Mother of Twenty-two

By: Malisa Dutson

Running a daycare can be very difficult thing. There's noise, mess, children that cant, or just choose not to listen and the best time of the day happens to be nap time. But one woman who has always loved kids thinks differently.

"I always enjoyed the company of children," said Tiffany Anderson, owner of a child care facility in Brooklyn called Sunshine Daycare.

Anderson, 45, has owned a daycare for 16 years. She says that her love of children will keep her running this daycare until the day she dies.

"Ever since I was six years old I wanted to own a daycare," Anderson said. As a child, she would always have a baby doll under her arm. She would set up all he dolls and create a doll daycare and always said that one day those dolls would be people.

Anderson has always felt close to children, even as an adult. Most people create daycares in places separate from their own homes for privacy reasons. But with Anderson it was different. I wanted to create a daycare in an environment I was comfortable in so I could become comfortable with the children Anderson said. So she created her daycare within her own home.

In 1991, when she created this daycare, she thought it was going to be hard to find employees. "I was very fortunate," she said. "I didn't have to find my staff because my staff found me."

When Anderson told her friend of twenty years, Joyce Mason, 57, that she was creating a daycare, Mason was all for it. "From day one I was here," Mason said.

Though she loves her job, Anderson explains that there are good and bad days when running a daycare. "Every time you're taking care of other people's children there's always one who may not agree with how their child is being handled or taken care of," she said.

Anderson works with children as young as three months old, all the way up to five, when they are ready for first grade. She teaches children how to eat on their own, how to write and even how to use the bathroom on their own as well.

"I think the hardest thing to do is to teach a child how to use the bathroom because everything else just sort of comes naturally," she said. "Oh, and of course teaching them how to write and tie their own shoes are hard, as well."

"I never had a problem leaving my child with Mrs. Anderson," said a parent who wished not to give her name. "My child loves coming here and sometimes doesn't even want to come home."

Montague Jones Jr., 35, a very close friend of Anderson, feels that her creating a daycare has made her one of the happiest people in the world. "She's a very good person," he says, "thoughtful, kind, and very generous. I even trust her with my own kids, said Jones, There's no one more caring of children than her."

Mason agrees. "She doesn't have any favorites," she said. "The children are all equal and all loved the same."

Although Anderson has only one child of her own, a son, she feels that with daycare she's a mother of twenty-two.

"I know that no kid is prefect and each one will have their own personality," said Anderson. "But that's the greatest part about being around children because you get to teach them, love them, and also learn form them as they grow.