TheChat was commissioned to find out how parents support their children at home when it comes to learning about friendships and relationships, growing up and puberty, being safe and issues like consent. Parents have also talked about wanting their teenage children to understand about relationships and sexual health. In our reporting we use the term parent to mean both parents and carers; this includes any family member with direct caring responsibility, as well as foster carers and kinship carers.
“Communication and open conversation is something that doesn’t start once they’re older. The work needs to be put in when they’re younger so you can have open conversations, as the trust has been built.”
– Survey response, parent/carer of 12–18-year-old
Conversations with parents – called ‘chats’ – and a national survey have provided insight into life at home and how parents want to support their child from the early years, through childhood and into the teenage years so that they are equipped to be healthy, happy and safe in their friendships and relationships.
theChat has shown that parents are the primary and most important educators of their children on all these matters, but we have also taken time to talk about what parents know and think about nursery and school-based learning. We talked about what parents want to see in terms of how school and home should work together to support learning.
theChat was a Scotland-wide project, facilitated by independent agency TASC (Scotland) on behalf of NHS Borders, NHS Grampian, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, NHS Tayside and NHS Eileanan Siar (Western Isles) and Glasgow City Council.
You can read all about theChat in the content below. As you explore the different parts of theChat it is worth remembering the words of educator Friedrich Froebel.
“Education consists of two things: example and love.”
– Friedrich Froebel
- About the Chat
- The Chat: Summary of findings
- Challenge questions
- At 18…
- Parents of 3, 4 and 5-year-olds
- Parents of 6, 7 and 8-year-olds
- Parents of 9, 10, 11 (and 12-year-olds at primary school)
- Parents of 12 to 18-year-olds
- Supporting parents and carers
- Spotlight issues:
- Children and young people with additional support needs/disability
- Consent
- Digital lives
- Do we raise our children as were raised?
- Learning in single sex groups
- Learning through the prism of faith and culture
- Myth, misconception, misinformation and disinformation
- Pornography
- Sex/Gender
- Siblings
- Some people are lesbian, gay or bisexual
- Teacher training/the quality of school-based learning
- The lived experience of girls and young women
- The role of dads
- Trust as a basis for home/school relationships
- What is age appropriate? When is a topic or focus right for my child?
“There’s much more awareness amongst kids about things. Maybe it’s about school, or what they hear from other kids. Maybe, now that I’m thinking about it, the most important thing is that we are part of these conversations. The worst scenario I can imagine is to sit them down to have that ‘talk’, but the risk is this bypasses us as parents. We need to make sure we are part of this. They need us to be part of this, so they know they can come to us if they need to.”
– Parent/Carer, Group Chat No.27
Infographics
To aid interpretation of the findings, we have created a series of graphics that can be viewed on the screen or printed out in poster form to share in your setting.
Click the images to view or download the graphic.
Sharing the findings
The following 5-minute presentation (with voice-over) describes theChat process and key findings. It can be used to introduce theChat to your groups and share news of the published report across networks.
Contact us
For more information about the Chat contact Elaine McCormack: Elaine.McCormack@nhs.scot
theChat.scot 