Overcoming Communication Barriers Between Parents and Teachers

When a child with an intellectual disability enters a preschool setting, the adults in that child’s life – parents and teachers – instantly become partners. But that partnership doesn’t always run smoothly. Misunderstandings pile up, messages get lost, and before long, both sides feel frustrated. The teacher wonders why the parent never shows up to meetings. The parent wonders why the school never seems to listen. Meanwhile, the child – who needs both worlds to work together – is caught in the middle. Understanding why these communication breakdowns happen, and how to fix them, is one of the most practical skills any educator or parent can develop.

Why communication breaks down: the common sources of misunderstanding 🔗

Communication problems between parents and teachers rarely happen because either party is indifferent or malicious. They usually stem from deeply rooted structural and personal barriers that neither side fully sees in the other.

Research published in the European Journal of Educational Studies categorises these barriers into four broad types: personal, socio-cultural, accessibility, and field-and-status barriers. Each plays a real role in everyday school-family interactions. A teacher may rely on educational jargon – words like “developmental milestones,” “IEP goals,” or “sensory processing” – without realising these terms are unfamiliar or even alienating to many parents. Teachers should actively review their written and verbal communication to remove technical language, and where professional terminology is unavoidable, it must be clearly explained.

Cultural and socioeconomic factors add another layer of complexity. In some cultural contexts, asking questions of a teacher is seen as disrespectful, which means a quiet parent may not be a disengaged one. Some families may also hold the view that academic matters are solely the school’s domain – not out of negligence, but out of deep respect for the teacher’s role. Similarly, logistical constraints such as irregular work schedules, lack of transport, or responsibility for younger siblings at home can make it genuinely impossible for many parents to attend school events or meetings, even when they want to.

From the teacher’s side, only about 24% of teachers demonstrate high competence in parent-teacher communication, and novice teachers consistently report that building relationships with families is the most difficult part of entering the profession. This is not a moral failing – it reflects a real gap in how teacher training programmes prepare educators to work with families, particularly those of children with disabilities.

How each side perceives the other – and why it matters 🔗

One of the most damaging dynamics in parent-teacher relationships is misreading the other person’s behaviour. A teacher may interpret a parent’s assertiveness as hostility or “being difficult.” A parent who pushes back in meetings or asks many questions might simply be frightened – trying to advocate for a child they feel is not being heard. On the other side, parents of children with special needs often feel blamed or stigmatised for their child’s challenges, and when they sense this, they pull back – making them appear uninterested when they are actually overwhelmed.

A study exploring parent-school communication for students with special needs found that both parents and teachers identified time constraints, institutional issues, and a lack of genuine interest in communicating as key barriers – but crucially, both groups also identified effective parent-school communication as one of the most important factors in a child’s school success. The challenge is not a lack of shared goals. It’s a lack of shared understanding of how to reach them.

Building trust and empathy: the real foundation of partnership 🔗

Trust is not a soft, nice-to-have quality in home-school relationships. It is, as researchers in special education consistently find, the cornerstone of everything. Ann and Rud Turnbull, whose work is foundational in the field of special education partnerships, identify seven principles for working with families of children with disabilities – and note that trust is the single element without which every other principle collapses. Without trust, even excellent communication strategies fail.

Research with parents of children with disabilities consistently shows that difficulty building trust with professionals is one of the primary obstacles to effective collaboration – and yet, when trust is present, student outcomes improve markedly. This makes trust-building not just a relationship goal but an educational one.

So how does trust actually form? The answer, according to the IRIS Center at Vanderbilt University, begins with something as simple as being responsive. Returning phone calls and emails promptly, following through on what you say you will do, and maintaining family confidentiality are among the most concrete trust-building actions a teacher can take. Trust, as the IRIS Center notes, tends to exist where people feel genuinely respected – not just formally acknowledged.

Empathy deepens that trust. The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) recommends a framework of five Rs for early childhood educators: respect, responsiveness and reassurance, relationship, reciprocity, and reflection. Each of these moves the teacher from a position of authority into one of genuine partnership. Showing respect, for instance, means more than being polite – it means actively examining your own assumptions and biases about a family’s choices or circumstances before judging them.

Moving beyond blame 🔗

A shift in perspective is essential for both teachers and parents. When things go wrong with a child – a behaviour escalation, a regression in skills, a missed therapy appointment – it is human to look for a cause, and that search can quickly tip into blame. Teachers may blame a chaotic home environment; parents may blame insufficient classroom support. Neither position moves the child forward.

A collaborative partnership orientation – one that centres mutual understanding and actively incorporates parents’ feedback – is necessary to improve communication, particularly in special education settings. This means both parties must resist the urge to defend their corner and instead ask: what does this child need, and how can we each contribute to that?

Research from the Learning Policy Institute reinforces this point, showing that when educators and families build partnerships on mutual understanding and trust, families experience less stress, report greater satisfaction with educational services, and children with disabilities achieve better outcomes. The partnership itself becomes part of the intervention.

Practical steps for a stronger home-school partnership 🔗

Good intentions alone don’t create good communication. Concrete, consistent practices do. Here are evidence-based steps that teachers and schools can take to meaningfully improve how they connect with families.

Use plain language and communicate consistently 🔗

Every written or spoken communication directed at parents should pass a simple test: could a parent who has never attended a professional development workshop understand this? Research on teacher-parent communication published through ERIC advises that emails and written communications should be kept friendly, factual, and free of educational jargon. Tone matters too – a message that leads with a child’s strengths before addressing challenges lands very differently from one that opens with a list of problems.

Consistency is equally important. Schools should use multiple communication channels – newsletters, emails, phone calls, and in-person check-ins – to ensure families remain informed. No single channel reaches everyone equally, and the families who are hardest to reach are often the ones who need the most support.

Be flexible with timing and format 🔗

A parent working two jobs cannot take a mid-morning phone call. A parent without a car cannot easily attend a 4 pm meeting. Scheduling constraints are a significant and often overlooked barrier to parental participation, and schools that want genuine engagement must find creative solutions – early morning or evening meeting slots, video call options, or home visits where appropriate.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships documents how home visits, when done thoughtfully, can be transformative – not just logistically convenient, but relationship-changing. One parent described how a teacher’s willingness to come to her home shifted her entire perception of the school’s sincerity.

Genuinely invite and value parental input 🔗

Parents of children with intellectual disabilities are not passive recipients of professional expertise. They are, in fact, the world’s leading authorities on their own child. The DEC Recommended Practices in early childhood special education explicitly state that practitioners should build partnerships that are sensitive and responsive to cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic diversity – and that means creating space for families to share what they know.

A qualitative study of culturally diverse preschool parents found that early and regular communication was the single most effective way to establish trust and comfort in the home-school relationship. One parent in the study described feeling immediately at ease with a new teacher – simply because the teacher had reached out before the school year even began. It took one phone call. The effect lasted all year.

Research on home-school partnerships for children with intellectual disabilities underscores that effective partnerships are built on mutual trust and shared accountability – and that parents who are involved in decision-making, not just informed of decisions, are far more engaged and committed throughout the school year.

Acknowledge the whole family, not just the child 🔗

Parents raising a child with an intellectual disability often carry significant emotional weight – grief, exhaustion, uncertainty about the future, and sometimes guilt. A teacher who acknowledges that reality, even briefly, creates a completely different kind of relationship than one who only ever focuses on academic or behavioural targets. NAEYC recommends that educators display family photos in classrooms, celebrate cultural events, and regularly update families with community resources – gestures that signal to families that they are part of the school community, not just observers of it.

What both sides must understand 🔗

Communication is not just the teacher’s responsibility, and it is not just the parent’s. It is a shared commitment to a shared goal. True partnership – as defined in special education literature – is about building on each other’s expertise and resources for the purpose of making decisions that directly benefit the child. That requires both parties to show up with honesty, flexibility, and a willingness to see the other’s constraints without judgment.

For teachers, this means leading the way. Schools set the tone for the relationship, and the IRIS Center notes that a truly family-friendly school is one that reaches out to all families proactively, creates a general climate of partnership, and lays the groundwork before any crisis arises. For parents, it means trusting that a teacher who reaches out – especially early and warmly – is genuinely on their child’s side.

What do you think? When a parent and a teacher see the same child very differently, whose understanding should take priority – and how can both perspectives be genuinely heard without one overshadowing the other? And if you’ve experienced a communication breakdown in a school setting, what was the single change that helped turn things around?

References

1. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1149130.pdf
2. https://www.understood.org/en/articles/how-to-break-down-communication-barriers-between-teachers-and-families
3. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8694006/
4. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6702960/
5. https://marylandfamiliesengage.org/developing-partnerships-with-families-of-children-with-disabilities-seven-principles-for-success/
6. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S1479-363620170000010026/full/html
7. https://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/module/fam/cresource/q2/p05/
8. https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/tyc/winter2022/fiver-rs-family
9. https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/blog/covid-home-school-partnerships-key-supporting-students-disabilities
10. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1425334.pdf
11. https://www.parentsquare.com/blog/family-engagement-in-schools-common-barriers-to-identify-and-6-effective-strategies-for-success/
12. https://www.ed.gov/sites/ed/files/documents/family-community/partners-education.pdf
13. https://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/module/dll/cresource/q2/p04/
14. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12265881/
15. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10780-025-09534-5