“In the beginning, I knew that I had to be very reliable, to make it work. And people took horrible advantage of me because I have a real fear of confrontation. I still hate confrontation, but I’m much better about it now. But I mean, I never closed I closed on one week a year for vacation. But there was a Christmas Eve that I was here with my husband at the time and the kids. And I still had a daycare kid here, and the family never came until seven o'clock that night. They said ‘oh, we got distracted shopping.’ Things like that happened, and things like that still happen, because there's a lot of people who don't like confrontation, who worry about being reliable, who worry about having these conversations with parents because they think ‘oh my god, they’re going to leave my business.’ There's a lot of people doing this still, who need the income, and so they don't want to cause an issue with the parents and have the parents leave. So they put up a lot and it's really sad.”

“People view us like we're robots. We have no family. We have no responsibilities. We have no emotions, no we never go through anything. We are only here to greet the children when they get here. That's all they care about. That's why there's no gifts at Christmas, right? If you don't see a person as a human being and an emotional human being with other things going on besides their kid, why would you give them a gift?

Every so often I get letters, I get notes. About how they couldn't have done this alone. I had a dad here who's single dad. His son is graduating and he sent me a copy of the graduation announcement. He attached a note and said that he wouldn't be the man he is today without my help. You know, that's what keeps you in the work, those notes keep you in it. It makes me feel like it hasn’t been for nothing.”

“It’s like I’m running two homes, but my own comes absolutely last. I have to have things safe. I have to have all of my licensing requirements. My bedroom, which should be the sanctuary at the end of the day, comes last. It’s a joke. Because there's one of me split in two. I feel like I'm putting out fires all day.

I think leaders are missing the fact that we're not a center with a janitorial staff, with subs, with more people who can circulate a room that is short one teacher, right? We have nothing. We have no external support.”