Affiliate Spotlight! SkillZone, Elemeno- Best Indoor Play Space in DC
Located in Capitol Hill, elemeno is a membership-based playful learning environment, parent coworking space, family club, and party venue for families with babies, toddlers and preschoolers. Initially called SkillZone, elemeno has expanded to include children's classes, parent education, and a variety of services for the whole family. Doulas of Capitol Hill is proud to host a monthly Doula Speeding event at Elemeno. Today on the blog Liza Fox, co-founder of Elemeno, shares her story.
What led you to this career?
A pretty unusual path! Professionally, my background is in public policy, management, and the integration of new technologies. Nothing related to being an entrepreneur focused on helping young families breathe easier!
But when my partner, Michael, and I were considering venturing out on our own to start a business, a friend gave us great insight by reminding us we should solve a problem that exists in our own lives - because we know others are likely struggling with it too. So we decided to focus on how to make it easier to be a young family in the city. We created Elemeno to be a place where parents with babies, toddlers and preschoolers can relax, learn, work, celebrate, and connect to a community of support through getting to know other local families.
2. What do you enjoy most about work?
The absolute best thing about our business Elemeno is that this is a place people come to be happy. It’s a place they come to take a bit of a load off, to meet friends, to let their children explore and experiment. I’ve never worked somewhere where there are so many smiles.
And to go a bit deeper, I truly enjoy providing something to help parents navigate the early years. Those first few years are some of the most incredible but also the most exhausting anyone will face in their lifetime. There are so many pressures on parents in our current culture to do everything perfectly, our ‘parenting-industrial complex’, I am passionate about providing a pressure release valve for parents of young ones.
3. If you are a parent, how was your birth and postpartum?
While I have two step children I love dearly, having been with them very early on, I have not given birth or worked through the early months following.
4.What resources would you want parents to have?
In a way, I think parents today are over-resourced. There are so many books, blogs, programs, etc., that it just gets overwhelming. I would like parents to have a more supportive community around them, so they don’t feel like everything is up to them. In our culture where we expect just the individual parents to be able to manage a separate household, careers, care and education, health care, enrichment activities, and literally everything that’s needed to keep a family going. It’s never been that way in human history before, and it’s not that way in most societies outside of ours. It really does ‘take a village’, and I want parents to have that village regardless of where they actually live.
5. What is one unique thing about your business that your customers/clients love?
Our member families love that we provide a sense of relief in their otherwise hectic days. Relief that they’re engaging in something that’s promoting their child’s development (physically, developmentally, socially). Relief that they get to shut off the rest of the world and relax for a bit in an environment that is built around the adult experience as much as it is for the kids. Relief that they can use our coworking space to get some much needed work done while knowing their child is learning and smiling with us downstairs. Relief that they can get out of the house, spend some quality time together, connect with other families, and not have to clean up afterward!
6. What's one thing you think the world needs to do to improve the lives of new parents (or people living in our service area)?
I guess I got on my soapbox a bit early with my earlier answer about resources I think parents should have. I truly believe we need to fix the culture of new parents being ‘on their own’ or just getting a surge of help right after birth but then having it go away in the long months and years ahead. This requires specific policy and program changes (parental leave, child care / preschool, etc.), but I think it starts with the paradigm shift that young parents alone are not responsible for the entire next generation of humans. If we want a vibrant future for our community we have to support those who will make it as a community.
7. What do you think is the hardest part of expecting baby or becoming a parent?
This isn’t likely the hardest part but it’s one that I don’t think others would say here so I’ll say it. Having a baby obliterates—I mean, uh—completely changes your social life. And having a second child does it over again because two kids are significantly harder to drag along than one. That’s not a bad thing, it’s just very, very different than you’re used to pre-kids. And you’ll find yourself doing it to yourself in that all you talk about is kid-related stuff, your priorities and care abouts shift, your schedule and willingness to put up with disruptions to it change drastically. That’s a big reason why we encourage our Elemeno member families to connect with each other and attend our meet-and-greet family socials and other events. I recently had a dad tell me, when he was ordering a beer from our bar here as his daughter played with a new friend, “I have a buddy who wanted to grab a beer, and I told him to meet me here because this is the only place I get out for a beer anymore”.