Professional Development Day!

What is the FAN tool?

The FAN (Facilitating Attuned Interactions) is an approach to enhance parental confidence and strengthen the parent-child relationship while simultaneously promoting healthy development. It does this by utilizing mindful self-regulation, empathy, collaboration, and self-reflection.  According to Lisa Gilkerson, Ph.D. and Founder of FAN, “Home visitors, Pediatric residents, and any professional working with young children can do amazing things in very challenging situations. The FAN helps them to stay steady, centered, and empathetic.”

How is the FAN helpful in a school setting?

The FAN approach is notably detailed and comprehensive, so here are a handful of components that we thought to be the most helpful. 

One of those would be practicing Mindful Self-Regulation. Practicing mindfulness to regulate yourself allows you, as the parent, to check in with yourself; to bring calm, you must emulate calm. You can start by consciously attending to your breathing, finding ways to help yourself relax and shift your awareness to the present moment. As teachers, we can also use mindful self-regulation to better attend to our students’ needs! 

Another helpful component is Empathic Inquiry, which begins with understanding how empathy can be used to listen and validate an individual’s experiences. Empathy creates connections between people through naming emotions and making space for those emotions to be heard and accepted. For teachers, empathic inquiry centers on the question, “what has it been like for you?” By genuinely listening to the parent’s perspectives, teachers can better understand their needs and validate their parents’ unique experiences. 

Our final component is Collaborative Exploration. The purpose of this step is for the teacher to see the same child that the parent sees so we can think together about how to become more attuned to the child’s needs. This allows us to bridge any gaps between routines at home and at school, ultimately creating a more cohesive system for the child and family to thrive.

How might the FAN framework be helpful in parenting?

These tools and resources increase a caregiver’s attunement to the needs of the children in their care. Understandably, perfect attunement is something all parents and caregivers strive to achieve with their children. However, referencing Dr. Ed Tronick, a child development expert and Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard University,  even the “best” parents are only attuned to their children 30 percent of the time. Although it may be unrealistic to be attuned at every moment, we can acknowledge that children are almost always attuned to us as their caregivers; children absorb and learn from our shared surroundings. The FAN tool gives parents and teachers a step-by-step approach to increasing overall attunement, while also acknowledging that it is not always possible and that is perfectly acceptable!