Transforming the health
& wellbeing of our children
Welcome to Parent Power!
We hope you find the website useful. It has been developed for the following reasons:
- To introduce and promote the idea of parents working together more, and using Parent Power to improve outcomes for all of our children.
- To provide information from the Planet Youth survey to parents that have children in national school.
- To provide some simple guidance for parents on key topics.
- To provide links to useful resources.
Watch our short video explainer to find out more.
Parents Working Together
As parents, we can achieve a huge amount by getting together and working out some simple shared expectations and boundaries for our children.
Strong parent networks and parental agreements are an effective and proven way to support children’s learning, development and wellbeing.
Parental agreements also make life a lot easier for children, for schools, and for us as parents.
Look at the downloads below and the video explainer to learn a bit more.
Use this simple guidebook to establish what areas you want to work together on
You can print this PowerPoint template and start to create your own Parent Power agreement
Our time is one of the greatest gifts we can give our children and setting time aside each day creates the opportunity and space to chat with them and listen to what they have to say.
Here are just a few good reasons why this is so important:
- It strengthens family bonds
- It improves communication
- It builds children’s self esteem
- It develops positive behaviours
- It can help your child to do better in school
Children who have regular and good quality sleep have improved attention, behaviour, learning, memory, and better mental and physical health.
From 6-12 years old, children typically need 9-12 hours of sleep each night and although each child is different, a good guide would be to move their bedtime up 15 minutes each school year.
Evidence suggests that if a child spends a lot of time on screens during childhood it can affect many important aspects of their life. Things like sleep, obesity, behaviour, and learning can all be impacted.
However, screens are part of family life now. They are used for staying connected, for entertainment and even for school and schoolwork.
What is important though, is that screens don’t overtake family life or prevent us from being physically active during the day.
All children should be active, at a moderate to vigorous level, for at least 60 minutes every day, and including muscle strengthening, flexibility and bone strengthening exercises three times a week is recommended.
That may sound a lot, but little things add up and have a big overall effect.
“Sometimes the smallest step in the right direction ends up being the biggest step of your life.”
If there are new things you’d like to introduce, or changes you’d like to make at home, you can do it.
Download the Parent Power Booklet
