FARMINGTON – The term “maternal instinct” gets kicked around so much, once pregnancy strikes you’d think you could almost see the halo.

But most mothers (and fathers) need help learning to figure out their baby’s wants and needs, deciphering the moods and mysteries of their children, becoming calm and resourceful moms and disciplinarians. Why else would parenting books be selling like hot cakes to people in all stages of child-rearing?

For Rene Blanchet and Toni Kuehn, of Franklin County Children’s Task Force – both mothers and experienced family care workers – asking for help learning to be a parent is nothing to be ashamed of.

“They don’t come home with a manual,” Blanchet, 36, said Friday. “I wish I knew (when her kids were young) half of what I know now.”

The task force is widely known as a child-abuse-prevention organization, Blanchet said. But its focus is really about helping take stress off new parents, offering learning programs and play groups, and teaching parents child-rearing skills.

Blanchet was named the task force’s executive director on Tuesday, and takes up her new post formally today. After four years working in every one of the task force’s host of programs, she seemed the perfect fit to the Board of Directors.

“I can’t imagine anyone on earth who could do a better job than her,” Board Chairwoman Barbara Marshall said Friday. They had been looking for months for a candidate to fill former director Tom Taylor’s shoes, Marshall said.

“We’ve been indebted to Tom Taylor for the dedication he has shown to the task force,” Marshall said. “(Blanchet) is someone who believes in the mission and has the resources, the connections, and the intelligence to bring to it.”

Blanchet will be overseeing all aspects of the task force’s operations, from parent education, support services, clothing exchanges and play groups, to its bullying and teasing prevention program, to management and fundraising for the publicly-funded organization.

Toni Kuehn, 38, is also new to the task force. She came on this summer as head of the task force’s Growing Healthy Families program. GHF, as she calls it, serves about 110 families all over Franklin County – from Jay to the Canadian border, by sending support workers into new parents’ homes once a month or more.

“The purpose of the program is to provide parents with support and developmental information,” Kuehn said. “It’s all about helping parents form a bond with their child, with an emphasis on attachment.”

Simple things – from making eye contact, to understanding the reasons why babies get easily distracted from nursing at around four months and why they have trouble sleeping around the time they learn to walk – can make all the difference to stressed parents, Kuehn said.

“Crying is just your child saying ‘I have a need that’s not being met,'” Kuehn said. It doesn’t mean parents are doing a bad job, or that they have a weird baby.

Preliminary studies show that the task force’s work has had a big impact on families all over Franklin County, Blanchet said. The bullying and teasing prevention program has drastically decreased the incidence of teasing in schools – up to 50 percent in some cases.

Parents who have gone through the growing healthy families program have also had an easier time, she said – getting outside help when needed, and planning better for the baby’s future.

They’ve done it on a budget made up mostly of grant money and donations from people and organizations in the community – Franklin Memorial Hospital, for example.

Assuming grant money and donations, increasingly hard to come by these days, keep coming, Blanchet and Kuehn said they hope not only to keep up the work the task force is already doing, but to expand.

Ideally, the group could create a space where parents would feel free to drop by whenever they needed to, to exchange clothes, take classes, participate in play groups, get support information, or just chat.