Building a Birth-to-Three Business

Creating an equitable and sustainable birth-to-three business not focused on childcare was a challenging concept for me to grasp at first. Most birth-to-three businesses are daycares, nannies, or service providers for children with developmental delays. I did not envision myself as a birth-to-three business owner who would focus on any of those areas. I am not saying that they are not important. However, I am focusing on how to support families by advocating for the needs of children and providing language services. I work primarily with Spanish-speaking families who need support with advocating for their child’s language development or advocacy for disability services. Starting a business has changed my life completely and I hope to continue to grow as a business. This blog post will discuss the purpose and journey of Developing Language to bring birth-to-three language services to children with disabilities.

The Beginning

I noticed how my Spanish-speaking friends in high school were not meeting grade-level expectations because they were in ELL classes and not learning the general education curriculum. The Spanish language barrier exists in public schools with a predominance of white female educators. I knew I wanted to be a teacher since I was in the sixth grade. I worked on how to teach language through a whole language approach by using both Spanish and English a teacher education club at my high school. After high school, I was initially deterred from being an early childhood educator because of financial reasons. My path to becoming a birth-to-three educator was not an easy one. Nevertheless, I wanted to change the way language is viewed in schools and how to develop language through play for our youngest learners.

I started my journey as a birth-to-three educator two years ago when I was working with young children in a daycare setting. I learned that many educating ten three-year-olds in a classroom by myself was not feasible long-term. The days were taking a toll on my mental health and physical condition. The result instead pushed me to find another place where I could expand my knowledge of early childhood education and continue growth through my experience in the classroom. In 2024, I decided to switch from teaching in daycare centers to teaching in a public school.

Teaching in a public school program allowed me to understand how essential language development is for children ages birth to three. I noticed many of my students entered pre-kindergarten with limited language skills. Especially, students who have developmental delays are at risk when they enter pre-kindergarten because they don’t have the foundational skills to learn or communicate. Many birth-to-three specialists within the region stated that they have high caseloads and do not have the staff to provide services to families and children. I wanted to fix this disparity by creating my own business that addressed the issues I was seeing in my classroom. Developing Language for Infants and Toddlers was created to fill the need within my community for high-quality birth-to-three services.

Future Goals

There was a component of my business that I will focus on later where I will support families with childcare and educational needs, but I need to start somewhere to get there. Short-term goals will focus on building and establishing the business through crowdfunding donations. The 2025 crowdfunding cycle will be used to support three more families in need of birth-to-three services. The families will receive more support with curriculum, advocacy, and language developmental services. I am grateful to the families who are already spreading the word about my services. I will hopefully be able to expand my business to provide professional development and hire more emergent language teachers to support more families. The expansion of Developing Language will depend on the funding available and how much money the crowdfunding sources yield. Nevertheless, I know there will be plenty of opportunities to grow and provide the best birth-to-three services program through Developing Language.

How to Support

Fundraising in 2025 has started strong. I am excited to provide new services with the funding and generosity of donors who want to make an impact in providing birth-to-three language development services to low-income families. Our goal is to expand our impact through virtual services and advocacy for our most vulnerable population. Developing Language is a program designed to support people who need birth-to-three services the most. Therefore, I am committed to keeping these services free for families. We are crowdfunding to allow for the maximum amount of donors to learn about our services and support through their generosity. We will start small, but we will start to grow in the next couple of years. Learn about how to support using the links below.

GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/47c439a3

Stripe Fundraiser: https://buy.stripe.com/4gw4h88U815DgZGdQQ

Thank you in advance for supporting my mission and creating equitable birth-to-three services for all children.