Parents as Teachers

PAT is an evidenced based home visitation program designed as a partnership with families focused on giving children the best possible start in life.

The philosophy underlying Parents as Teachers is that parents are a child's first and most influential teachers, and the role of the parent educator is to assist families in giving their children a solid education foundation. Our Public Health Nurses/Parent Educators use Parents As Teachers(PAT) as a framework for conducting home visits and facilitating the development of parenting skills through parent-child interactive play, educational PAT handouts, and through watching PAT videotapes of DVDs.

Download our Parents as Teachers Brochure

The Parents as Teachers Program:

• Provides families with research-based early childhood development education.

• Builds on the family's strengths.

• PAT is child development centered with emphasis on language development, intellectual development, social- emotional, and motor development

• Points to the parent's roles as a designer, consultant, and authority to promote, foster, and enhance children's age appropriate development through nurturing care, age appropriate communication, reading, and playing.

• Proper knowledge is power; and when knowledge is put into practice in the context of nurturing care, families experience better relationships with their children;

• Children develop safe and secure attachment to their parents.

• Children demonstrate school readiness at the appropriate age.

• Research shows that children of families that were actively enrolled in PAT program experienced less or no child abuse and neglect, are doing better in school, cope better with stress, and are able to form meaningful and safe relationships with other children.

MCH families enjoy PAT program and express appreciation for what parent educators bring to them through regular home visits. It is not unusual for many families to request continuation of PAT after their child turns one year old, and some of them request home visits and PAT activities for their children after age 3.