By Kurtis Hiatt
Everything happens for a reason.
George Washington alumna Deborah Tillman firmly believes it. In 1992, Ms. Tillman was a talented staff accountant, a happy wife to husband James and an even happier new mother to a little baby boy, Zeplyn.
Zeplyn was Ms. Tillman’s world. So while she crunched numbers from 9 to 5, she had to know he was in good hands.
A few surprise visits to his daycare providers uncovered he wasn’t.
Once, she stopped in for a surprise check-in around lunchtime to find her son in the very same car seat in which she left him hours earlier. Coat on. Sweating profusely. There was no need for excuses—as Ms. Tillman says, “You don’t get second chances with your child.”
Unfortunately, the nightmare continued. In just three months, Ms. Tillman pulled her son from more than half a dozen shoddy caregivers. No one seemed to be able to adequately care for her son. No. 7, for example, had left her baby alone in a bassinet in a dark room, sucking air from an empty bottle propped up by the wall, she recalled.
There wouldn’t be an eighth. “I just lost it,” Ms. Tillman said. “I said, ‘I’m done.’ ”
Everything happens for a reason.
Ms. Tillman immediately quit her job and enrolled in a 25-hour daycare provider course. Soon, she had a handful of kids under her watch and a waitlist to boot. But Ms. Tillman is a dreamer, and she had a vision that stretched far beyond her apartment.
“I said, I’m going to have a school, because I’m going to do this right—to show people how to do it,” said Ms. Tillman.
Mere months later, the opportunity knocked. The daycare business in her high-rise in Alexandria, Va., was closing and the management was asking did she want it? She did. On March 4, 1994, after a good amount of elbow grease and a fresh coat of paint, Happy Home Child Learning Center opened. It didn’t take long for the waitlist to begin to grow.
Over the next 17 years, Ms. Tillman, who received her master’s in early childhood special education from the Graduate School of Education and Human Development in 2002, would refine her childcare philosophy (positive parenting) and discipline practices (positive redirection). She would open two more Virginia centers for a total of three, taking in about 200 3-month-olds to 5-year-olds at any given time, cared for lovingly by 36 teachers. She’d settle for no less than her kids’ best. She would operate not just daycares but schools, “graduating” countless youngsters and sending them off to kindergarten with the fanfare of a cap-and-gown ceremony. She’d know her families so well she’d field calls from them in the middle of the night—Ms. Tillman, she won’t take a bath!—and keep in touch with the kids forever—Oh, so-and-so’s in med school now.
She’d also scribble down her aspirations when they struck, including one of particular significance that read, “Daycare disasters, transformed.” She hardly expected that one to materialize so quickly. But sure enough, it did.
Everything happens for a reason.
In a transformative moment last July, Ms. Tillman said, son Zeplyn, now in college, gave his mom a thumbs up during dinner. “He said, ‘I’m putting my thumbs up because you have devoted your life to me,’ ” she remembered, tearing up. “ ‘You switched gears. But now, I want you to do what you want to do.’ And I said, ‘I’m doing what I want to do.’ But he said, ‘Yeah, mommy, but there’s more in you for the world to see.’ ”
Zeplyn was right. The very next month, Ms. Tillman got an email from a casting producer with “America’s Supernanny” on Lifetime, where weary parents seek guidance from a tough-love nanny on how to raise their children. Junk mail? she wondered. No, it was addressed “Dear Deborah.” She called the woman, launching into what would be a blur of a week. They flew her to California for a series of interviews and then, armed only with a cameraman and her signature no-nonsense nannying, sent her off to help a family. In a matter of hours, the kids were sharing and one was potty trained.
By the end of the week, they offered her the gig. Get your life in order, they told her, filming starts in a week.
She spent the next eight weeks in eight homes. There was upstate New York. And Indiana. And Kentucky, North Carolina, California. The routine was always the same. To prep, she’d review a tape of the family ahead of time to get an understanding of their issues. Then she’d simply show up—having never met them—and begin observing and determining what “techniques” she’d apply throughout the week. After the intensive intervention, the family would go it on their own before she did the final check in. Days would start at 6 a.m. with hair and makeup and taping wouldn’t end until around 9 p.m. Then it was off to the hotel to plan for the next day. Two or three hours of sleep a night wasn’t uncommon.
But such grueling days were necessary if she was to completely transform an entire family. And she doesn’t leave anything unfinished.
“I have to make sure in my heart of hearts that when I leave that house, I know I did everything I could have done for them,” she said.
It’s never easy but always rewarding. After the week of tantrums and tears, many of the families keep in touch, and they tell her they’re still on track. So far, seven of eight episodes have aired (the last of this round airs Jan. 31 at 10 p.m. on Lifetime). Ms. Tillman is just as invested in one family as she is in the next.
Not surprising, say employees and parents. Ms. Tillman, an East Orange, N.J., native, is the best of the best.
She understands how to nurture, educating the “whole” child from brains to behavior, said Paula Perkins, a Happy Home director who has worked for Ms. Tillman for eight years.
She’s also warm, caring, and “just one of those people you feel like you can sit down at her kitchen table and have a meal and coffee and never want to leave,” said Jennifer Scully, whose 2-year-old son, Joe, attends Happy Home. She isn’t just the director of childcare centers. She’s that chatty friend—the one who’s always smiling and talking a mile a minute, even though she drinks nothing stronger than a venti Starbucks tea.
Then there’s that indescribable feeling parents get walking through one of her Happy Homes—colorful, lively places where toddlers are singing songs like “The Wheels on the Bus.” “I just got the warm fuzzy feeling,” said Markita Woods, whose sons Dawson and Devin attend Happy Home.
Best of all: “There is no front,” said Ms. Woods. She’s right. From the no-nonsense nannying right down to the A-line dress and kitten heels she wears, Ms. Tillman is on TV the same as in person.
Busy as she is, Ms. Tillman does find time to unwind. She likes to read, spend time with her family—a husband of 21 years and son, a sophomore at Georgetown University—bowl, play tennis and listen to jazz at Busboys and Poets. Faith is also important; she keeps the Bible on her desk for guidance. “I totally believe that I could not be doing what I’m doing in my own control,” Ms. Tillman said. “If I was in control, stuff would be messed up.”
Doesn’t she get tired? Hah. “Burn out, to me, doesn’t really happen unless I just really get sick of doing something,” said Ms. Tillman.
And that’s unlikely, especially when there’s so much she can do.
“I’m here on Earth not to just go to work every day,” she said. “I was put here to do something. And that something, even when I die, has to still be resonating.”
Though there’s no way of telling what the future holds, Ms. Tillman is working on a children’s book (she’s already published Stepping Out on Faith: How to Open a Quality Childcare Center) and wants to start a foundation that provides books to needy children. Given the opportunity, she’ll sign on for more “Supernanny” shows, too.
Whatever happens, it’ll happen for a reason.