By Christine Root
Tré sat on his mother’s lap and pulled her hair, licked her face and shoved his "Thomas the Tank Engine" book right up to her nose. Not able to sit still, he jumped off his mother’s lap and ran over to play with one of his favorite toys, a plastic train set.
"Choo Choo!" Tre, 2, squealed as the battery-operated train went around the track. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a box of rubber stamps with ink pads on the kitchen table. Tré quickly ran over to the table and pilfered through the box of stamps with reckless abandon.
"Tré has got so much energy and is in to everything at this age. I don’t get to sit down much. I’m used to it though," said his mother, Ashley Griffith, 27.
Griffith, a single working mother, recently packed her belongings in a 25-foot U-Haul truck and moved to Bellingham from San Francisco.
"San Francisco was the only time I had lived in a large city and I lived there for three years. I wanted to go back to a place that was smaller with less people, less crime, less complications. A better place I could raise my son," Griffith said.
Griffith chose Bellingham after conducting extensive research on various cities. She called the Chamber of Commerce and obtained information on Bellingham schools, its crime rate, cost of living and major attractions. She looked at maps, browsed the Internet and obtained pictures from the Visitor Center.
"Bellingham seemed like a great place to raise my son. The cost of living was low and my son and I could live by the water and also be close to the mountains," Griffith said.
"The decision to move to Bellingham was difficult emotionally because I felt alone with just me and Tré. I didn’t have a job lined up or know where I was going to live. Eventually I gathered up my courage and went for it," Griffith said.
Griffith said she has been happy with her decision, but, as a mother, has been disappointed in the quality of day-care providers in Bellingham.
"I take my son to the YMCA, where the turnover rate for day-care providers is extremely high," she said. Griffith, who was once a daycare provider knows how hard it can be on children when they get attached to one particular person and then that person leaves. "The inconsistency is so emotionally hard on children," she said.
Griffith has been looking for another place to take her child, but has been disgusted with what she has found. Many day-care providers admitted to smoking near the children. Another day-care, Griffith said, had a "vicious looking dog on a chain" which the day-care providers said served as a guard dog to protect the children against strangers.
"The worst day-care I went to was ironically at a beautiful house with a beautiful back yard, but the woman who was going to be responsible for watching my child lacked common sense. Her dog died after licking slug-bait she put on various plants throughout her back yard–the same backyard the day-care children played in everyday," Griffith said with a disgusted look on her face.
Griffith is in the process of starting a day-care program at her home where she would provide a space for a qualified day-care provider to run a small business, watching five to seven children a day, including her son.
Griffith said her daycare, to be called "Nature’s Child." will be different from other day-cares because the children won't watch television there and will be exposed only to a "natural, non-toxic environment."
"I believe that television shows today are extremely toxic to children’s minds and unlike many other daycares, watching television will not be an activity included in my day care curriculum. Instead, there will be interactive activities such as dance, educational games and story time," Griffith said.
Griffith said she plans to also provide nutritious meals, which she feels many day-cares fail to provide.
"My menu will include strictly vegetarian entrees with organic fruits and vegetables. None of the food I will provide will be canned, processed or frozen," Griffith said.
Griffith said she fees that the "nutritious meals" will motivate many parents to enroll their children in her daycare.
The projected date for the opening of "Nature’s Child" is Jan. 1.
"Finding time to actually go through all the processes of starting a day-care, such as getting a child care provider license, obtaining child care materials and creating a curriculum has been very challenging," Griffith said.
"This would save me $400 a month. Most of all, it would benefit Tré, for he would get to be in his own comfortable environment and have the consistency of one particular day care provider. Plus, I’ll get to have more input on what my son is exposed to, " Griffith said, with excitement in her eyes.