort her to follow her mom. Sometimes, it embarrassed the teachers because she don't want to follow her mom back.
- Cze Hui

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Challenges faced by early childhood educators when working with families

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Challenges faced by early childhood educators when working with families

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One of the challenges might be the lack of parental education to help with children's schoolwork, children will have their schoolwork after school so parents need to guide their children to finish the schoolwork. However, they might have parents who will not guide their children in working on it so they will cause their child not to complete the homework that day. They may think their children will automatically take their schoolwork out and do it by themselves but children need guidance to work on it so collaboration of parents is very important. This collaboration of parents will make the children become self-disciplined because they will know and understand they have to complete the schoolwork by that day and this will slowly build up they are responsible for their academic. - Cheong Yi Xuan

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Families facing problems within family structure

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Families facing problems within family structure

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For example, parents arguing, divorce or separation. These examples may lead to some children often thinking family problems are their fault, even if nobody has told them this. Changes in the family can unsettle and upset and make children feel insecure and bad about themselves. They may feel angry, anxious, or depressed. These feelings can affect other areas of their lives such as school and friendships. We, teachers, ought to provide extra attention to these types of children may resulting unfair to other children. Therefore, teachers have a hard time struggling with the time to care for each child.
- Ana

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Challenges faced by early childhood educators when working with families 

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Challenges faced by early childhood educators when working with families 

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The challenge here would be the expectations and strategies that parents set towards their child. Therefore, educators would need to learn to be patient with parents and have good communication and at the same time be clear about the system the school follows. Another challenge is that teacher and parent would need to have meet ups. But, this is hard to meet because some parents may be working. With this issue, parents may not know how his or her child is developing and how the child is doing. -Shuwei

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Challenges faced by early childhood educators when working with families

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Challenges faced by early childhood educators when working with families

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Parents lack of time to be involved in school activities. For example, when parents are busy with work and some may even give their children to take care by their grandparents. So when the parents did not involve in the school activity or even at home, they might not know the growth and development stages of their child. And it will be difficult for the teacher to communicate with them about enhancing or correcting some of the child's doing or developments. Take for example, when a child behaves in an undesired behaviour, the teacher might need to get more information about what has happened to the child or does the child also behave like that at home. Thus, parent involvement is important, so in this case, the teacher need to communicate with their parents and come out with a solution on how to correct that undesired behaviour.  - Wong Jie Yi

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Challenges faced by early childhood educators when working with families

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Challenges faced by early childhood educators when working with families

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Early Childhood Educators are people who have direct contact and communicate with parents. However, there also had some challenges that remain between them. First, parents do not have time to participate in their children's activities at school. There are many activities in kindergarten for parents to join in, but most of the parents are working. In today's society, many parents go to work after sending their children to kindergarten, and also some parents can even put their children in kindergarten for a whole day. Parents are busy with work, so that is almost difficult to participate in school activities. For example, teachers give children homework to complete with their parents, so their parents need to supervise their children to complete their homework. However, parents who come home from work late will delay their children's studies. Second, parents have high expectations for their children's education. For example, there are no exams in kindergarten. Some parents are more concerned about academic performance, so they feel that no exams mean that their children have not learned anything. With this issue, the parents will start to question what the teacher is teaching their children.

---Lee Phyllis

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Challenges faced by early childhood educators in ECE settings

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Challenges faced by early childhood educators in ECE settings

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Parents had higher expectations in care for young children and their education. For example, some parents were too worried about their children's academic and performance, hence some of the parents might text the teachers frequently or having long conversation with the teachers when they pick up their children. Some more, they requested to the teachers that they want their children to do more homework like mathematics worksheets and so on so that their children get a better academic base. - Lee Yee Shan

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Challenges faced by early childhood educators when working with families

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Challenges faced by early childhood educators when working with families

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Parents don't have the time or bandwidth to be involved in school activities; people today prioritize work. ECE educators lack prior communication with the parents, and parents question why they need to be involved in their child's activities or find it troublesome. Parental involvement remains difficult for educators. - Tan Hui Ru

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Challenges faced by early childhood educators when working with families

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Challenges faced by early childhood educators when working with families

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Parents need extra support with caring young children. For example, some parents may have elderly parents to take care of and don't have enough time to take care of their children. They need ECE educators' help to take care their children. Besides, some parents might have special needs children or children need extra help in the developmental areas, so they need some extra support from ECE educators.  - Lee Wan Qi

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Students come from diverse families with different backgrounds, cultures, values, and child-rearing practices, so educators may not be prepared to cater to these differences if the school is not knowledgable in terms of diversity and multiculturalism. They would end up being unable to fulfill the families' expectations to provide the ideal education to their children. - Sabrina

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Examples of real-life challenges in ECE settings

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Examples of real-life challenges in ECE settings

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Parents lack of time/ bandwidth - For example, an ECE teacher asked parents to allow children to bring an item for show and tell but none of the children in the class brought anything to school. Therefore, the teacher could not conduct the show and session for the week and had to modify the activity. - Mariana