In this episode of Early Childhood Chapters, we talk with Dr. Thomasa Bond about why family first isn’t just a philosophy but a practical approach to building strong, safe, and successful early childhood programs.
Dr. Bond brings over 30 years of experience in early childhood education, including 14 years as a child care licensing consultant. She shares real-world strategies to help program directors, teachers, and administrators strengthen communication with families and create true partnerships that put children’s well-being at the center.
Highlights include:
- Why clear, open communication with families starts before enrollment
- How strong policies and procedures build trust instead of barriers
- Advice for handling challenging conversations with parents with empathy and respect
- The importance of staff training to support effective, consistent communication
- Real-life scenarios where centers repaired trust with families after mistakes
- Simple changes centers can implement to keep families engaged and informed
Dr. Bond is the author of two Gryphon House books: The Early Childhood Director’s Guide to Solving Everyday Challenges and Build Your Dream Team: How to Recruit, Train, and Retain Early Childhood Staff.
She’s dedicated to helping programs create safe, high-quality environments that truly partner with families to support every child’s learning and well-being.
Connect with Dr. Bond:
- Website: drthomasa.com
- LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X: @DrThomasaBond
- Virtual and in-person training provided through Early Childhood Education Growth LLC
- Annual early childhood conference
Episode Transcript
Below is a lightly edited transcript of the recording.
Emily Garman: Dr. Bond, thank you so much for joining us today.
Dr. Thomasa Bond: Thank you so much for having me, Emily.
Emily Garman: Let’s jump right into our questions. In your experience as a licensing consultant, as an educator, as a program manager, what are some of the biggest barriers you see to truly having collaborative relationships between families and schools or centers? And how can programs overcome those barriers?
Dr. Thomasa Bond: So that's a very good question. One of the major things that families and centers have an issue with is good communication. So when I describe good communication, that doesn't mean just coming in, saying hi and bye or welcoming the families to the center or welcoming the children every day, that is just an introduction. Hello, I'm talking about true communication, where they understand when I say.
I mean the families understand what the policies and procedures are of the center, and that starts from the very beginning. So when you have good policies and procedures and you're communicating that with the families, and they not only understand them, but they buy into them as well, right? They say, yes, I believe in why you're doing this.
Then that makes it so much easier for you to set the tone for communicating with the parents, because you've created that union through that first communication that you have with them. Signing parents up for your center isn't just about having the child view the center or having the parents view the center. It's about having the parents understand what your concept is at the center and why it is that way.
So your policies and procedures aren't just something that you have parents sign off on. It's something that you explain to them so they understand why you're doing the things that you're doing. It's not just because you want to have policies and procedures written, it's because you want to keep the children and the families and the staff as well, safe at the center.
Emily Garman: And that buy-in; not every center is alike, not every school is alike. Your center may not be for everybody, and that's okay. But when you get that buy in, and you have that good communication, then you can make sure from the very beginning that everybody is a good fit.
Dr. Thomasa Bond: Absolutely, absolutely. I've had parents call me before, and they want to make a complaint against the center. And my first question to them always is, have you spoken to anyone at the center? Have you spoken to the administration? Have you spoken to the owner? Have you spoken to the staff? Have you made any advancement with communicating with anyone at the center?
And I want to say more times than not--if I had to put a percentage on it, I would say 95% of the time, parents have not spoken to anyone associated with the center in any way, shape or form. And when I ask parents, because that's a very telling question, right? When I ask them, why have you opted not to speak to the people that are caring for your child?
Their response is pretty similar every single time. They don't want their child to fall victim to anyone at the center if they complain. And my response is always the same: we should never take our children anywhere where we don't feel comfortable speaking to the staff about our children, whether it's a concern that we have or whether it's to praise them for what they're doing, we should have that rapport where we can communicate with them, because when you can't communicate, you're operating out of fear.
And that really comes from the communication that happens up front with the parents, from the staff at the center. When you start that communication off, the first thing you say is, we are going to collaborate together. This is going to be open communication. If you have concerns or if you have questions or if you want to just tell us about something that's really great going on at the center, feel free to share that with us.
This is a safe space, not just for your children, but for you as well. And when they understand that, then they feel comfortable expressing their concerns.
Emily Garman: And you would think that every center owner, every director would want families to come and talk to them about any concerns before they tried to escalate and make a complaint. I mean, any business owner would want you to come talk to them. So when there is a challenging situation with a parent; I mean, these things can happen for any number of reasons--a disagreement over discipline or some classroom practice.
What are some specific pieces of advice you have for educators and workers and center directors to really keep that relationship positive, focused on the child's success, because everything has to come back to the child and the child's well-being.
Dr. Thomasa Bond: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And the main thing in that scenario also would be communication, because before it escalates, we should be able to see what's going on. And parents just want to be heard. That's the main thing. So if a parent comes in and they say, say, for instance, they say, I walked into the classroom and I heard a staff person yelling at my child, or I heard them speaking inappropriately to the whole group.
When they say that to the administration, the first thing they should say is, I hear you and I will check into that, and I will make sure that this whomever the staff is, understands that that behavior is not acceptable. What they should not say is I know that staff so well, they would never say or do anything like that. You must have misunderstood.
Well, you're basically saying that their eyes were lying to them, their ears were lying to them, and that is never going to sit well with anyone. You want to acknowledge what they have said to you, and assure them that you will make sure that it never happens again, and they never observe anything like that. And if additional steps have to be taken, that you will make sure that you take those additional steps as needed.
Emily Garman: Over my career as a parent of a child in child care and in schools, I have seen conflicts like this. They come up all the time. And it's interesting to me because it's so clear, looking at it from the outside, that we all want the same thing. The parents want what's best for their child. The school, the center, the people who work there want the best thing for that child, too. So it's just in that communication and like you said, making that person feel heard and respected and that their concerns are valid.
Dr. Thomasa Bond: Yes, yes. And that's, that's the main key, because we we can't just look at it like, the parents are coming to us and they don't have a knowledge base or they don't have an understanding. We want to make it clear to them that they are their child's first teacher. We are here to support them in their efforts.
And in supporting them, one of the key things is making sure that we have two-way communication. That communication is not just one-sided. It's not just, we hold all of the knowledge, so you should come to us for everything. No, we share the knowledge. And sometimes if there's conflict between the staff and the parents, it can be something as easy as setting everyone down and figuring out where that conflict comes from.
Emily Garman: And that's communication. Again, I want to circle back to one thing you mentioned earlier about having really clear policies and procedures, and can you talk a bit about how having strong policies and procedures really can help build trust and better communication with families, rather than have it feel restrictive or just bureaucratic or having all these arbitrary rules.
Dr. Thomasa Bond: Yeah. Clear policies help everyone. So I like to describe policies and procedures as your roadmap to success, because they outline what you're going to do in the event that something occurs. So it's not a surprise to anyone. So, for example, if a parent comes to the center intoxicated. We don't want that to happen, right. But if they do, what policies are in place so that the parents understand this is what the center will do if this occurs, and the staff understand this is what they are required to do by the policies and procedures that are in place at the center if the situation occurs.
So it's not a shock to anyone. So say their policy is that the child will not be released to the parent. That someone on their emergency card will be contacted to come and pick up the child. That doesn't mean the parent isn't going to be upset about it, right? That’s not what we're saying at all, but their actions are what has caused this to occur.
And that has been clearly laid out in the policy and procedures. So everyone was aware of this upfront. So it's not a shock. So, if you don't have written policies and procedures, and say the same scenario happens and the staff person decides, oh well, I don't really know what to do. So I'm not going to call anyone. I'm just going to say to the parent, I'm not going to release the child to you.
Now we have a completely different scenario. The parents weren't aware of what was going to happen. The staff just made up something on their own. A lot of times if we don't have policies and procedures, we rely on our own experiences and our own knowledge, which sometimes can be correct, but other times cannot.
And when we have written policies and procedures, they should be vetted, right? So you should have someone from the police department, someone from Child Protective Services, maybe even a lawyer, read over your policies and procedures because that is your protection. So you want to make sure that your policies and procedures are also protecting the center, as well as the children and the families.
Emily Garman: And to make sure that everybody reacts the same, because, as you said, we all react off of our own experiences. One staff member might think, well, it's probably fine. Another staff member might call 911. You know, you'd want to have everybody responding in the same way, no matter who it is, who happens to be answering the door that day.
Dr. Thomasa Bond: Absolutely, absolutely.
Emily Garman: And that, I think, brings in the idea of providing training to staff to give them the skills to deal with this. So in that situation, it's conflict management. It's learning how to communicate clearly what their policies are and have confidence doing that. I'm curious about what are some ways that centers and schools can develop those communication skills, which not everybody who's working at a center or a school has had any training in that, necessarily. So what are some ways, with limited budgets and limited time, we can empower our staff to do better at that?
Dr. Thomasa Bond: I think you already stated that. That's training. So training and communication oftentimes go hand in hand. You can't really be good at one without being good at the other. So as administrators, it's their responsibility to make sure that their staff is trained properly in how to communicate. And like you stated, Emily, not everyone is great at communicating. It doesn't come naturally to a lot of people.
Hence why we have a lot of miscommunication. It's not because they're trying to give incorrect information. Sometimes they just don't understand the proper way to communicate. So it's important for the leadership to understand their staff's strengths and weaknesses through understanding their staff strengths and weaknesses. They can then curtail training around bringing up their weaknesses so that they are no longer a weakness. Right? A lot of times administrators say here, because all states have a requirement of the number of training hours that staff are required to complete. And they say, here, make sure you complete them. Well, a lot of time staff will take training that is convenient for them, that is free for them, but doesn't really provide any benefit for them. And that's really where management comes in: knowing their staff. And if you have staff that are having issues with communication, then that would be a training that you would schedule for them.
And that's where a true leadership comes in, right? Is knowing your staff so that you can help to elevate them. Required training should not just be, like okay, this is like a side dish on the menu, right? No, it's the full meal of the menu. Training is what we always need. It's what builds us to be better, not only for the children and the families that we're servicing, but for ourselves as human beings and individuals working in the field.
So it's not just about, oh, everyone has to have training, it's about building the training around the individual, which is way more important than the number of hours that you're required to have per state law. It's about building that skill level that makes them better.
Emily Garman: One thing that's so great about your book, The Early Childhood Directors Guide, is you provide real world scenarios, actual circumstances that you've observed or that people have told you about, because humans learn through stories, you know, we learn and we retain information better when it's a relatable scenario. And one thing you do in the book is, you tell these stories and then you teach around them. You kind of offer some suggestions of what could have been different, or what could have helped the situation go better. So I'm wondering if you could share 1 or 2 of those scenarios with us now, you know, a time that something happened, a missing communication or an error, and how the center repaired or rebuilt trust with a family after after something went wrong.
Dr. Thomasa Bond: That is why this book is so near and dear to my heart, because I feel a lot of times, mainly managers, they feel like, oh my gosh, this is only happening to me at my center. No one else has ever experienced this at their center. Right?
And so out of that comes isolation and loneliness, despair, guilt. Because you feel like I should have known better, but I didn’t know better. I should have been better at this. But I wasn't better at this. And so I really want to build people up from a human stance. Right? Like I have made mistakes as well in my past.
The difference between making a mistake and learning from it, is making a mistake and staying in that place and making that mistake over and over and over again. And so that's really what I wanted to show in this book, is that we can grow from mistakes, we can become better from the mistakes that we've made. And so just to touch on a couple of the mistakes that are made, transitions are very hard at centers, and I don't think we realize it.
I don't think we even expand upon it enough for people to even understand that transitions are very hard for staff, and they're very hard for children. And so what we tend to see during transition times, our children are lost or misplaced. And so they're lost literally all over the place; lost on the playground, they're left in classrooms, they're left in bathrooms, in hallways and stairs.
Just any place that you can leave a child, they're left, and oftentimes staff don't really want to acknowledge it's like, oh, well, they're really fast and that's how they got away. Or I had them all in line, but one of them got out of line, and we didn't realize it until we were back at the classroom, or we were outside.
And what I really like to drive home, not only in the book, but when I speak to early childhood providers, is when something like this occurs. It's never the fault of the child. The child is just literally being a child. If the parents wanted their children to be in charge of their care, they would have left them at home.
They did not have to pack them up and bring them to a child care center for you to then blame their child for the missteps. And so that's very important for us to understand that growth comes from acknowledging the mistakes that we made. There is no growth in blaming a child or blaming someone else for an incident that occurred that if it weren't for us not paying attention, not completing a name to face, the child would not have been left.
And so in scenarios such as that, I've had both extremes. I've had parents that were like, I can no longer trust this place with my child, so I'm going to pull my child. And I've had other instances where parents were like, they took all of the right steps, but it's generally when the child was left, like in a classroom, maybe that child was sleeping, so they didn't know that they were actually left , by the time someone came back to retrieve them. And so those parents are generally more forgiving. We could sort of understand that, right? Their child didn't even know that they were left.
A good example of that would be a center was taking the children outside and they changed their routine. Normally they would have the children line up, but this particular time they decided to have all of the children get all of their bedding and put it on their beds before they went outside. And this was before nap time, right? So they're already like a little on the cusp of being sleepy. Well, one child put everything on her cot and then covered herself from head to toe with her blanket. So when they were counting the children to go outside, clearly they missed one. But they they retrieved all the children that were on their feet. But she was not. But when they realized that she wasn't with them was when they were outside on the playground. So immediately the staff runs back in, and it took her a minute to find her because all of the cots look the exact same way. They all had blankets on them. So once she realized that she was under the blanket, you know, she was asleep, they woke her up and they took her outside. But it was probably maybe 5 or 6 minutes that she was in there by herself. But she wasn't aware that she was by herself. So the parents were a little more forgiving.
They're not as forgiving when their child has exited the building and was found on a major street by someone not working at the center, and then having to bring that child back to the center.
You know, I don't blame parents for either one of those scenarios, because at the end of the day, we have to do what makes us feel comfortable with our children. And if that means we have to find another place for our child, we can trust that. Because in both of those scenarios, the staff were terminated from the center, but it didn't matter that the staff was terminated, right? The other one, they were like, okay, well, an accident happened. We understand it. My child didn't know any difference. So that was the difference between the two. I am running a few minutes late; my previous meeting is running over.
But in both of those scenarios, they did not have a policy on what would happen to staff, and I say have degrees because it depends on the scenario. One scenario a child by the grace of God was not killed on a major street, and the other one had no idea that they were ever left alone at all. So these are two major extremes here, and everywhere in between, we have to have policies that address this.
What extreme will the person be terminated? What extreme will the person be written up? What extreme will the person be retrained? Or maybe they will be placed on a probationary period until they have proven themselves again. There's all of these different steps that we can put in place so it doesn't have to be just one. So we have to realize that there's different levels for things as well.
Emily Garman: So for people who are listening, whether they are center directors, managers, people who work in childcare centers or schools, what are some small things? I'm always trying to think of something that somebody can take away after they're listening. Today, small changes that centers can implement to get back to the heart of building those strong bonds with families and putting the family first and the relationship first so that child benefits from a really positive and strong relationship between a center and their family. What are some little changes that that we can make?
Dr. Thomasa Bond: I would start first with having like maybe a suggestion box for the parents or having like if you have an app, a way that the parents can anonymously state any concerns that they may have, that they may have not felt comfortable sharing with you. And the reason I say that is because they might have a concern that they don't want to share, or they don't feel comfortable sharing, but you won't ever know that.
And then they may unenroll their child, where it would could be something that you could address. So a lot of times parents don't like change there. Like the rest of us. We don't really like change all the time! And you may have had to move staff around for some reason, but they don't say anything, but they're upset about it.
And so a lot of times what parents will do is they will just start shopping around for another center without ever voicing their concerns to you, and then you might have a mass exodus from your center, and you might not know why that is happening. So maybe start with a suggestion box, or a way that you can get a pulse on your parents to know what they're actually thinking, and so that you can address any issues that they may be having before they turn into something larger.
Emily Garman: I want to touch on your books, so I'll ask you where folks can find you on social media and on the web. But you have two books available from Gryphon House. One is the Early Childhood Director's Guide to Solving Everyday Challenges, and that's a book we've been talking about and referring to a lot today.
This is a great book filled with lots of real world scenarios and good examples of how centers can address those challenges. And then your other book is called Build Your Dream Team How to Recruit, Train and Retain Early Childhood Staff. So there's kind of similar themes in there, but it's about staff development too, which we've touched on today.
So tell us where people can connect with you online.
Dr. Thomasa Bond: So you can connect with me online really easy through Facebook, Instagram. I'm also on X as well as I have a blog that I do and they are all DrThomasaBond. Or just search for my name and you’ll find me. Either way, I look forward to connecting with you.
Emily Garman: Thank you so much for joining us today. This has been a really great chat. Thank you so much.
Dr. Thomasa Bond: Thank you Emily, I enjoyed my conversation with you today.
Emily Garman: Thank you for joining us for early childhood Chapters. Our guest today was Dr. Thomasa Bond, who has more than 30 years of experience and early childhood education, including 14 years as a child care licensing consultant. She earned her doctorate of education in organizational leadership with a minor in early childhood education. And she's the author of two Gryphon House books, The Early Childhood Directors Guide to Solving Everyday Challenges, which is a book we talked a lot about today, as well as Build Your Dream Team. She's dedicated to helping programs create safe, high quality centers that truly partner with families to support every child's learning and well-being.
Find her on social media and on the web at DrThomasa. That's just like Thomas with an A at the end. drthomasa.com. We really appreciate your time today, Dr. Bond.
