REXBURG, Idaho -- When Paula Wilde was a new mother, she wished someone had answers to her parenting questions. Should my baby be talking by now? When should I begin toilet training?
"It would have been wonderful to have someone come into my home and tell me all these things," she said.Now Wilde is one of seven Parents As Teachers educators who visit about 50 Madison County families to teach parents how their children's early development is critical for success later in life.
"Our job is to help parents be their child's first teachers," Wilde said.
To the parents, the free parenting advice makes the visits worthwhile. To the children, it is the new toys every month, especially the blobble.
Just watch 4-year-old Jaren Bean mold and stretch his blobble, a Play Doh-like substance made from Elmer's glue, borax and water.
"I like the blobble," he said.
Jaren and his 18-month-old sister, Amree, both get a monthly visit from Wilde.
Shari Reinwand said she noticed improvements in the development of both her sons since teacher Margaret Bake started visiting them in August.
"She's been doing wonders with his speech," Reinwand said of 2-year-old Christopher. "He seems to be able to get along better with other kids and share his toys with them."
And her 7-month-old son, Aaron, seems more alert since his time with Bake.
"When she works with Aaron, she always brings something for Christopher to do, too," Reinwand said. "While she's paying attention to either Christopher or Aaron, it gives me an opportunity to play with the other one, one-on-one."
At the Beans', Wilde uses the same toys to teach the many ages of children different lessons. While she has Jaren count how many cows are in the pen, she teaches Amree that cows say "moo."
"She gets right down on the floor and plays along with them," Gaylynn Bean said.
As a parent, Bean said she appreciates these age-specific activities.
"She has given me a lot of reminders of things I already knew, but she can tell me what kinds of things they can enjoy at their ages," Bean said.
The teachers also have hundreds of handouts on a number of topics including toilet training, sleeping, immunization, stranger anxiety, home safety, language development, interaction with siblings, outdoor play and more, Wilde said.
"I think it's really important for parents to know what resources are available in the community," teacher JoAnn Clark said.
The program in Madison County was one of the first in Idaho, one of two states in the nation that does not have an official statewide Parents As Teachers program. The other state without Parents As Teachers, Hawaii, has a similar state-sponsored program.
In Missouri, where Parents As Teachers was founded and is funded by the state, every child is assigned a teacher at birth.
A grant from the Albertson Foundation allows Madison County to offer the program for free. Of the 30 Parents As Teachers programs in Idaho, 17 are funded by the foundation.
Three Madison County teachers were trained to be Parents As Teachers educators before this grant. Now there are seven, but each of them has a full-time job in addition to visiting families. With nearly 100 families on a waiting list to join, the teachers are preparing to scale back their visits to each family, so they can visit more families less often, Clark said. Parents As Teachers requires educators to visit each family at least five times per year.
"What we're finding is that most families will be fine with us seeing them less often," she said. "There will be some that we continue to see more than once a month. Some families just seem to need more contact than others."