Ilma's story
A grandmother's care, the way it should be.
Ilma started caring for neighborhood babies in the early 1990s, when her own children were still small. She opened Jungle Junction as a licensed family daycare in her Lathrop home in 2013, and the children she once rocked to sleep have started bringing their own kids back. That continuity (generations of the same families returning) is what makes Jungle Junction what it is.
She is patient. She is bilingual. She still remembers the names and birthdays of children she cared for twenty years ago. When parents tell us their child runs to the door in the morning instead of away from it, that's the highest compliment we receive.
"I treat every child as if they were my own grandchild. That isn't a slogan: it's just how I was raised, and it's the only way I know how to do this."