Getting information from your child about their day at creche can sometimes feel like you are embarking on an interrogation routine with a chief suspect in a crime! And often all you get in return is a non-committal, don’t know, yes or no answer! This week we’ve been looking into Child Paths Early Years’ Software and finding out how their app helps parents to get their child to open up about their day at creche and create meaningful conversations without having to ask questions.

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Child Paths Can Help

Child Paths was designed by Ciaran Flynn, a father of two young daughters, to support, assist and educate parents in understanding more about what they can do at different stages of their child’s learning and development and potentially flag any developmental issues to allow for early intervention.

He realised teachers were under enormous pressure daily with paperwork and they did not have the platform or the time to communicate efficiently and effectively with parents. It was for this reason that Ciaran created the Child Paths App, to enable teachers to communicate much quicker and smarter to parents in real-time giving a greater insight into their child’s welfare, learning and development.

The app provides peace of mind, real-time updates and photos as they happen throughout the day. Parents can be kept up to speed on their child’s learning and development helping them to monitor, track and analyse information. With fantastic features around observations, milestones check-list with action plans, curriculum planning, food, activities, sleeping, photos, conversations and much more parents get a greater understanding of their child’s day through the app.

How To Get Your Child To Open Up About Their Day

Some children run out of creche or school and can’t wait to tell you all about their day and some don’t. Here are some tips to help learn more about their day at creche or school.

Don’t Bombard Them With Questions

Don’t bombard your child with questions as soon as you see them. They will often be tired and, just like us, may need time to decompress after their day.

Often sharing a snack or curling up together with a book will relax your child and give you an opportunity for some gentle questioning to get them to open up about their day at creche or school.

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Talk About Their Day

If you ask questions that require a simple yes, no or don’t know answer, your child is less likely to share information with you. Instead talk about their day.

If you are lucky enough to have an app like Child Paths in place you can use the information to jog your child’s memory and get them thinking and talking about their day.

For example:

• Instead of asking, “What was the best toy you played with today?’’, you can now start a conversation with “I see you were playing with the big yellow truck today”.
• Or instead of “Who did you play with in creche today?”, you can say, “I see you played with Sarah today, you love playing with Sarah”.
• Instead of “What did you have for lunch today?”, you can say, “I see you made cookies for lunch today, can I taste some of yours”.

Statements rather than questions can elicit a better response from a child, and encourages further conversation.

Ciara & Rian

Here’s one mother’s thoughts on Child Paths…
“As the mom to a 3 year old boy a lot of the time I get a reply “good” when I ask how was your day. Now I can say “you were the Weather Reader today” or “were you reading the Gruffalo” and suddenly we have a great conversation about it.
I love the app as I travel too and during the day it’s great to see what Rian gets up to and what he ate.

For me as the owner of Nurture, I am delighted that we invested in Child Paths with Ciaran and Robbie. I was slow to move to an app as we didn’t want to lose the personal touch for families but we haven’t looked back and we get a lot of very positive feedback about it”. Ciara & Rian, Child Paths users.

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Share Stories About Your Day

Sometimes by sharing stories and information with your child about your day, makes them more excited to share stories about their day.

Mum Grace told us – “My eldest has just left creche and the only way that we could get her to chat about her day was to start off by talking about our day. We gave up asking her in the car on the way home and waited until supper and started talking about what I did first and then asked her about what she did during the day.

My youngest is in creche and with him the best way to get him to talk about the day is to show him the pictures that the creche put up on the parent app.

Once he sees the pictures, he starts talking about what him and his friends did for the day.”

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Sit Down Together For Dinner or Family Time

Simply by coming together as a family and maybe chatting over dinner, offers a relaxed atmosphere for everyone to share insights into their day. From your child in creche to older children and you and your partner.

No TV, no phones, no distractions is the best way to bond and keep in touch with what is going on in everyone’s lives.

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Bedtime Staller

You may often find that your child can’t wait to tell you all about their day as soon as you mention bedtime! Build time into the bedtime routine to allow for them to share their stories with you.

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Don’t Forget To Listen

It may sound obvious, but often we cut across our children or only half listen to what they are saying. Take the time to really listen to what your child has to say. That way they know they can talk to you and are more likely to share stories and insights into their day with you.

If you want to learn more about Child Paths please go to www.childpaths.ie

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Do you have any tips on how to get your child to open up about their day at creche or have you tried any of our tips? We’d love to hear from you. Please share your stories with us in the comments box below.