In the DMV’s competitive and pricey child care market, there’s a growing
sect of teleworking, freelancing and business-owning parents who find that
traditional full-time child care doesn’t suit their needs. It’s an issue
Nicole Dash heard parents gripe about time and again when she ran a small
daycare out of her home in Annandale, Virginia. Many of her teleworking
clients needed just a few hours of care a couple of days a week. But she
continuously denied their requests and explains, “unfortunately, that’s not
how it works,” one slot means full-time care for one child. Eventually, she
asked herself why the system couldn’t be more flexible. Enter Play, Work or
Dash, a coworking space in Vienna, Virginia with in-house daycare.
Essentially, parents can work in peace, host meetings in the center’s
conference rooms, or dash out for an errand, while professional caretakers
supervise their kids at play nearby all for up to three hours per day. Kids
as young as 9 months and as old as 8 years can come play at the facility.
Dash, a mother of four, had been managing her daycare, a parenting blog and
a side job as a digital marketing consultant for a few years when in
January 2015, she began to consider the prospect of owning a larger child
care center.
“I feel like every step of my journey led me to open Play, Work or Dash,”
she says.
Through daycare and her blog, she heard of the complications for parents
whose changing work schedules meant they needed an alternative to the rigid
child care system. She visited a coworking space tailored to young
professionals without kids, and thought, “Wow, this is it. We need a place
where parents can work uninterrupted while their children play in the next
room.”
Marcia Sheehan, a longtime friend of Dash, supported the venture from the
moment Dash pitched it to one of their networking groups. Sheehan owns and
manages a small business and has two young boys. Before Play, Work or Dash
opened, she worked on her business from home in the few hours between
dropping off and picking up her kids from two different schools, but she
always felt strapped for time.
“It is so hard,” she says. “You just feel so pulled. As a mom, I feel like
it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, there’s going to be the mom guilt.
It’s really difficult to have kids that are before school age and have a
business.”
Play, Work or Dash is marketed to people just like Sheehan. According to
Global Workplace Analytics, 3.7 million Americans – about 3 percent of the
total workforce – worked from home at least part of the time in 2016. For
those who have young kids, Play, Work or Dash is a game changer.
“When she opened her doors, I was there on the first day,” Sheehan says.
“To support her, but also to support me. I was so excited about it.”
For the next few months, Sheehan picked her youngest son up from his half
day preschool at noon and fed him lunch in the car as they headed to Play,
Work or Dash for a few hours of uninterrupted work time for Sheehan.
Sheehan was so excited by the business concept that Dash soon hired her as
the center’s community manager, which means she monitors the business’
social media presence and connects with other small businesses that host
workshops for members of Play, Work or Dash.
Play, Work or Dash has supported over 300 families to date. Some clients
drive up to two hours round trip just for three hours of work time, Dash
says.
The center’s popularity highlights the lack of options for parents like
Sheehan. In a city where it costs an average of $22,631 per year to send an
infant to a child care center full time – the highest in the nation,
according to the Economic Policy Institute – some parents may feel trapped,
believes Kate Mereand-Sinha of the D.C. Department of Small and Local
Business Development.
Mereand-Sinha’s department partnered with the public health program at
American University this spring to conduct research on the numerous issues
surrounding child care in D.C. Basically, Mereand-Sinha says, what’s
happening is this: parents who work at home only need part time care for
their children on dates that may change from week to week – the same issue
many of Dash’s clients struggled with when she managed her home daycare.
So, those parents can ensure their child’s slot by shelling out thousands
of dollars for full-time care that they may not really need, or they can
search for an alternative.
“What we presume is happening is that those who can’t afford it are going
into unlicensed care and those who are at the high end of the market are
choosing nannies,” Mereand-Sinha says. “So the marketplace of those who are
choosing center-based or even home-based care is shrinking. When that
market shrinks, the costs keep going up and up because you don’t have
enough diversification.”
Play, Work or Dash fills the gap for those who lie somewhere in the middle
of the spectrum. “The high cost of child care, the inflexibility, the
struggle to find child care and our changing economy – all of those factors
I think are why people are responding to Play, Work or Dash,” Dash says.
Dash’s oldest child will enter college in the fall while her youngest will
start first grade. She makes breakfast for her kids every morning after
catching up on her emails, then she packs their lunches and gets the
younger ones on the bus before she heads to Play, Work or Dash.
Her husband, a teacher, manages homework in the afternoons before they all
sit down together for a family dinner. Her life is hectic, but she doesn’t
believe that a work-life balance is achievable. Instead, she believes in
the Play, Work or Dash model of scheduling blocks of time in the day for
specific tasks. When she’s with her kids, she puts business aside, she
says.
“I want to be able to grow my business while also enjoying every moment
with my children because they’re growing so fast,” she says.
She hopes to soon add private office spaces for people growing their own
small businesses to Play, Work or Dash’s current location in Vienna. She
also hopes to expand the business to more suburban locations in the DMV.
Eventually, she’d like to franchise the model and open up spaces outside
other metropolitan areas.
“I love what I’m trying to build,” she says.
