I overheard a charming conversation in line at the grocery store last week. It was between a mom and her – I would guess – six-year-old who were talking about an upcoming parent-teacher conference. In between piling bags of apples and goldfish and cheese sticks onto the checkout counter, Mom was casually chitchatting with her son about how he felt at school, what he thought of his teacher, and what subjects were his most and least favorites. Then, as she zipped her card through the reader and began loading bags into the cart, she said, “You know, this is my chance to spend some one-on-one time with your teacher. Is there anything you’d like her to know or want me to talk to her about?”

Damn. Nice job, Mom. Done well, parent-teacher conferences are incredible opportunities to give our kids their best possible school experience. But those opportunities can only be realized if both the parent and the teacher come into the conference with that goal in mind. I’ve participated in about a hundred parent-teacher conferences myself, but only as a mom. So I reached out to a friend I’ll call Sarah who, as a longtime and outstanding teacher, has probably done thousands. Here’s a few tips from both of our perspectives. 

Have a Chat with your Child Before the Conference.

This one might sound a little silly. I’m sure you ask you child about school every single day. I’m equally sure that most days your child says it was fine before angling for a snack or taking a few minutes to zone out after a long day. That is unless something dramatic happened. If they got invited to a birthday party or excluded from a birthday party. If they won the spelling bee or no one sat with them at lunch. If they were bored or their best friend didn’t talk to them or someone brought in cupcakes. This is the stuff that generally bubbles up into a kid’s mind when asked about their day. This means that you, doting mama, are only getting a highlights reel – or a lowlights reel, as the case may be – of your child’s school day. You are not getting the full picture.

Of course, it’s important to know as much as possible about your child’s feelings and experiences, and sometimes it’s super important to share them with their teachers. But something I’ve learned is that if I really wanted to help my kids thrive at school, I needed to get my hands around more than just their best days and worst days; I needed to have insight into their typical days. Sad to say, I’ve squandered sizeable chunks of precious conference time probing why no one sat with Scout at lunch that day she came home sad rather than looking into who she was playing with at recess all the other days. 

When you cut to the chase, there are only two people who really know your child’s day to day, minute to minute at school: your child and their teacher. Since I was never one of those two people, I always started parent-teacher conferences with a pre-conference conversation with my child. Usually over cookies.

Ask Younger Kids Questions Aimed at Helping you Understand their Overall School Experience.

I’ve learned that even young children can offer meaningful insight into their day-to-day if they’re led in the right direction, so I asked broad, open-ended questions that aimed at typicality. When you get to school do you usually feel good about being there? Do you generally feel that you can ask your teacher questions when you have them? What parts of the day do you look forward to most and which are your least favorite? Is there anything you’d like your teacher to help you with more? Is there anything you wish your teacher understood about you? Is there anything you’d like me to discuss with your teacher?

Give Older Kids the Power and Confidence to Speak for Themselves.

Older kids benefit from this sort of pre-conference prep as well, especially if they’re attending. Learning how to actively participate in thoughtful conversations with their teachers is a huge growth point for kids who will be expected to do more and more of that as they get older. As Sarah so wisely recommends:

Prepare your child to participate in the conference (if age appropriate). We have students in grades 5-8 attend and help to lead the discussion with some preparation. At this age, it is important for them to have some voice and ownership, so let them grow their skills at facilitating the conversation. Don’t always speak for them so that they can develop their confidence in self-advocacy and accountability.

Understand that the Best Way to Improve your Child’s Educational Experience is to Partner with their Teacher

Whenever I walked into a parent teacher conference, I understood my job in that moment to be threefold: to learn information about my child from the teacher; to share information about my child with the teacher; and to forge the strongest relationship possible between my child and their teacher. The most effective way to do that is by entering into a partnership with that teacher. 

Of course, I needed information about my child. Is she on track academically? Is he engaged and participating in class? Is she making connections with the other kids? Do you have any specific concerns I should know about?

But if I was the only one who walked out of the conference having learned something, I hadn’t fully done my job. To give my kids the healthiest, most satisfying school experience, I needed to make sure that their teachers understood them. On this point, I really can’t say it better than Sarah did:

We do our best job in partnership with you. We are on the same team. We share the same goals – the academic, social, and emotional growth of our students. Let us know what works for your child and what doesn’t. Share information about learning styles, needs, and things that may be happening at home that may impact the way a child enters their day. Let us know if he/she is having a rough week. Communicate changes so that we can support the child.

But, at least with regard to younger kids, even that isn’t the whole enchilada. See, what I was really trying to achieve wasn’t just an excellent academic experience; it was a happy one. That means I needed to make sure my kids feltunderstood by their teachers. I had a simple trick for this that worked out really well over the years. Near the end of each conference, I would ask the teacher some approximation of the following question: When I get home, my child is going to ask me what happened at this conference and, specifically, what you said about them. What would you like me to tell them?

This question has never, ever failed to elicit a lovely response. Something that might otherwise have gone unsaid and unknown had I not carved out some space for it in the crush of sharing and learning going on between the teacher and me. I would carefully write down the lovely response word for word, and, the next morning, when I was grilled about the whole thing over Cheerios, I would read the quote verbatim to my inquisitor.

She said, “I can see how eager Scout is to learn, and I’m so excited about working with her this year.”

“Tiggs brings so much energy and enthusiasm, it’s contagious,” he said.

“Max has a way of making everyone feel included. She makes the class a kinder, warmer place to be.”

And, simple as it seems, my kids would march off to school that day feeling a little more seen, a little more understood, and a little more appreciated than they had the day before. 

If you’ve got kids too young to attend parent teacher conferences with you, give it a try. If nothing else, it’s a really nice way to end the conversation. And it’ll give you a chance to add another bullet to your already lengthy and outstanding list of “momccomplishments:” Rapport-Builder-in-Chief.

And, Like Any Partnership, You’ll Need to Lean Heavily into Trust.

This is the biggie. It’s all sunshine and roses when the news is good. Who struggles to accept that their child is super smart or unfailingly kind or a diligent student who makes and keeps friends easily? It’s not until you hit a dark patch that you realize just how important trust is in your relationship with your child’s teacher. What I’ve seen is that these dark patches tend to come in two slightly different shades.

The first is the “I-had-no-idea” shade. No one wants an unpleasant surprise during a parent-teacher conference. To learn for the first time that your fourth grader is still struggling with math facts. Or that your happy-go-lucky son is having a serious problem paying attention in class. Or that your vivacious daughter is quiet as a church mouse at school and doesn’t seem to be making friends. Having a teacher tell us something we think we should already know about our child is embarrassing. It makes us feel horrible. Like we’ve failed. Believe me, I’ve been there.

The second is the “my-child-would-never” shade. This one is the worst. When you walk into a conference thinking everything is fine only to learn that your child has been misrepresenting something to you, or “borrowing” work from other kids in the class, or is reported to be the villain in the latest fourth grade dust up. An image of your wonderfully kind, innocent, honest child floats up into your mind and your eyes fill with tears and every protective instinct you’ve ever had surges up like a tempest thundering, MY CHILD WOULD NEVER!

(Well, at least that’s what happened to me.)

Over time I learned that these instincts are powerful, common, and, in my case at least, had very little to do with my child. They had to do with how incredibly invested I was in raising good kids. I didn’t want to feel or look like a bad parent. I didn’t want to think that I’d raised a kid who was even capable of dishonesty or unkindness. 

Spoiler: turns out we’re all capable of dishonesty and unkindness, and a few years into the game it became obvious to me that even the best, most well raised kids in the world make mistakes and bad decisions and, sometimes, suffer consequences for them. And when good kids make bad choices, they don’t need defense counsel; they need our counsel. Defending or ignoring our kids’ flaws and missteps doesn’t make them disappear; in fact, it makes it more likely they’ll be repeated. And it denies our kids the loving guidance they need during a difficult time, abandoning them to manage whatever they’re struggling with on their own. 

I’ve come to completely agree with Sarah when it comes to unexpected or difficult news from your child’s teacher:

Believe us. Recognize that your child may want to avoid being in trouble or have a limited perspective and may reframe or misstate a situation/experience/encounter because of the limited perspective in their interpretation to you. Your child’s teacher truly wants success for him/her and will share the best information to achieve that success. Let go of your natural defensive response. Any concern brought to your attention is not a reflection of you and your parenting, but rather the moment that your child is in, and together we can collaborate on a plan to help them navigate it.

Of course, if you sense or your child tells you something that sends your spidey senses spinning, that needs to be explored. And you shouldn’t wait for a scheduled conference to do it. 

But I’ve never had to deal with that. My main challenge was my hesitancy to trust that my child’s teacher might know something about my child that I didn’t, especially when it involved a growth point. I got over it when I arrived at one stunningly simple realization: sharing difficult realities with me wasn’t the teacher’s idea of a day at the beach either. They wanted sunshine and roses as much as I did. It would have been so much easier for them to avoid or minimize my kids’ struggles, but instead they jumped into them with me. They opened up tough conversations and joined me in difficult moments, ones that might have ended in tears or contention or dismissal or denial. They did that for the sole purpose of ensuring that my kids would not be abandoned to manage whatever they were struggling with alone. And if that selfless, whole-hearted commitment to helping kids grow doesn’t build trust, I don’t know what does.