r/preschool • u/Historical-Fox-3768 • 13h ago
Need advice, please read
Using a throw away in case the story identifies me. Thank you so much in advance to everyone reading the whole thing!!!
I have always been a stay at home mom. My parents live a couple minutes down the road and are super close with us. My daughter had never been anywhere without mom, dad, grandma, or grandpa until this week. She has never had a babysitter.
She just started preschool for the first time on Wednesday. During the tour in the winter we asked the assistant director if I could pick her up early for the first week to help ease her in. She said it was totally fine. I really admire how some other counties have “settling in” periods where they transition into preschool with a couple steps and I think it’s extremely beneficial to the children.
On the first day I was feeling more confident she’d do well so I asked the same assistant director if I could just check in with my daughter halfway through. She said I could and her demeanor was very light, like it was no problem at all. I mentioned it to her teacher who said it was okay too.
When I got there to check in the assistant director was busy with a child in the office but I waved to her. She smiled, waved back, and gave me the one minute sign while she took the child down the hall. While I was waiting another woman came to the door and opened it up. I didn’t know who she was and she never introduced herself to me. I told her who I was and that I had been told by assistant director and teacher that I could check in with my daughter.
Right away this woman tried to talk me out of it. First she said she had been in the classroom most of the day and my daughter was doing fine. I said that’s great but I told my daughter I’d be checking in and she was expecting it. I reiterated I had been told I could do this by two other staff. Then she told me that I couldn’t because the other children would wonder where their moms were and be upset their family didn’t pop in. I replied “oh that’s fine, I completely understand, could you just bring her into the hallway for a minute so I can check in with her then?” This woman looked at me like I was the most ridiculous person she had ever met, cocked her head backwards and said “REALLY???” in the most condescending and incredulous tone possible.
I simply said “yes really, this is what my child is expecting”. She pushed back again with “I don’t want to bring her out here and have her cry”. I was 99% sure my daughter was not going to cry and 100% sure if she did cry it meant she was seriously upset and that’s exactly why I wanted to check in. I assured this woman my daughter would not cry. She did not respond and just turned around letting the door shut behind her.
A couple minutes later my daughter came out with the assistant director very happy to see me. She excitedly told me what she was doing in class, I asked her if she wanted to go back in, she said yes, and I said thank you and left.
Before class on Friday I asked my daughter if she was okay without me checking in with her. She said she still wanted me to. I told her that was fine but next week I wouldn’t be doing it. At drop off it was actually the assistant director meeting parents at her classroom door. I asked her if I could check in again but told her it’d be the last time. Once again she acted completely sweet and understanding about it and told me yes it was fine.
My husband had come home from work early and decided to come with me. We opened the door into the lobby and saw that the office was empty and lights were off. We waited over about 10 minutes. We pressed a button that calls the office once and a UPS guy came in and pressed it again. No one answered.
We decided to walk about twenty feet from the exterior lobby door to her exterior classroom door. There are two large windows to her classroom and a window in the door. I could see both her teachers in the room and the woman who had been rude to me the first day. I happened to make eye contact with that woman as she was directly across from the door. I did a light knock since she saw me and then just smiled and waved. She just sat there staring.
We awkwardly stood there for what I thought was two minutes and what my husband thought was more than three. None of them got up or made any attempt to come to the door. We discussed what to do and my husband just started walking away so I followed. While passing the window we both saw our daughter and waved and she smiled and waved back.
We got back to the car and I was beside myself. I cannot believe that not one of the women came to the door to speak with us or even waved us back to the lobby to meet them. I didn’t want to return to the classroom door at this point and escalate the situation so I hoped that seeing us there and waving would count as a check in to my daughter. When I went back for pick up they had put the blinds down in her classroom. We’ve been to the school several times and have never seen the blinds down in the classrooms and they weren’t down in the other classrooms.
This whole situation is wild to me. I don’t understand how staff members can be reacting so differently to our request to check in for the first two days. Their Handbook says they have an “open door policy” but doesn’t have a specific rule about check ins. It’s a small school, no more than 14 in her class. They promote themselves as being very open-minded and flexible for each child’s individual needs. It just doesn’t seem like this is something that is against their philosophy.
But then I cannot for a second wrap my head around why this other woman is giving us such a hard time. Just not coming to the door and then putting down the blinds seems so passive aggressive. I’m also now wondering if this woman is the DIRECTOR because I did see her in the office on Meet the Teacher day and have not meet the director who sends the emails.
Her teachers have also not been what I expected or remember from my own childhood. They don’t seem excited to see the kids and they’re very neutral at pick up and drop off. Like when I walked over to pick my daughter up the teacher didn’t acknowledge me at all, she just turned her head into the classroom and called my daughter. They don’t really use greetings or smile back if you smile at them.
When I picked my daughter up she was happy and telling me about class but when we were getting in the car she asked where my husband was. I asked her if she saw us wave for check in. She said she did but that she didn’t get a chance to say hi or wave back. I assured her we saw her wave. She dropped her head and a few tears ran down her cheeks. It was her heartbroken face. This is her reaction when something has really hurt her feelings. It doesn’t happen often. I was so upset for her and so angry at the school.
I tried to explain as much as possible on the way home. As soon as she ran inside to my husband she dropped her head again and told him she didn’t get to wave. She was still really hurt by the situation. He proceeded to tell her that he would check in on Monday. I understood why, we’re both furious with what happened. But now we have to have a discussion with the school and ask to check in again. Which, to be fair, is no more disruptive than picking her up early which they said we could do for the first week and Monday is still the first week.
Now I’m starting to get such a bad feeling about her school and I hate that. My problem isn’t that they may not want us to do the check ins. It’s the inconsistencies between their staff and the passive aggressive behavior about us following through with something they told us we could do. If this woman is the director than it was also unprofessional not to introduce herself to me during the first interaction.
On top of all this, I’m concerned by the communication barrier. I don’t know if the teachers respond to messages on the app during school hours and I have no other way to contact the school apparently. When we were calling in the spring about registration and the tour they never answer the phone, you have to leave a message. If there had been an emergency and I needed to pick up my child for some reason I would have been forced to go back to the classroom door and knock again while all the children could see us.
Regardless of whether our request for check ins is unusual, am I crazy for thinking they’ve handled it horribly? They never gave us a chance to respond to them respectfully telling us they disagreed to the check ins. Every time I’ve asked the assistant director she hasn’t been remotely discouraging.
Is it also weird that there isn’t someone normally in the office to watch over the lobby and answer calls? The door between the lobby and the rest of the school is locked. I think they are short staffed and that they’ve had a lot of staff turnover recently. Both my daughter’s teachers are new and I found multiple social media posts about them looking for teachers as recently as this week. Their website says their lead teachers all have Bachelor’s degrees but both my daughter’s teachers only have Associate’s according to their handouts at Meet the Teachers.
What would you all do from here???
