Harbor Day Care Celebrates 35 Years of Learning and Smiles on the Bristol Peninsula

When Laurie Mahan, the founder of Harbor Day Care in Bristol, started the business in January of 1988, it was to fill a need she indentified while working at Bristol Consolidated School as an educational technician. Since then, Mahan has enjoyed becoming an integral part of the community and helping rear generations of Bristol peninsula residents.

“I saw a need in the community: there was a shortage of affordable day care down on the peninsula,” Mahan said. “I knew I liked kids and knew I wanted to teach in some way, and this was it.”

Mahan emphasized the importance of Harbor Day Care’s “old school” approach, with a focus on outside time and playing in the elements.

“We are a center that is a home, not an institution. Some kids call it their play place. It’s their spot, their club house. We get dirty around the edges, but that’s life. I hate sugar-coating things,” she said.

Mahan said Harbor Day Care has seen hundreds of kids over the years on the property off of Pemaquid Harbor Road, some starting as young as six weeks of age. She and her husband built a cabin on their property for the purpose, surrounded by a fence with a playscape in the center.

The Mahans’ two dogs, Biscay, an affectionate goldendoodle, and “Big Baby” Blue, a sleepy black flat coated & golden retriever mix, help out with things between naps and snacks.

In her early 20s, Mahan worked at a camp in Washington in the Cascade Mountains, about 90 miles from the nearest town. Afterwards she moved to Oklahoma, where she found that she missed the ocean.

“Washington was incredibly beautiful, but it wasn’t the ocean. I grew up on the water on the Jersey Shore, my father was a fisherman, and I thought ‘I’m gonna go to Maine,’” she said.

Mahan ended up in running a bed-and-breakfast in Chamberlain, Ocean Reefs Lodge, then cooked at the Samoset Restaurant in New Harbor, where she met her eventual husband, Robin Mahan. His sister, then a teacher at BCS, suggested she take an open educational technician position at the school, which she would hold for three years.

“When we got pregnant, we had this whole plan that we were gonna open a daycare. I got pregnant and we started clearing the land, and we opened up almost a year later,” Mahan said.

According to Mahan, Harbor Day Care currently has a waitlist of about two years and has seen generations of kids pass through its doors.

“I had her mother as a child,” she said, pointing to 2-year-old Gwen Grinnell, the daughter of Clara Poland and Eamon Grinnell, of Damariscotta.

Mahan said the learning that takes place at Harbor Day Care is “baby step learning,” the real rules used as an adult: taking turns, listening, being kind.

“It seems just like babysitting, but it’s a lot more,” she said, helping Gwen Grinnell put her boot on the right way. “The lessons are soft, but they’re the same ones you learn for your entire life.”

The accredited daycare’s mission is to provide affordable childcare for the community while focusing their life-lesson education on play and the outdoors. The inspiration for this approach comes from Mahan’s own childhood on the New Jersey coast.

“A lot of the way we run things here are based on how I grew up. I was one of six kids, and we were free ranged: we were outside, always, we played and played and played, rode our bikes. It was a great way to grow up, and that’s how we do things here,” Mahan said over racecar noises from Otto MacCready, age 4, and Casen Weatherbee, age 4, as they raced around the yard on bikes.

In Harbor Day Care’s 35th year, things are slowing down a bit, according to Mahan. While she is not slowing down to stop, she is ensuring she and her husband, who is retiring from his work as a builder to help at the daycare, take on what the two of them can handle.

Mahan sat in the center of the front yard and led some of the kids in their favorite sing-along songs. MacCready and Weatherbee continued their long race around the yard, and Robin Mahan kept a watchful eye on the children in case any of them were to stray too close to the freshly painted picnic tables.

“The special bond that you have with these kids, especially when they start at this age …” Mahan said, taking a break from the song and nodding towards seven-month-old Ellis Hyson in her arms. “They’ll forget (it), you know, but I’ll never forget them.”