 Your children are your whole world. To make sure they have the best possible start in life, participation in early childhood education and care is paramount. In these settings, it's important to communicate. Frequent information sharing between families and educators about your child's sleep, rest and relaxation is your best chance at an effective partnership. Yeah, we just talk about with educator every day. Maybe I'll just try and stop for a chat and ask how they were doing the day, whether they've slept well. Whether he was difficult to wake up and what that's going to mean for my husband and I when we go to put him to bed. This video helps parents better understand the importance of routine. Why sleep, rest and relaxation practices may differ at education and care services as opposed to home and strategies for effective communication between parents and educators in the best interests of their child's sleep routines. It's the second of two films that are the culmination of a comprehensive early years sleep study of children aged birth to five, conducted by the Queensland Department of Education and Training and the Queensland University of Technology. For children birth to five, sleep, rest and relaxation are vitally important for physical, neurological, social and emotional development. The regularity of a routine is very important, however, children change as they grow and whilst those rituals are important to establish routines, they need to change as children change. A million years. I sleep this big. I sleep this big. No. I stay up all night. I can't get to sleep. There's so many things impacting your child's routine. It's critical to identify and respond to their changing sleep, rest and relaxation needs and to communicate these with educators. Educators need and want to know your child's sleep patterns at home. They also need to know about your family's sleep routines, changes across time and any disruptions to your child's sleep on a regular basis. Unfortunately, our research shows that communications are typically short between parents and educators and probably not sufficient. It's important to build trusting relationships, one where parents and educators share information and work together to support healthy sleep or restful alternatives. According to a CEQA, this includes a culture of open communication, sharing information about children's progress, relationships and experiences, creating a welcoming environment for parents and responding to family's questions in a prompt and courteous way. For education and care services, it's a quality expectation for educators and families to work in partnership. This is extremely important when it comes to ensuring child safety, particularly those aged birth to three. Our research findings are showing that some parents make requests for practices that don't comply with guidelines. Whilst parents do know their children best, your professionally trained educators are required to comply with those guidelines. Other requests may simply not be responsive to the child's needs. For example, asking that the child doesn't sleep despite showing signs of tiredness. So start a conversation today. Talk to your child's carers, and if they're old enough, even talk to your child about sleep. Because it makes me happy the more we get lots of energy. I'm a donor. It helps me find a real Batman. Continuity between good practices at home and good practices at your service mean good outcomes for children and for families. And educators will do their best to try to maintain the routines that you have worked so hard to establish. The early education and care setting is a busier social environment, so children may be more tired. Because of this, early education and care settings often schedule a standard sleep time in the middle of the day. That is perhaps logistically better for the centre, but is unlikely to meet every child's needs. So communication about that is important. In fact, under the National Quality Framework, early childhood education and care services are required to demonstrate that they're providing for each child's comfort and providing appropriate opportunities to meet individual needs for sleep, rest and relaxation. So be sure to ask your early childhood educator about this. If you have any further questions, you can also contact a CEQA who oversee the implementation of the National Quality Framework. It's important to consider your expectations. Educators were being asked by parents to do things that were unsafe for their child, not in their child's best interest, and possibly in contravention of the Education and Care Services National Law, putting educators in an incredibly difficult position. Ultimately, our research on sleep, rest and relaxation has shown that it's vital for children's development and ongoing wellbeing. It's important for young bodies to recuperate and is important for their life-long brain development and wellbeing. And in achieving consistency between sleep routines at home and within Education and Care Services, communication has been found to be the key enabler. Regular, ongoing, two-way information sharing is best practice and will provide the best outcomes with children birth to five. Thank you for watching. We know there's been a lot to take in, so our recommendation is to...