Debbie Pokornik
Bio:
Debbie is a mother, wife, author and parent educator. Her interest in parent education began when she was attending the University and discovered she was pregnant. Her area of study—Social Work—caused her to reflect often on the kind of parent she wanted to be. This, along with her natural desire to help others excel in life, led her into the role of parent educator.
Today Debbie is the mother of two teenagers who provide ample opportunity for her to practice her parenting skills. She admits, she is not a perfect parent and uses her own mistakes as opportunities to learn and grow. In her job as a prevention social worker she has created numerous programs, trainings and other supports for toddlers to seniors. She is now the CEO (Chief Empowerment Officer) for her company, Empowering NRG, and works part time in a school division as their Early Childhood Support.
Debbie has written about parenting for years, developing a knack for taking challenging topics and breaking them into pieces people can understand and apply to their lives. Her book Break Free of Parenting Pressures: Embrace Your Natural Guidance provides parents with ideas for relationship building, developing discipline, understanding Parent Power, recognizing effective parenting tools and much more.
Debbie encourages others to listen to their natural guidance while striving to be the best that they can be. She is patient, energetic, intuitive and motivational. She provides insightful workshops, thought provoking keynotes, and enlightening seminars.
Debbie lives on a small acreage in rural Manitoba with her husband, two teens, her “snowbird” mother-in-law, numerous pets and a yard that is far too big to keep free of unwanted plant growth. Her most recent goal is to get past her fear of social networking and learn to face book, twitter, and blog with confidence.
Book Description
When we believe something is natural we think it should be easy. When we think something should be easy we tend to beat ourselves up if we don’t have the answers or don’t do it well. This opens the door to self-doubt, uncertainty, harsh judgment, and second guessing.
In Break Free of Parenting Pressures, author and parent educator, Debbie Pokornik, urges parents to throw off the shackles that come with this way of thinking and tune into the inner wisdom required to enjoy and excel at this task. Very little about parenting is truly natural, meaning personal development and a willingness to learn or adapt will always be required.
Written in a gentle, friendly style, this book shares stories about the author’s personal parenting adventures, focusing not only on her successes, but her “moments of learning” as well. She provides insight into where our current skills and strategies come from and enlightens us on how we might adapt them to ensure they are meeting our parenting goals.
“The parenting experience is unique to each of us,” Debbie says, “but I believe all parents will benefit from support at some point in their parenting journey.” Awareness, open-mindedness, a willingness to practice and adaptability are all important pieces of the parenting puzzle and this book provides plenty of tips and exercises to help parents do all of these things. The book concludes with a chapter on self-care focused on helping parents de-stress and take stock of what they can realistically handle in their lives.
“I really hope parents reading my book come away feeling tuned into their natural ability and confident they have what it takes to do this job. There is no one way to parent and I’d love it if my book could remove a lot of the self-doubt parents feel so readers fully enjoy this journey and build strong loving relationships as a result.”
Parenting is not really natural, but becoming a parent often is and that is an important distinction to understand. Nature doesn’t give us tasks we are unable to handle. This means despite our set backs, questions and uncertainties, we are the perfect person to parent our child…if only we are willing to embrace this challenge and can be open to making this journey our own.
More information about Debbie and her services can be obtained from her website at http://www.empoweringnrg.com
