Daycare Nightmare - Elizabethtown,KY

Ugh..even thinking about it irritates me! Luckily she was only there for 2 months or so and I just couldn't take it anymore. It started off with the tops of her feet being dirty from crawling around on the floors that they suppsoedly mopped every night. And I'm not talking about a tinge of grey..my husband swore they must be going outside. On more than one occassion I came in early to find her and almost all the other children either in bouncy chairs or in cribs- standing up, awake..just staring at all the toys they could've been playing with. The last straw was when I came in to find my daughter half in and half out of her bouncy chair, trying to escape while the teacher was feeding her snack, that I provided, to 2-3 other kids while giving her none! I hated that place!

The daycare reprimanded my 3 year old for wetting her pants. She only went there once.
I have been very blessed with childcare providers. But I am also a SAHM and didn't take them on a regular basis until they could talk to me and tell me what was going on.

My philosophy of interviewing people for childcare became, "if there was a fire, would this person risk his/her life to save the life of my children?" More often than not, I had to hire people who flunked my gut test. I prayed a lot.

When my kids were young, I was working full-time and my husband was in school. We lived in Cleveland, Ohio at the time. We had many "worst daycare nightmares" ourselves, but the absolute worst happened to a co-worker. Her children's daycare center was located in the basement of a church on the corner of an extremely busy intersection.
One day, she arrived to pick up her two kids (both under age 5). She went down the stairs to get them and she didn't see them. They weren't there! She asked a teacher where they were.
Prepare yourself for this answer ...
"Your two children wanted to go home and together they marched up the stairs and walked out the door. We couldn't follow them, because we had to watch the other children."
She found her two children, safe, walking down the sidewalk together about half a block away.

Hi K.
Ironic that your post came when it did. Here's my story. My worst daycare nightmare happened recently when both of my son's teachers got fired/quit. The whole class went through this transition and my husband and I were very upset. We didn't see this coming. Our son is two. He has only been at this daycare for 4 months. We really liked the one teacher (who has now become our babysitter) and so did my son. She was the one who quit because the other teacher would raise her voice at the kids. I felt guilty for not noticing any outcome from my son's behavior. It's hard to tell with a kid his age. Is it just him being a toddler or is there something going on in the classroom? Or, could it be that he was still transitioning to this new daycare? We talked with admin about this and apparently they knew about her behavior and had been working with her. While the other teacher (our now sitter) had a hard time standing back and watching this negative behavior, she constantly raised her concerns to admin about this other teacher. She got so frustrated that she decided she could no longer work with this other teacher or the daycare and she felt admin wasn't acting more aggressive about this behavior, so she quit. My son still talks about both of them and asks where they are? (I'm tearing up as I type this). This is still a fresh wound for us. I never thought I would have to deal with a situation like this having a child this young. We basically told the admin that if something like this happens again in this class, then we're pulling him out. This daycare does pride themselves on their teachers and curriculum. So far things are working out with the two new teachers.
Sorry so lengthy, but like I said, it's still a fresh wound.

My worse experience was when my daughter was 3yrs old. We tried a home daycare (I thought that I'd try that because growing up, my best friends mom had done it and it worked well. Plus I wanted to do it myself while staying home with my daughter but I never got to because my husband never had a steady job and I always had to work). Well, the lady said that she watched all kinds of kids every day but it just ended up being my daughter (and once a week was another girl). So my daughter was bored. Then the babysitter would put on scary movies and have them watch that (My daughter was too scacerd too go).
One time I came to pickup my daughter early and no one was at the house. I tied contacting the babysitter but wasn't able to get ahold of her for hours. I left notes on the door because she wasn't answering the phone. I finally got a call from the babysitter saying that she was sorry, her husband had a flat and she had to go meet him.
Needless to say I didn't bring my daughter back! All of this happened in less than a week of watching her!

All of our expereinces since then have been great.

Well my story surely takes the cake. My sister owns a daycare and I would hear her discuss how they have to go through all these state inspections and that they were 4 or 5 stars because they were sooo awesome so when my son was about a year old, I decided to put him in daycare part-time. I placed him in my sister's daycare (who wouldn't, everyone should trust their family members right?). Well he was there for 2-3 weeks I noticed everytime I would pick him up he would be in the crib and crying. I said something to my sister about him being in the crib all the time and not being allowed playtime outside the crib so she made a point to make the teachers keep him out of the crib unless it was nap time or they needed to put him their for safety reasons. So I thought okay everything is going great until a few weeks later. My son broke out in a rash all over his entire body. He was running high fevers and terribly sick. So I took him to the doctor and she asked if he had been exposed to measles. I told her not that I know of and she said, it looked like measles and that was what she was diagnosing him with. Now we all know that measles can be a very dangerous disease and that is why it has to be reported to the health department. So I immediately called my sister to let her know that he had the measles so she could notify parents of the potential for their children to get it. When I called her she said that he probably caught it from a child at the daycare that she knew had had it. I asked her how long before and she said about 1 1/2 weeks before. I asked her why she didn't notify anyone and she said the state didn't require that they notify anyone of a measles outbreak. I called my doctor's office and let them know that the daycare had an outbreak and they hadn't notified the health department. The doctor immediately called the health department who went out to the daycare and forced my sister to notify all parents of the outbreak that occurred almost 2 weeks before my son had caught it. Come to find out, she didn't notify the health department because the child that had it was not even a child registered to attend the daycare - a friend of hers needed a babysitter for several hours so my sister told her to take her son (with the measles) to the daycare to be watched. I was soooo furious I immediately took him out of the daycare and didn't speak to my sister for at least a month until she finally called and apologized. I actually put him in a daycare that my sister had worked at before she opened her on so it was like a slap in the face to her but I didn't care. That has to be the worst experience I ever had with daycare but it wasn't the fact that my son caught the measles that was so bad because they catch everything at daycares it was because my sister used poor judgement and didn't feel the ned to call and let me know about it.

My son was in a home daycare for 3 days -- when he spit up because she was feeding him too much and too fast. I raced over there from work just to discover that he was still in his high chair, still covered w/ the cereal spitup all over him (clothes and body) and she had put the spit up in a bowl to prove to me that he was really sick. I snatched my son up, said MANY choice words -- and never went back again.

Advice from all this -- I knew from the first time I stepped foot in her house that it was not a good match -- but I was desparate and she had come highly recommended. Since then -- I always listen to my inner voice and it hasn't let me down yet!

This story comes from a colleague of mine who is a state inspector. She was called to investigate an unlicensed child care in a home. The lady who ran the daycare decided to take the children with her to the bank. She put them in her car and off they went. When they arrived at the bank, she let four (yes, four) of them out of the backseat, then she went around and let another three out of the trunk! Someone at the bank saw this and called the cops who called the parents and had them pick up their children at the bank.

The sad thing about it is my colleague was called back about two weeks later because the same lady had done the same thing with some of the same children!

What I want to know is if getting to ride in the trunk was a treat or punishment?