Welcome!

Happy Week of the Young Child!  And welcome to my blog about the fun, fascinating, and often fearsome, field of early childhood!

As a professional goal for myself, I will be maintaining and sharing this blog by posting information, stories, and opinions regularly.  And by "regularly," I intend to mean two to three times a week, but some weeks are bound to be more packed with information, stories, and opinions than others.  Or, at the very least, some weeks are bound to have more time for blogging than others.

And what information, stories, and opinions will I be sharing, you may be wondering?  

The answer is simple and straight forward: everything early childhood.

Although I am not a parent, I am a full-fledged member of the early childhood community.  In fact, because I am not a parent, I am a far more permanent member of the community because no matter how much time goes by, I will always work with young children, whereas parents of young children eventually become parents of old children, and then teenagers, and then adults.  (The social-emotional issues in these phases of childhood may be very similar, but the logistics are quite different.)

Why do I have so much information, stories, and opinions about early childhood?  And why do they matter to you?

Another simple answer: I love young children and you should too!

The more thorough answer is this:  I have a Masters degree from the Erikson Institute in Chicago in Early Childhood Development.  This basically means that I went deeply into debt in order to know almost everything there is to know about the way we develop as humans very early in life.  I have spent the last several years working with families with young children in a variety of capacities.  I have been a nanny, both live-in and live-out.  I worked at a wonderful non-profit organization that offered support and an indoor play space for parents and their children who were three years and under.  I taught at a fabulous progressive preschool in the Chicago suburbs, and currently, I supervise a team of teachers at a Head Start preschool in a relatively underserved neighborhood in Philadelphia.  I have also worked as a parent coach, helping those who feel overwhelmed or concerned about their children's challenging behaviors.  Ultimately, I love working with infants, toddlers, preschoolers and their families, and I am darn good at it.  It might be the only thing I'm good at (apart from making a really straight French braid and delightful chocolate chip cookies), so I like to put a lot of effort into making my practice extremely intentional and using my knowledge and skills to help families feel confident and content.

Check back soon for my next official post about early childhood!  

Teaser:  This week, to celebrate the Week of the Young Child, I have designed and will be running a variety of interactive programs for the 250 students at my school, including an opportunity to build with giant blocks (made from cardboard boxes that once carried our extraordinarily large shipment of paper towels).  I'm sure I'll have stories and pictures to share!

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And a little food for thought:  If a child wants to be called by a name that is not their own, should their parent or teacher go along with it?