In the landscape of a child’s life, parents and carers are the first and most enduring educators. The home learning environment remains the single biggest predictor of a child’s future success. Research consistently shows that when parents are actively engaged in their child’s learning, children make an average of five months' additional progress in a year. ¹
For many parents ‘child development’ can feel like a daunting academic subject that’s very distant from the day to day. Early years settings can help to demystify child development and also reframe it. As we all know, parents can often feel anxious about their child’s development, and greater understanding of what’s happening can help to alleviate worries and enable them to move beyond the typical ‘race to milestones’.
The What and the Why
Enabling parents and carers to see what their child is doing at nursery and why they’re doing it helps to communicate the importance of learning through play. For instance, if a child played with puppets, you might say ‘Today, Leo used the puppets to tell an exciting story; he created several characters and expressed feelings like anger, fear and sadness. This helps him to understand and manage his own emotions’.
Digital platforms, such as Tapestry, and physical learning journals allow parents to see what their child is doing and understand why they’re doing it. A shared photo, or video, of a child setting out the animals in a small world farm is interesting, but the accompanying observation provides far more insight into their child’s development, for example they may be exploring mathematical concepts like sorting, size and spatial awareness.
Educators can also share snippets from the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), Development Matters, or Birth to 5 Matters. Combined with the ‘what and why’ it can help parents to recognise learning in everyday moments and give them the vocabulary to discuss that learning with other interested adults.
Home Learning and the Value of the Everyday
Empowering parents means helping them realise that they don’t need expensive toys or school-like setups to support learning. The most effective home learning happens in the normality of daily life. The back-and-forth interactions, often called ‘serve and return’, is hugely valuable for children’s brain development.
Providing ideas for parents and carers to try at home illustrates how simple these can be:
- Narrate the day: Talk through the shopping list or what you notice on the walk to the park.
- Try open-ended questions: ‘How does the water feel on your hands?’
- Use puzzles to build problem solving skills and resilience: ‘That piece didn't fit. What could we try instead?’
- Use a ‘picture walk’ through a book to help develop attention to detail and connecting visual symbols to real-world objects: ‘What do you think is happening here?’
- Tell stories about when you were little to help children to understand narrative structure
- Go on a texture treasure hunt to help build descriptive vocabulary, for example they can try and find something ‘crunchy’, something ‘smooth, and something ‘tickly.’
Meeting Parents Where They Are
Some parents and carers experience barriers to engaging with their child’s setting. There are many reasons for this; English may be an additional language, work patterns may mean it is hard to find time to speak, or they may have past negative experiences of education themselves. Settings can provide useful support through a range of strategies such as:
- Offering flexible meeting times to help fit with work commitments
- Providing resources in home languages
- Using video as a way of demonstrating their child’s learning and interests
- Hosting special events at the setting
Our Educators’ Hub has extra resources on this topic, for instance ‘Stronger Together’ by SEND and early years specialist, Harshah Parmar, offers lots of practical advice and ideas: https://tapestry.info/stronger-together-working-with-parents/
Parents also view nursery staff as the experts and often look for guidance on parenting. Parents value staff who can offer gentle, non-judgemental tips on potty training, sleep routines, supporting development or responding to certain behaviours.
Building Trust Through Communication
Communication is the connector that helps to link the home to the setting. Parents hate feeling like they are getting a scripted version of their child's day. They value honesty over perfection. If a child had a wobble or struggled to share, parents usually prefer to know. It builds trust when a practitioner says, "He found it hard to take turns today, so we worked on it by doing X."
Where possible, regular, informal conversations during drop-off and pick-up are more valuable than formal meetings or reports. Parents also value having a window into their child’s day. A regular photo or video of their child playing, or laughing with a friend, provides immense peace of mind for a parent or carer.
The foundation of any partnership is trust and respect, and this is key in forging strong, sustainable links with parents and carers. Empowering parents isn't just about handing over a checklist of targets for them to complete with their child; it’s about demystifying child development and building a bridge between the early years setting and the home.
Dr Helen Edwards is the co-founder of Tapestry and a former teacher and nursery owner. Visit the Tapestry Educators’ Hub for more resources: https://tapestry.info/tapestry-education/
¹ Education Endowment Foundation, Parental Engagement, 2025 https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/teaching-learning-toolkit/parental-engagement
