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A new workshop series at Rutgers Presbyterian Church helps parents of young children think like early childhood educators—and stress less in the process.
Anna Sobel spent years on the other side of the classroom door. As a preschool and
Kindergarten teacher, she watched parents drop off their children each morning—some rushing, some lingering, many wearing the particular expression of someone who’d already negotiated seventeen small crises before 8 a.m.
She had opinions back then about what those parents could do differently. Assumptions about why things seemed so hard for them.
Then she had a kid.
“I realized I had made all these assumptions about parents,” Anna says. “And then I was one, and I was like—oh, it is brutal. And I have a background in early childhood education. It’s still brutal.”
That humbling recognition led Anna to launch Small Brave Steps, a coaching practice focusedon helping caregivers navigate the early years. This February, she’s bringing a three-part workshop series to Rutgers Presbyterian Church—where she once taught in the Ready, Set, Go program—designed to give parents access to the kind of knowledge that usually stays locked inside teacher training programs.
“Teachers have so much knowledge,” Anna says, “but not necessarily the time or resources to share it with parents. And parents have so much knowledge about their child, but don’t have the space to truly partner with schools in ways that would help.”
She sees herself as a translator—someone who can help parents understand what’s happening at school, and help them apply that same lens at home.
Parenting with Connection Series
February 10: Building Independence
Parents hear constantly that they should foster independence, but rarely get a roadmap for how. This session covers how teachers actually teach self-sufficiency: scaffolding, sequencing,
knowing when to step in and when to step back.
March 10: Boundaries as Love in Action
Parents worry that holding limits will damage their relationship with their child—that their kid will feel unloved or, worse, be somehow scarred by the word “no.”
The reality, she argues, is the opposite. “Think of boundaries as a container. Children push and push and push because they’re trying to find out where the edges are. They feel so much safer when they know.”
April 14: Untangling Power Struggles
The final session tackles the moments when everything falls apart—the bedtime standoffs, the dinner table negotiations, the fights about screen time that leave everyone exhausted. Power struggles are often deeply triggering for adults, Anna notes, because they tap into our own childhood experiences of authority and control.
These sessions will offer guidance and perspective. It's easy, when you’re in the thick of it, to feel like every battle is urgent—like the way your three-year-old behaves right now is a preview of who they’ll become. Anna encourages parents to zoom out.
“Imagine you’re parenting for who your child will be at 27,” she says. “A lot of times with little kids, parents push compliance—do it because I said so. But do you really want your 27-year-old to just do what people say? No. You want them to respect authority, but also question it when it’s appropriate.”
Three other pieces of advice she returns to again and again:
- Don’t take it personally. Your child’s job is to test limits. That’s not a failure of your parenting—it’s a feature of their development.
- Get good at repair. You will mess up. What matters is showing your child what it looks like to come back from a mistake and rebuild trust.
- Worry less. Easier said than done, Anna acknowledges. But part of understanding
development is recognizing that most of what feels alarming is actually normal—and temporary.
Anna asks just one thing of parents who sign up: let go of the idea that you need to arrive with answers.
“Come with curiosity and honesty,” she says. “Bring questions you don’t have answers to.”
Parenting with Connection: Workshops for Parents of Young Children takes place on three Tuesdays—February 10, March 10, and April 14—from 9:15 to 10:45 a.m. in the Rutgers Church Sanctuary. The series is designed for parents of children ages 2–5. Tickets are $50 for all three sessions. Space is limited.
