Our Story

We moved to downtown Durham from northwest Raleigh in January 2009*. We love living in Durham. When we moved, our son Ian was 5 months old, and we were piecing together a variety of childcare options (my part-time work, my brother, my husband, and a friend with a slightly older child were caring for him at various times). He was signed up to start going to a daycare center in Raleigh in February. We had reserved his spot at this center a full year in advance in order to get him in. When he started, we had already moved to Durham, and now drive back and forth to Raleigh every day.

After a few weeks in Durham it was clear to us that this was the place for us, and that we would never move back to Raleigh. We started looking for childcare in Durham. I was pleased to find several places I was interested in and set up tours. On these tours, I was excited to discover that there were childcare centers that had the same philosophy to childcare that I have (unlike Ian's current daycare), and are places I could feel really happy about taking him. I've been sad to find, however, that Ian is not going to get into any of these centers (Lakewood Ave. School, Kin Too, and First Pres. Day School). In part, this is because all the childcare in Durham that I like (except Kin Too) gives preference to children of Duke employees. Also, there is clearly much higher demand for this care than there is supply.

I have been contemplating our options:
1) Continue taking Ian to daycare in Raleigh indefinitely.
This center is high quality but does not agree with my philosophy, which will be a bigger problem as he gets older. We also really want to have him somewhere local, so that his friends when he's a little older will live in the same city he does. We'd also like to stop spending an hour of the time we have with our son each weekday driving back and forth.
2) Take Ian to a daycare in Durham that we don't feel good about -- obviously unsatisfying.
3) Continue to hope that Ian will get into one of the daycares we like off the waiting list -- realistically this could take years, and at places like Lakewood is unlikely to ever succeed.
4) Create a new childcare option for ourselves that will provide the kind of environment we envision for our son.

Right now we're exploring option 4 to see if it's possible. It seems like this depends mostly on whether we can find a group of parents with similarly aged children who are committed to the idea and share our values. If it works out, we're hoping we can create a great childcare option for a small group of families in Durham!



* There were several reasons for our move - primarily because we didn't like our cookie-cutter neighborhood with its nutty homeowner's association and because we found maintaining our large house and yard overwhelming and unsatisfying. We wanted to be able to focus on working, raising our son, and allow my husband to devote his time to his business. We intentionally downsized and got rid of a lot of excess stuff. Our life now is much simpler!