Just as the transition to a new school year for children happens each fall, this is a good time for parents to start anew also. Along with buying a new backpack for your child, it is a good time for parents to refresh their goals for the school year. 

I recently picked up a Hallmark card with a frazzled woman pictured on the front. The inside of the card read, "Life is so DAILY!" And isn't that true for parenting, from the beginning. There is so much physical and emotional and social and educational caretaking, what with meals, clothes, toys, play dates, childcare, and school, that we are often daunted just by the routine of raising our child. Often we are so immersed in the routines of daily living that we don't have time to focus on clear goals for our child's development. And we really do need those goals to provide touchstones as we move throughout the daily-ness of our lives.

Universal goals for a child are threefold:

1. Raising children to be caring and nurturing

We want our child to feel good about themselves and to connect with other children and adults in a loving way. We want our child to be empathic and sympathetic and to enjoy being with and helping other people. We want our child to be compassionate and social.

2. Supporting children to be strong and capable

We want our child to feel empowered to move confidently in the world to do their life work. We want our child to be able to voice their feelings and views and to take action as needed.

3.Teaching children to be problem-solvers

We want our child to have the most important life skill, the ability to analyze a situation and propose a solution and, should that solution not work, to be able to re-strategize to try again. We want our child to be able to cope with frustration and deal with adversity and creatively resolve conflict and problems, be they social problems, emotional problems, financial problems, ecological problems, personal problems or national or international problems. We want our child to be a creative thinker and solution-seeker.

So, given that we want our child to be caring and strong and a great problem-solver, the question becomes: how can we encourage our child to be nurturing and powerful and analytic? Within each parenting situation we encounter, how can we partner with our child in helping them become more caring, stronger, and more thoughtful? And how can we empower ourselves to empower our child?

iBlankie is about empowering you with words, skills, strategies, and techniques to empower your child to thrive, to become the best that they can be within themselves and within the world. iBlankie’s advice focuses on children from age 3 to 8.

Irene began her teaching career as a computer science instructor in college and math teacher in high school. When she first stepped into her children’s preschool, she felt like she had come home. She always loved young children and, after many early childhood courses and certification, she began teaching 3-year-olds and was a teacher and Director for ten years at Silver Spring Nursery School (SSNS) in Silver Spring, MD.

SSNS was a cooperative preschool, a parent-participation nursery school in which parents played an important role in the running of the school, both as aides in the classroom as well as administrative aspects of the school. In cooperative preschools, parents have hands-on experiences learning about child development; a cooperative preschool is a setting in which children grow in independence and parents grow in learning about young children. Irene also served for ten years as volunteer President of the Potomac Association of Cooperative Teachers (PACT), an organization consisting of 80 parent-participation nursery schools and over 180 preschool teachers and directors in the Washington Metro Area; PACT held two yearly conferences featuring speakers and workshops focusing on educating young children.

While working at SSNS, Irene became especially interested in working with challenging children and their families and did intensive studies in child development, including in-depth workshops with internationally respected pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton at Touchpoints. In 1992 Irene left daily teaching, became a member of the American Counseling Association and founded The Early Childhood Consultation Center (ECCC), which specialized in challenging behaviors of children ages three through eight.

In her 25 years as Director of the ECCC, Irene worked as an educational and behavioral consultant to families and children through home visits as well as in her offices in Bethesda and Silver Spring, MD. Irene also provided consultative work onsite to private and government preschools and day care centers, as well as private and public elementary schools, providing skills and techniques to turn children’s stumbling blocks into stepping stones. Irene also worked as a family consultant to patients at Washington Pediatric Associates in Washington, DC, working with Dr. Nicole Lang, who was honored for 20 years by Washington Magazine as one of the 100 best doctors in the Washington Metro area.

During her 25 years as Director of The ECCC, Irene presented over 500 educational workshops to parents and educators in venues including The World Bank, The Federal Reserve Board, The National Association for Educating Young Children International Conference, The Goddard Space Flight Center, Babies R Us, adoption agencies, pediatricians’ offices, hospitals, libraries, and grassroots parent groups, as well as daycare centers and preschools.

Irene is the author of three fun joke books for children: Cat’s Out of the Bag, Grin and Bear It, and In the Doghouse. She also published How Can I Help My Child? Early Childhood Resource Directory for Parents and Professionals Caring about Children Ages 2 through 5 in the Washington Metro Area, which won a National Self-Publishing Book Award in 1998.

Irene has two grown children. She retired in 2017 to Southwest Florida to pursue her passions for playing racquetball and beading. Irene’s retirement fun has included writing and publishing Care and Feeding of the Aging Human Male Species: A Sassy Primer.

Irene truly hopes that these articles, all written in response to parents’ and teachers’ questions and concerns, are helpful!

And here are some of her favorite resources….