About Beth Brantley-Daniels

Hi, I am Beth Brantley-Daniels, I am the founder and owner of Bright Ideas Childcare and Learning Center. I am also the mother of 8 children, 4 girls and 4 boys and 2 and ¾ dogs. One of the dogs had to have their leg amputated. We have been called the “Brady Bunch” of the 21st Century. Like many of you, I never planned on being where I am today, in the field that I have chosen, or the number of children I have. Actually after being raised the middle child in a family of 2 girls and 4 boys, I wasn’t sure if I would ever have children, especially boys. I always said, if I had boys they had better come with a receipt because I was taking them back!

I went to school to become a nurse, but I have always had an entrepreneurial spirit. After going to nursing school and working in hospitals since I was 15, I started getting burned out. I got a part-time job in a health club. This is going to really date me but, that was in the mid-eighties when Jane Fonda….I know…Jane who?, was the fitness guru. After a few years I moved to Denmark and opened my own fitness studio called Body Factory. I had a great time traveling, doing fitness workshops, and full filling a dream. Then my oldest son, Will (I call him my science project), came along. I sold Body Factory, moved back to Washington State and decided to go back to school to become a midwife. Somewhere in that time, I had my daughter Helle, my “car pool mom,” I became a certified Doula and Lactation Consultant, and was taking child development when I had my “game changer,” Peter. Life as I knew it would never be the same.

Will is my “science project” because, being the first child, if he could survive my experiment called parenting and I could survive his testing of my hypothesis, then we will both be okay. Will has taught me so much about being a parent. Will paved the way for Peter. Will introduce me to something I lacked when he was born… patience. Will had a “Frequent Visitor” card to the emergency room by the time he was 3. To no one else’s surprise but my own, Will was diagnosed ADHD at 8, along with a severe and rare form of dyslexia. I just thought all boys were like that!!! Will taught me the meaning of unconditional love.

I call Helle my “car pool mom” because though she will occasionally test the speed limit, she will be consistent; she will follow the rules but don’t cut her off and don’t park in her space. Helle has been my peace maker, my level headed thinker, my even and consistent child. She works hard at everything she does. She is a perfectionist, she’s a beautiful girl inside and out, she’s becoming an authentic woman, and she is a Christian. Helle has also taught me about faith

Peter is my “game changer” because all the rules to life as I had known before his birth, changed instantly. Peter was born with several health issues. In his first 2 years, he was in the hospital, more than he was out. He had 8 stomach operations, a feeding tube, and something called “sensory integration”. Instinctively, I knew there was more to the sensory thing than I was being told. Peter challenged everything I knew about parenting, medicine, and child development, he was later diagnosed with Autism, Sensory Integration, ADHD and Severe Reflux. Peter also shares the same rare form of dyslexia with his brother Will. He is now a sophomore in high school and has severe learning disabilities. Peter still does not read or write beyond a 1st grade level and struggles with numerical value. However, if anyone has ever met Peter, they find that he is an expert on just about everything else. He knows the State Laws better than I do, especially as it pertains to childcare or education law. Peter is obsessed with computers, cars, cell phones, and keys. He has a unique knowledge in each area and constantly surprises me with what he knows. He has an amazing way of accommodating his disabilities. He is never short on questions and when he wants to get the right answer he turns to YouTube.

I was pretty much a single mom when Peter was born. The children’s father traveled and was gone most of the time. Daycare for Peter was not an option. It was difficult to find anyone willing or capable of watching him. I had a model home at that time and never converted the sales office into a garage so I used it as a room for childcare. I started a childcare co-op in our neighborhood and took in other children. In a last ditch effort to reconcile my marriage, I moved to Arizona and introduced the co-op concept to my new neighborhood. The co-op was a success, my marriage was not.

Soon after moving to Arizona, I went through a horrible divorce that left me pretty much homeless, penniless, and without a car. There were many days where I wasn’t sure how I was going to be able to provide food, clothing, and shelter, let alone Peter’s medicine. I hadn’t worked in the corporate world for many years. Peter was barely stable and not yet diagnosed. Peter didn’t like wearing clothes. Every time I turned around the kid took his clothes off and picked his diaper off into small jelly pieces all around the house. He didn’t talk much but he was very, very busy. It wasn’t unusual to find him going down the laundry chute, biting the dog, or on the roof. One particular day, he climbed out of his crib, down the roof, and somehow got to the curb just in time to wave (naked) to all of the cars coming to pick up their children from school; I lived across the street from the elementary school. I was unaware of Peter’s activities until I got a knock on the door from a very handsome man dressed in a military uniform holding my naked baby in his arms. He was polite enough to not judge my poor parenting skills and handed me my baby. That was the beginning of a wonderful friendship. Who would have known that this wonderful man also owned a daycare and needed a director? He is now my husband, it was a match made by Peter!

I was a trainer and director at his Center until I was given an opportunity to start an on-site childcare for a large corporation in Phoenix. It was quite an endeavor to build this center. I never built a center from the ground up. I was given a very large empty administrative room without any walls or definition, it certainly didn’t look like a warm inviting place where children would learn and grow. I was already working 2 jobs and could barely provide for my children let alone fill the empty space with toys, books and furniture. This was going to require creativity. The classrooms were defined by office partitions linked together to form walls. My children and I spent the little time I had between my day job and cocktail waitressing, going to garage sales and consignment stores buying used toys and books to stock the classroom. Peter packed his hot pink Sesame Street purse which he called his briefcase and went to “Silly Hall” (city hall) and learned all of city, state, county, and fire rules and regulations in building a childcare facility.

I called my mother to share this opportunity and to tell her about HER new line of work, that she just needed to move to Arizona. She said, “Oh Beth Anne, is this another one of your BRIGHT IDEAS”? That’s when I knew what the name had to be! Bright Ideas Childcare and Learning Center opened May 1, 2000. We opened the Tempe location November 1, 2006. The Broadway location has a new owner but is still managed by my mother, the beloved Ms. Penny and the Tempe Center is a thriving location.

My family has grown. I now have in order of age, Will, Helle, Dominique, Peter, Christian, Ashley, Jaylee, Benjamin and my wonderful, supportive husband Tim. Dominique (3D, or the Dominator) is the #1 Female BMX Pro in the United States. My husband is her number 1 supporter and coach. They travel the world competing in events almost every week, with her eye on the Olympic Cycling team for 2012. I have been in Dominique’s life since she was 4 years old. Dom and Helle were in the same Kindergarten class, which made volunteering for field trips fun since I got the opportunity to flirt with her dad and prove to him I wasn’t as bad of mom as he must have had thought upon our first meeting! Dominique reminded me of Will, she has a penchant for climbing things and scaring the crap out of me with her fearless daredevil energy. Dominique is a phenomenal athlete. She is very fortunate that she has such a supportive father who has dedicated himself to cultivating her talent. She has literally dominated every sport that she’s chosen to participate in.

Christian is our “Mocha Boy” well we have a colorful family. Like I said, we are the Brady Bunch of the 21st Century. We are blended and biracial. Christian is a lot of fun. He thinks he is the inventor of the teenage boy, he doesn’t realize that those that walked that oh so tortured path before him gave us great parental insight into puberty which broke us in for the land of teenagers. Christian is very smart. He loves to read. He is coming into his own trying to find his success in school, sports, and girls!

Ashley, “bubbly”, is just that, bubbly. You can always count on Ashley for her bubbly personality, a sweat hello, a hug, and a desire to please. We have been blessed to have Ashley as a part of our family for a little more than a year, but she has been a part of the Bright Ideas family for many years. Ashley is well acquainted with the wonderful stage of awkwardness and acne and is familiar with road of teen age drama. Luckily, she has embraced it with grace and a big smile. Ashley has a great sense of humor and is going through the phase of self discovery, identity, style, her likes and dislikes.

Jaylee, “The Diva” is as she puts it, “the only one”. Sometimes she will include you in her “the only one” stage and sometimes, she is truly “the only one”. Jaylee is an extremely bright and precocious preschooler. I sometimes have to remind myself that I am the adult not her. Jaylee will never question her smartness, her beauty or her worth to the world. She has the confidence that most adult women can only dream of. She loves books, playing pretend, dressing up, and correcting Peter on how to count to 10. Jaylee has challenged me in many ways; she is very creative when it comes to getting attention and fulfilling her fantasy of being “the only one”.

Benjamin, “Chicken Nugget”, “Benee Boo”, “Fatty Boy,” you may get the sense that the boy loves to eat! Ben is a toddler. Ben came to us just before his 1st birthday. He was severely delayed in all areas of his development. He has progressed so much. Besides his love for food, Ben loves, loves, loves, books and movies especially if it involves cuddles and dinosaurs. There are few children his age that will sit through an entire movie, but he will and he’s hard to distract. I will never be able to have a car without a DVD player again. I don’t know how my mother took 6 kids anywhere when hitting each other was our only form of entertainment!

I am so thankful for my husband. He was the one that believed in me when I had literally nothing and kept telling me I could do it. He is my strength and he centers me. He is always there to do the thankless jobs of going to the bank, going to the store, or playing Mike Brady with a really bad wig. I am a very fortunate woman to have the experiences that I have and a family that not only puts up with me but supports me. This has truly been a family business from the start.

I look back now and I am not quite sure how it all fell together so well. In 15 years, I have never received any child support. We had some pretty lean years. I know that there were many days when I was just surviving the day. I truly believe that it took divine intervention for Bright Ideas to come to fruition and to continue to grow and have the opportunities we do today. There have been many bumpy roads that we have hit along the way. I have made more than my fair share of mistakes. I have currently returned to school to get dual degrees in Human Development and Early Childhood Development. During class we were asked to state 1 thing that we were really good at and one thing that we were an expert in. My response was, I am really good at detecting special needs in children and I am expert at making mistakes! I believe that Bright Ideas is what it is today because of the toil that it took to build it and the heart that it takes to grow it. I have always envisioned Bright Ideas to be an extension of family and community to help build the foundation of children.

I have been asked several times to do a blog. I was apprehensive at first because I don’t have a couple of initials at the end of my name indicating some sort of credentials. I guess what I do have is “street cred”, I have experience with literally more than 1000 children and parents, and hundreds of stories to tell to anyone willing to listen. I am hoping that this summary of the making of Bright Ideas will inspire some to follow their own crazy Bright Ideas and help to serve as a forum to raising happy, healthy, strong families. Please let me know if there are any specific topics or questions that we can discuss. I am looking forward to continuing to build a relationship with our families and community.