History of BT
Basic Trust (BT) has been in existence on the Upper West Side since the late 1970's. Jan Miller, then a recent graduate of Bank Street and a single mother, having worked in other child care centers and being criticized for getting “too attached” to the infants, decided to start a daycare program for babies and toddlers where she would have felt comfortable sending her own son. And so, with 6 babies and toddlers, in the living room of her apartment on W. 79th St., she began what was to become Basic Trust.
Our Philosophy
Jan began Basic Trust with very solid principles that guide us to this very day. One was that the ideal model for raising children under the age of three is a healthy, high functioning family. This notion stood and still stands in stark opposition to in the operative model for childcare in the world of early childhood—the institution, the school. At BT we believe that babies and toddlers and even our Big Kids do not need to spend their childhoods in school. What we want to feel most closely akin to is a home. We believe that the family and the home provide a baby everything he or she needs--consistency, flexibility and the opportunity for attachment. The term "basic trust" comes from the theories of Erik Erikson who believed that the first psychological task of the human infant was to establish either a basic sense of trust or mistrust in the world. Our goal is to provide the environment and relationships necessary for the child to weigh in on the side of trust.
That means that the environment we provide must be consistent and reliable. The child must know that the environment and the people in it will behave in a more or less predictable manner. But it must also not be a place that is too rigid. The child must trust that her needs will be met. That an infant can eat if he is hungry and sleep if he is tired. It should be a place with just enough rules to make sense and just enough flexibility to feel good. And the child must find people there to attach to, people with whom he or she will fall in love and learn to trust completely.
Another founding principle was that, in order for this trust to develop, we must form equally strong and uncompromising relationships with the parents of the children in our care. When we agree to care for a baby at Basic Trust we understand that we are entering into a very significant and often complex relationship with the parents as well. We believe that we are equal but different partners in raising the child and work to create the most productive and healthy relationship with families that we possibly can.
Jan also began Basic Trust with the belief that daycare has the opportunity to be a community for families as well as children. To that end we have numerous functions throughout the year that allow parents to talk and connect both with and without their children.
Throughout the years, Basic Trust has had many different homes from Jan’s living room to the basement of a public school to our current residence in a three story townhouse. Every place we’ve lived we have had the same mission: to create a place of integrity for children and families. A place that works as hard as it can to live its mission every day to help parents raise happy, healthy kids.
That means that the environment we provide must be consistent and reliable. The child must know that the environment and the people in it will behave in a more or less predictable manner. But it must also not be a place that is too rigid. The child must trust that her needs will be met. That an infant can eat if he is hungry and sleep if he is tired. It should be a place with just enough rules to make sense and just enough flexibility to feel good. And the child must find people there to attach to, people with whom he or she will fall in love and learn to trust completely.
Another founding principle was that, in order for this trust to develop, we must form equally strong and uncompromising relationships with the parents of the children in our care. When we agree to care for a baby at Basic Trust we understand that we are entering into a very significant and often complex relationship with the parents as well. We believe that we are equal but different partners in raising the child and work to create the most productive and healthy relationship with families that we possibly can.
Jan also began Basic Trust with the belief that daycare has the opportunity to be a community for families as well as children. To that end we have numerous functions throughout the year that allow parents to talk and connect both with and without their children.
Throughout the years, Basic Trust has had many different homes from Jan’s living room to the basement of a public school to our current residence in a three story townhouse. Every place we’ve lived we have had the same mission: to create a place of integrity for children and families. A place that works as hard as it can to live its mission every day to help parents raise happy, healthy kids.