SINGAPORE – When Ms Poh Ying Xia, 38, learnt that her son’s pre-school was shutting down in 2022, she decided to buy it to keep it open, together with another school parent.
It led to an overhaul of her life. The marketing agency boss is now taking a diploma course in early childhood education with her mother, whom Ms Poh has dragged out of retirement.
Ms Poh’s seven-year-old son, Hsu Rui Hao, has autism. His sensory challenges meant that he had frequent meltdowns in his early years, triggered by everyday sounds like the hum of the washing machine.
At the first childcare centre he attended when he was two, he cried daily. It was a “nightmare”, his mother recalls, from the moment she put his uniform on him, through his car ride to school. He once continued weeping for 40 minutes after drop-off.
When she switched Rui Hao to Sunny Bunny Montessori childcare in the Upper Thomson area in August 2022 at age three, his tears dried up. He seemed more at ease there.
Just two months later in October, the then-owner announced plans to close down, leaving some parents with children there seeking alternatives.
Ms Poh readily agreed to fellow parent and finance director Ang Hui Ling’s suggestion to buy the childcare centre together.
“I didn’t know it was unusual. I just wanted my son to continue in a school he liked. There was such a big contrast compared with his first pre-school,” she says.
It was her first business venture. “I was coming from the perspective that I would just provide the funds and the school would run on its own.”
She was working then as a regional marketing manager at a multinational specialising in medical aesthetics.
