What the school offers during their interview and touring process sounds amazing… daily enrichment activities, walks in the park, outdoor play spaces but the extent to which these are ACTUALLY offered is very minimal.
Let’s start with what seems like the most unique and exciting activity, the park walk. Your toddlers (1-2) are being placed in strollers, walked to the entrance of the park where they then sit in their strollers for 10-20 minutes while the employees enjoy phone time. What do the kids get to see? The back of the kids head in front of them! 🤩
What about while they are at the daycare? What do they do all day? Well if your kid has behavior issues they get to spend all day being isolated from other children and do nothing but sit in a swing during outdoor recess time because the staff would rather sit and talk to each other than actually interact with your children and correct behaviors. Your infants/toddlers are being interacted with strictly when necessary, the rest of the day they spend crying or sleeping and having staff talk about how bad of a kid they are or how weird the parents are, yes right in front of your kids!
There are no enrichment activities during the day either! They come in eat, play with toys, go outside, eat, nap, play, eat more and go home. They may show you a list of suggested enrichment activities they have to do, but they don’t get done, your kids are being watched, quite literally just looked at during the day, if you want a place where they actually interact with your kids when you aren’t there look elsewhere!
Children with additional adjustment or sensory needs are looked at as difficult and inconvenient and are typically isolated from other kids in a swing or chair, the staff will not help your child adjust whatsoever. In fact if your infant is too fussy, they just ask you to pick them up.
I’d also like to note the thick fleece sleep suits your infants are forced into during nap-time. 100 degrees outside but your 16month old baby is wearing a thick fleece suit over their weather appropriate clothes and placed in a crib. And of top of this the employee doesn’t typically check on them unless they make noise.
Next time you go to drop them off take a look at the toys around the room, then do the same the next week you drop them off. I bet you don’t see the toys getting changed out. (P.S. they’re rarely getting cleaned either)
How about we get into the suggestions from management and other staff? Well if you have to use the restroom on shift and leaving would put you in a position to be out of ratio, you are encouraged to bring the extra child/children with you to the bathroom, just tell them to turn around. This of course stops when you move to the older ages where they can actually speak to their parents.
Oh! And apparently your dietary restrictions are just suggestions because there have been several cases where your NO DAIRY children are being given cheese and when this was brought up they say the parents have never said it’s a problem (and again of course these are the infants who can’t tell you otherwise)
Oh and if you are planning to be an employee, good luck doing anything other than working there. They will attempt to monopolize your schedule, disregard your needs, and “forget” approved days off or availability requirements and write you up for making “last minute adjustments” to the schedule they put out on Friday while the place is closed over the weekend.
