Page 329 - DEDU502_GUIDANCE_AND_COUNSELING_ENGLISH

Unit 32 : Problems of Guidance and Counseling in India and their Solutions

and reporting encouraging results. It is firmly believed that there is a genuine need for counseling Notes
parents.
Parent-teacher meetings are becoming more common in schools. A parent may visit a teacher at the
latter’s request or a parent may want to know why his/her child has not done well in a particular
subject handled by the teacher or ask the teacher for an explanation regarding a punishment to
pupil. There are other parents who believe in having informal contacts and hence visit schools.
Sometimes parents may feel embarrassed or offended or belittled about being asked by the teacher
to go over to the school to discuss their child. Some parents get annoyed because they believe that
it is the business of the school to take complete charge of their children and that they have no role
to play.
Parents usually are a heterogeneous lot. They have their own perceptions, expectations, prejudices,
likes and dislikes about the school or about individual teachers. A teacher’s apprehensions of parents
are not entirely unfounded. They find that some of the parents are belligerent, fault-finding and
unsympathetic. Some parents are uncooperative and disinterested.
Parents understandably are indulgent and so they see their children in a different light. On the
other hand, for the teacher, the child of a particular parent is one of the several hundred pupils he
may be seeing daily. The parent, as a parent, may not be able to see the problem of his or her child
as the teacher sees it (as a problem of a member of his class). If the parent is told of a conduct
problem of his child, he may feel hurt, embarrassed and may even become disturbed. The parent
may take a defensive attitude or react in a hostile manner. Some parents may feel hurt and become
very apologetic. The counselor has to see the pupil’s actions without bias and enlist the parent’s
cooperation for doing something positive for the child. The parent, motivated by his protective
instinct, may defend the child’s actions. In all such cases, the counselor must behave with great
caution and professional experience to win over the confidence and trust of the parent and help him
see the shortcomings or the problems of his child in an objective manner. This requires a considerable
amount of sympathetic, understanding of the parent. When once the parent’s confidence and trust
are secured, it becomes easy to enlist his/her cooperation. The assurance of confidentiality and
privacy will reassure him/her.
Some parents have difficulty in expressing themselves. A parent may be reluctant to talk. The
counselor has to first establish a warm relationship to open up lines of free communication by
talking about the positive aspects. The parent’s initial resistance can be overcome slowly with patient
handling. This brings home the importance of good relationships for the natural release of feelings.
By adopting an understanding attitude, the defensive reactions of the parent can be surmounted
and by persuading the parent to talk, his inhibitions can be overcome. It is always necessary to
remember that the manner in which the parent sees the probem of his child may be very different
from the way in which the teacher or counselor sees it. The important objective of a parent-teacher
conference is to gain insight into the child’s behaviour to get a proper perspective from the point of
view of the classroom situation and the home environment. It the parent thinks that he has to take
the blame for the failing of his child he may take a hostile attitude towards the school but if the
parent is made to feel that he will be helping in the resolution of his child’s problems, he will take
a different attitude. In the course of the meeting the parent may even be prepared to recognize the
problems of his child which he would have otherwise stoutly rejected if presented in a different
manner.
Sometimes parents’ help is sought to gain some information about the child’s personality problems.
Such information concerning the pupil may go a long way in resolving his problem and help him
in his scholastic work.
In most PTA meetings, group sessions can be organized to use the group approach to resolve
problems. In group situations people see their problems in relation to other people’s problems and
find them similar and, therefore, not unique. Understanding insights can help a great deal in reducing
the tensions and anxieties of parents.

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