All Helen Raine wanted was a couple of mornings to herself. It seemed like an impossible dream... until, one day, her co-operative preschool was born. And it didn’t need fundraising, registration, or a website. It just needed six mums, six kids, paper, paint, several gallons of kiddie glue and a space.

When my son was about two, I began to sing the classic mummy lament. “All I want,” I mused with friends, “is a couple of mornings to myself, but I can’t find any decent, part-time childcare.” I was living in the US and the childcare available either required a full-time and therefore expensive commitment, or was mediocre babysitting.

What I wanted was a part-time option, where my son had a fun learning experience and I could escape for a few hours every week knowing that he was doing something meaningful.

Well, America was not built on sitting around and complaining. Only a few weeks later, a woman called Wynne got in touch with me. Her son had attended a co-operative preschool in Idaho and she was now moving close to where I lived and wanted to recreate this experience.

I met Wynne at Starbucks, where she was armed with a sheaf of papers, a pen and a slightly forbidding manner (sorry Wynne, it was the clipboard that did it). She was talking about fundraising, registering the school, pre-assigned jobs for parents. I left deflated. This was way more work than I was capable of taking on, since I was now also vastly pregnant.

But the idea of a co-operative preschool just wouldn’t go away. It answered a need that many of us had; time for ourselves while our kids learned the skills they would need later at kindergarten. Things suddenly came together one day at the playground where six of us mums were standing around watching our kids in a desultory fashion and all saying the same thing. And in that moment, the preschool was born. We realised that we didn’t need fundraising or registration and a website. We just needed six mums, six kids, paper, paint, several gallons of kiddie glue and a space.

One week later, one of us was playing teacher, two were helpers and three were dropping off their kids and doing a victory salute as they ran off, childless for once, to do freelance work, or jog, or do yoga, or whatever it was that would make them feel like a person instead of just a mummy.

I would love to report that this first class went like clockwork and we never looked back. The truth is that by the end of that first class, the mums in charge were dizzy. The kids weren’t used to the structure and leading them round the different work stations was like herding cats.

We mums weren’t used to teaching, so lesson plans seemed to take hours. Some kids ploughed through our meticulously planned activities in seconds while others lingered over the glue and glitter for half the class. Worse, the neighbourhood centre, where we were housed, had multiple exits, as well as gaps in the fence that led straight onto the main road. We had to keep counting the kids to make sure no one had escaped.

But gradually, we worked out the kinks. We moved to a church hall with an enclosed garden. We developed a consistent structure that each mother could use to plan her lesson, cutting down on work. We reduced the helper down to one and each mum took on a specific job, such as supplies, communication and scheduling.

We talked about what kinds of discipline techniques we wanted to use and how to help the children work out “social interactions”, such as hitting, snatching toys and having a complete and utter meltdown. We made sensory tables out of plumbers’ pipes and bought supplies at car-boot sales.

But the turning point was when we hired a teacher. Not only did the lessons improve immeasurably (we’d really been muddling along with lesson plans cribbed from Pinterest and preschool websites), but we mums only needed to be helpers once every six weeks, and later, as the number of pupils increased, once every nine weeks. Despite this, the cost remained at only around €50 monthly.

That meant that for eight blissful weeks, we had two whole mornings to do exactly as we pleased. It was revolutionary, especially when we started sharing childcare for the younger kids too, while their big brothers and sisters were at the preschool.

The ethos of the school was important to everybody. It was a true co-operative, where everyone took part and no one was ‘in charge’. We made decisions and solved problems by consensus. There was no room for freeloaders; in order to put their child into the class, parents had to be genuinely prepared to participate. And we went out as a group in the evenings to foster that social spirit (or at least, that was the excuse we gave our husbands). Our now firm friend Wynne left, but new mums joined in and became friends too.

What I wanted was a part-time option, where my son had a fun learning experience and I could escape for a few hours

And now, two years later, as I write this, my younger daughter is having her first day without me at the co-operative. We’re in a different building with a new teacher, 11 kids and an almost entirely new group of mums, some of whom have only just met.

Right up until today, I was asking myself: “Why am I doing this, it’s a whole heap of work!” And it’s true, it’s taken a lot of organising. We’ve had meetings; I’ve planned lessons while we tried to find a teacher; we’ve e-mailed constantly; sometimes confusion has reigned. But everyone has pitched in and here I am with my precious time off and my child learning how to cut with scissors, sing new songs and work out how to deal with other children without her mother hovering over her.

So if the preschool you want for your child doesn’t exist, there’s a simple solution; stop complaining, find a church hall and create it.