I was introduced to Lucy Daniels about a year ago through a former colleague. At the time, I was serving as the Family Network co-chair at my previous employer and we wanted to give back to our community, specifically geared towards children and their families. We meet with the director from Lucy Daniels and we were so amazed (and impressed) on how the staff and volunteers devoted their hearts and time to help children live emotionally healthy lives. Our network members volunteered to deliver quarterly Lucy Book Club bookmarks to removing recycled materials for the center. We were so excited to be part of a great cause, anytime they needed us, we were there! I knew for sure I wanted to continue to help Lucy Daniels with their mission and joined the Board of Directors this year. The dedication and support provided at Lucy Daniels will give families and their children a chance forhope and a future!!

I became involved with the Lucy Daniels Center in the Fall of 2011. I very rapidly noticed the passion and dedication each of the faculty, staff, and board members have to the mission of this organization. The need for development programs for socially and behaviorally challenged children has become especially important as families in our region struggle through the recession, through changing family life, and through changes in this dynamic world. Last year, The Lucy Daniels Center served over 600 families struggling with these difficulties. The faculty and staff are highly trained and educated to take special care of the children, give them the help and confidence they deserve, and make a very profound difference in the lives of the children and their families. The Lucy Daniels Center is a model institution for the emotional development of young children in North Carolina.

My daughter attended the LDC from ages three to five. She just finished her first semester of college. She met many other children there that she still maintians relationships with today. I credit the LDC for my daughter's incredible capacity to make and keep friends. She has tremendous interpersonal skills which I believe she developed while at the Center. She had the opportunity to be exposed to many different children and because of that she has a deep caring capacity. Many times her teachers would remark that she would always be the first one to invite the new kid to play or to make sure eveyone one was included. By the time she graduated high school she knew at least one friend from every high school in Wake County. I am convinced that because of her exposure to the incredible teachers, staff and other wonderful kids at the LDC she developed this skill. I am now a LDC Board member some sixteen years later.

My daughter started at the LDC this year and it has been a positive experience for her as well as myself. I tried another preschool last year and my daughter did not take too well to the environment. The LDC was the perfect fit for her this year! She is very sensitive emotionally and the teachers and staff helped her work through her emotions. The phase in program was a wonderful way to help my daughter ease in to going to preschool without mom. No tears for either of us! I highly recommend the Lucy Daniels Center not only for the phase in program but also teaching our little ones academics as well as emotional security!

My son had severe separation anxiety and also general anxiety. The school helped him work through his feelings so that he would no longer disrupt a whole classroom when he needed help, and gave him strength to cope in many circumstances. Today he is in first grade at a public school, and it is difficult to believe he is the same child whose behavior was so out of control two years ago.

LDC also gave us as parents invaluable assistance and support on how to cope and to parent a child that is not developing typically. They helped give us the strength to recognize that not all other parents have the same experience we have, nor can they understand it.

As a former teacher at Lucy Daniels there was no other place I thought of for preschool for my first child. Great ratios combined with excellent caring and educated teachers make for the best introduction to school for a preschooler. They have taken the time to make him (and all the preschoolers) feel so comfortable away from mom/dad for the first time in a school setting. Now pregnant with our second child we see many years of Lucy Daniels in our future!

This will be our family's 5th year at the school, and we've been thrilled. It's a NAEYC Accredited, 5 star licensed nationally awarded progrm. You may have heard of them in Carolina Parent's column or quoted in national parenting magazines. This year they're offering classes for 2-5 year olds developing within the typical range or who have mild delays that would allow them to participate in an inclusive classroom setting. They also offer an Early Intervention Program for kids needing support in social/ emotional areas.
As a parent, I was struck by several things that make this program different from others. First, it's an 11 month, half-day preschool. For us, this has provided a consistency that made going back to school after break easier. It's a secular program with a good mix of students from a variety of backgrounds. They also have smaller than required classes. The most important thing for us was the phase-in program, which allows you to slowly transition your child in at the beginning of the year by staying increasingly shorter periods until the child is comfortable staying on their own. For kids like mine who are incredibly attached and have a difficult time with separation, this is a wonderful thing in making them feel safe and secure. They also don't require that a child be potty-trained by a certain deadline, but work with the parents on the child's schedule. They've been great in helping our child deal with the changes that come with a new sibling. You can tell they really care about the kids. They call to let you know that the child is missed when they are out sick, and even offered to let my child talk to his friends on speaker phone when he'd been out a week sick. I can't say enough great things about them, and I strongly encourage those of you looking for a preschool to consider them.

I have been visiting the Lucy Daniels Center for Early Childhood from the day of its groundbreaking ceremony on and it's fair to say that the Center has been doing groundbreakig work every since! As a psychiatrist who is also trained at a child analyst, I recognize the unique value that the Lucy Danierls Center brings to our community. First and foremost, it provides direct services to children and families of the highest quality in its pre-school programs. What makes the Lucy Daniels Preschool unique is that it offers children who simply might not make it anywhere else a chance to get back on a normal developmental path through the power of applied psychoanalytic work with the child and his/her family. The Center also offers the primier child evaluation program in the Triangle. It has always served as a beacon for troubled families by providing information and support in parenting and by developing a skilled community of families, clinicians and advocates all focused on raising healthy, happy children. I consider myself very lucky to be a part of the Lucy Daniels Center community and look forward to working with them in the future.

My daughter attended the Center's Child Enrichment Program (model pre-school) classes from 2006-2009. As a preschooler, she was hesitant and unsure of herself and yet deeply sensitive, both to her own feelings and those of others. Her teachers nurtured her growing understanding of others’ emotional cues, helping her make sense of interactions with her classmates and feel more confident in her responses to conflict, so that she emerged, as a 5-year old, prepared to face the social dynamics of a kindergarten classroom—and the world beyond. I was amazed by her growth. The teachers at the Center are of the highest caliber, well-trained and uniquely attuned to the emotional lives of the children in their classroom, not just their outward behaviors. The Lucy Daniels Center is an exceptional place, and I recommend it without reservation.

I am a big fan of the Lucy Daniels Center for two reasons. The first is that they were gracious host to my Finance team of 18 employees last year as we completed our GlaxoSmithKline Orange Day assignment ( all GSK employees select a day of volunteer work and our company is generous enough to pay for the day and the activities). It was a wonderful experience to work on the LDC playground as the children waved and smiled from their classrooms and were entertained by the muddy and wet strangers who took great joy in putting mulch down on their area for play ( it was pouring rain while we worked and it made it fairly comical). Our team had a great time with team building at LDC.