School’s out for summer and parents are scrambling for child care solutions.

It’s wrong to describe schools as a baby sitter for working parents, but there’s no better environment for children.

For the next three months, school — except for summer enrichment classes — is no longer an option for today’s harried parents, juggling careers and family life.

“Thank goodness,” working parents breathe a sigh of relief, “There’s day care.”

For instance, Helen’s Day Care.

On Austin’s northeast side, Helen Johnson has been offering quality child care services for 24 years.

Add to that total, her years at the former Austin Day Care Center at the Church of the Open Bible, and the total swells to 39 years.

Of course, her husband, Phil, is a valuable partner, but day care is an art and science perfected by his wife.

Something she obviously cherishes and takes with a grain of salt. For instance, knowing dray care bliss can turn instantly to something else.

She compares that to “war and love.”

Johnson began her day care career right after she married her husband, Phil Johnson.

Child’s paradise

The couple live in a comfortable home near the end of First Avenue Northeast.

Inside and out it is a child’s paradise.

Fully enclosed for the children’s protection, there are multiple playgrounds in the backyard, balls to bounce, riding toys, basketball hoop, swings, slides, sandpile and even a garden to watch things grow.

The most recent addition has been a rear deck and ramp to accommodate a special needs child, Matthew Erath, 10-year-old son of Becky Erath, a single parent.

The Johnsons have also added two egress windows to satisfy regulations about safety of the children.

Inside, the front hallway contains a collection of plastic bins where the children store their outerwear and, during the nine months of the school year, papers to share with their parents.

The home’s living room is, literally and figuratively, a great room.

There’s a computer on a desk, a wide-screen television set and enough carpeted room for game-playing, horseplay and other child activities.

And this isn’t the main playroom in the home.

“We’ve had kids who were at other day cares, but came here for awhile, who don’t want to leave,” said Phil.

There’s no arguing from Holly, 13, an eighth-grader this fall at Ellis Middle School, Matt, 10, and Ryan, 2.

On this afternoon, they are the only children left before their parents arrive to collect them.

In addition to Matt, a special needs child, who requires a wheelchair to navigate through life, Ryan is a diabetic child at the tender age of 2 who also requires special attention.

Teenager Holly functions as “big sister” for both: giving up her chair in front of the computer for Matt’s wheelchair when he arrives home from school and doting over Ryan, picking him up for hugs when she feels he needs them and picking up the toys he drops behind him as he wanders back and forth in the great living room of the Johnson home.

Children first always

Helen and Phil have agreed to talk about how day care is an all-consuming vocation for them.

“Matthew loves the ramp,” Helen said proudly. “Before we had it built, we had to lift him in and out and carry him all over the place.”

Ryan wanders over to inspect the reporter’s tape recorder and ask “Where’s Matt?”

It is after 3 p.m. on a school day and the arrival of Matt, wheelchair and all, is greeted with anticipation from everyone. “Keep watching out the door for the school bus,” Phil tells Ryan.

“I directed the Austin Day Care Center for 15 years before we got married and afterwards I opened my own in our home,” Helen said. “Some of the families of the children encouraged me to open my own day care and I did.”

Helen’s Day Care opened 24 years ago with 14 (the licensed capacity) children. Helen and a girlfriend, who came over to help, managed the day care while Phil operated a vacuum cleaner business in downtown Austin.

After being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease two years ago, Helen reduced the number of children she watched to 10.

The children are ages 2 to 12. They also serve families who need respite care of their children. Although the couple are willing to become a crisis nursery home, they have never received the designation.

The couple has constantly reconfigured their home, a second flood playroom for the children is another example, to accommodate their clients.

Children matter in the home without question.

After almost four decades of day care, Helen sees changes in the children.

“I think it’s getting more difficult, because many children don’t know how to entertain themselves,” she said. “They have been so dependent on TV, the computer, video games entertaining them.”

Children are not allowed to let high technology and other electronic distractions dominate their lives at Helen’s Day Care.

“We just shut things off and say ‘It’s too nice of a day to stay inside,’” she said.

Every year, regulations increase, but Helen said, “to the good.”

According to the day care operator, “They are beneficial to the kids and help guarantee the safety and welfare of the kids,” she said.

Mower County hires independent licensers to conduct inspections and rectification every two years.

Honorary grandparents

It’s no secret, the day care clients call Helen and Phil, “Grandma” and “Grandpa,” in line with their 60-something ages.

This par of surrogate or honorary grandparents also have to be disciplinarians or do they?

According to teenager Holly, a client who should know, neither are “very strict.”

There’s nap time, meal time and quiet time. There are also birthdays are a “big deal” celebrated with parties.

All the children, no matter where they live with their families, are treated like members of one very large family.

Two-year-old Ryan comes from Brownsdale, three more come from Lyle and the rest are from Austin homes.

The parents do not face annual increases in day care rates. “Every couple of years or so I have to increase them,” said Helen.

“The bus is here,” announced 2-year-old Ryan excitedly.

Abruptly everything comes to a halt and the entire household ventures outside to greet Matt arriving on an Austin Transportation Service handicapped accessible bus driven by Howard Wytaske.

Each school day morning, Matt is delivered to the bus at curbside by Helen and Phil after a ritual that illustrates the attention to detail at the day care center.

On those mornings, Helen rises at 4:30 to go to the Erath home to prepare the handicapped child for a day of school and/or day care.

Helen is hired by Morningstar home health care to provide the services.

By design or chance, clearly Matt is everyone’s favorite in the Johnson day care center.

“You need to have more than one person here to take care of a special needs child,” Helen said. “They require more time and attention always.”

The Johnsons have watched children as young as six weeks old. She has cared for one family’s three daughters since each were six weeks old.

“After 39 years of doing this, a lot of those babies have grown up, graduated, some are married and some have their own children.”

Five years ago, both Helen and Phil, suffered debilitating injures during a fall from scaffolding while re-siding their home.

Day care parents and families from their church, Cornerstone Assembly of God, helped complete the project while the pair recovered. The day care was temporarily closed.

Whose gift is it?

By 5:30 or 6 p.m. each day, the last child has been collected by their parents and Helen and Phil are left home alone … sometimes. They do respite care in the evenings and weekends; holidays, too.

They may have grocery trips to make, too.

Nap time each day is the only other extended quiet time enjoyed by the adults.

“We enjoy the kids so much,” said Phil. “It’s actually like family-time for us. Some time they need a little discipline, time out and stuff like that, but most of the time it’s at lot of fun.”

Helen learned parenting in her family. She has six sisters and four brothers, plus her parents raised a sister of their father, too.

“We had a house full,” she said. “We all lived on a farm near Lansing Corners.”

Helen’s Day Care is a “bread and butter” style day care. A few frills, such as the computer, but basically a “give them all your attention, be prepared to say “no” and always praise them kind of day care.

As Helen said, “It can go from war to love in a moment.”

On a wall in the great living room — the title seems apt —- there are two plaques.

One reads, “Day care is loving care by special people. A special home away from home.”

The other reads, “A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in or the kind of car I drove, but the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child.”

Both plaques and touching sayings are gifts from day care families.

Just like the day care at Helen’s Day Care is a gift to the families.