Meet Wendy Dougherty, Early Intervention Special Instructor

Wendy Dougherty recently came out of retirement to join Happy Hearts as a special instructor specializing in behavior. “I just missed it - it's that simple,” she shares. “I missed being with these little souls and their families. My kids said, ‘Mom, why don't you relax and read good books and go to the beach.’ But I didn’t want to do that. I really love this work so much.”

Wendy has been working with children and their families in a variety of settings for more than 30 years. She began her career as a counselor, assisting kids, adults, and families. After starting her own family, she decided to move into teaching, and taught in both public and Waldorf schools. 

At the Waldorf schools she started out working with children from birth to first grade, and then later taught elementary children. Her focus was on helping struggling kids who had treatment plans, childhood support plans, or behavior support plans through the school. This gave her a chance to become very close to many families in her community and was a great segue from her therapeutic work.

After she retired from teaching, Wendy and her husband took a trip to Europe. On the trip, he asked why she seemed so unsatisfied. “I told him I was longing for my children and their families. Teaching had been all consuming, and I needed a break from that. But I wanted to keep serving. It’s such a big part of who I am, and I’ve been doing it for decades. It felt like something was missing.”

Once they returned home, he encouraged her to look into different ways that she could serve families while still scaling back her hours and retaining some of the flexibility of retirement. Finding a job posting for Happy Hearts opened her eyes to early intervention, which seemed like a natural next phase of her career. She started in October and loves working with Jess and the rest of her team. “I do this work because it inspires me. It’s such a wonder to be able to help families find new ways to work with their children and so exciting to watch children grow and unfold before your very eyes. It’s an honor to work with parents in this context.”

Her favorite part of the job is those ah-ha moments when a family discovers what will work for their child and begins to feel empowered. “Every child has their own special key, and sometimes it takes a little while to find it. But once you can unlock what’s hindering them from moving forward, the child just begins to flourish in ways that can be really surprising.” She considers the best part of her job when a family doesn’t need her anymore because their child is ready to fly on their own.

Wendy encourages any parents just starting early intervention to breathe and know that many of the answers are already within them. With behavioral challenges, parents sometimes feel exhausted and overwhelmed, which keeps them from realizing that they are far more capable than they know. “Early intervention is not about somebody coming in and telling you what to do. It’s about solving the puzzle together. Parents know their children better than anyone. But there's so much noise around us. It's hard to trust ourselves. Part of knowing what to do is asking the right questions. Finding the resources. It's all out there. Imagine this as an exciting journey that you're traveling with your child rather than something to fear. Live into all the exciting things ahead. All of the breakthrough moments. They'll happen.”

She also sees early intervention as a way to teach children an important life lesson. “There's not a child on this earth who isn't going to encounter struggles. Part of our task is to show them how to do it. In my life there has never been anything of value that hasn't come with a bit of challenge and a bit of pain and a bit of struggle. It's out of that struggle and pain that wonderful things can happen. But it’s hard. It can be scary. But the more you dig into it, the more you meet it, the greater the potential the child has to thrive. There's nothing more important than your child. So this is the place to do hard. Hard isn't bad. It's just hard. As we face the hard things, the child also gets to see, ‘oh, this is what it looks like when you're met with something challenging. My mom can do it. My dad can do it. Grandma can do it. They're not afraid to meet the hard stuff. Maybe I can too.’”

When she’s not working, Wendy loves spending time with her four children and three grandchildren and traveling with her husband. She keeps active by skiing, hiking, taking walks in the woods, and having dance parties with her grandchildren. A lover of the arts in all forms, she’s been writing all her life. She co-authored "Growing Great Girls," a gender specific curriculum for at-risk girls, and published many parent support articles throughout her career. At her daughter’s request, she’s now writing down the bedtime stories she once told her kids and compiling them into a book.