Post #2 in category. Please read all posts in numerical order.
Parents and family are not peripheral to their child’s development; they are central. And yet in clinical, therapeutic, and educational settings, they are often sidelined, treated as caretakers and observers rather than vital participants in the child’s assessments, learning, and treatments.
Physicians, therapists, and educators, acting with good intentions, form a kind of professional fraternity downplaying the role of the people who know the child best. Parents and family are the people who know the child best and are the people their child knows and trusts better than anyone else.
This parent-professional class system dynamic creates an artificial and unhealthy separation. The child lives in one world, professionals in another, and the family in a third, each with their own impressions, beliefs, language, expectations, methods and priorities. Communication, planning and effort are fragmented.
When caregiving, teaching and therapies are dispersed and fragmented, each guided by its own values, theory, methods, goals and priorities without consensus, without interdisciplinary communication and collaboration, development loses its coherence.
The child’s learning and development do not progress. The child and their family become increasingly confused, anxious, frustrated and disappointed, trapped in an unproductive tangle of different directions and failed intentions.
The family, rather than being recognized as an indispensable part of the child’s developmental journey, are often considered caregivers, protectors, providers instead of co-constructors and leaders of their child’s learning and development. Too often, this is also the belief and role held by the parents and family members themselves.
Parents defer to “experts” believing that a diploma ensures meaningful interpersonal connection, wise judgments, reliable and unfailing opinions and improved and comprehensive learning and development for their child.
While professional expertise should be an important and influential aspect of every child’s education and treatment, it is incomplete without the loving day-to-day experience, understanding, personal connection, sensitivity, and dedication only parents possess.
Meaningful progress rarely happens unless all three worlds (child, family, and professional) are brought into informed, regular, and respectful collaboration. Belief, integration, and collaboration are not merely ideals; they are essential.
Copyright © 2025 Shlomo Chaim
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