Daddy Daycare

It's been about three weeks now. The kids and I have been home, me doing Daddy Daycare and loving every challenging and sleep deprived moment of it. But this didn't happen by choice; it happened out of necessity and for the first time I felt lucky to be out of a job right now. This was the kind of necessity that wasn't really necessary to begin with, but unfortunately the world is filled with the daft and the dense masquerading as regular people among us. I’ve gone back and forth with talking about this, writing this entry and sharing it with you all. And I had some reservations but finally I thought, why the hell not?
I won’t discuss the details or give background here because it’s not necessary. It’s irrelevant to the point I want to make. And this is a delicate matter that has to be handled accordingly. There are innocents involved and they mean a lot to me. I want to be sure I do them justice with every sentence, phrase, word, and even punctuation placement. It is that important to me, and to them. I also don’t want you, the reader, to get lost in the details of the back story. I want you to keep your objectivity and not be affected by emotions not necessarily related to this specific incident. I don’t want to sway you for or against my argument. This isn’t an episode of Law and Order, and I don’t need to muddy the facts with other details to prove my case.
I was sitting at home about three Tuesdays ago feeling sorry for myself when the phone rings. It’s my wife. As I answered, immediately I could tell she was not happy. It’s not hard at all to tell when my wife’s not happy. It was about 1:30 that evening. I remember because my son was at the Elementary school that day instead of daycare and I was getting ready to leave to pick him up at 2:30. She didn’t even say hello or greet me in any other way as she usually does. All she said in a sort of a hushed yell, I imagine so her cubicle mates at work wouldn’t hear too much of her conversation, was “They are kicking him out of daycare!” “What?” I asked, confused. “Robert just called me; they don’t want us to bring him to daycare tomorrow they are kicking him out!” Robert is one of the daycare owners, along with his wife Pam. My son had only been attending this daycare since December of last year. We moved him from his previous daycare which honestly we were mostly satisfied with the service and attention he got there but because of a change with my job that moved me to a new work location and with my wife expecting our second it made pickup and drop off extremely difficult and inconvenient. My wife is also finishing her Master’s degree (yeah, she’s a great multi-tasker unlike myself) and takes classes a couple days a week, and I happily do as much of the heavy lifting as I can especially where the kids are concerned. This new daycare he was attending allowed me to do just that so she could remain focused on her classes. We thought we did our due diligence in seeking out a place that would provide at least the same level of service we had become accustomed to if not better. Pam said all the right things during our tour and my son really seemed to enjoy the facilities. We were sold!
From what Robert had to say to my wife when he called that afternoon, they were kicking him out because he was too much for them to handle and they just didn’t have the resources to deal with him or to add an additional teacher to his classroom. This came as a complete surprise to us because we had heard no complaints prior. A few months back they expressed some concerned but all those issues were resolved, I thought. In fact, we thought things were going rather well now because they had even moved him to the next class (well overdue) just the week before. We make a point to ask how he’s doing both at drop off and pick-up time, and they also provide a daily reports at pickup, and through none of these interactions with the staff did we have any hint that there was an issue. In addition, Robert was quick to point out that one of the teachers was pregnant and had shown concerns. The only problem is my son was no longer in her class. In fact, this was to be his second week in his new class with all new teachers and he seemed to be getting along fine there. And my wife called him on that. Then this dick had the nerve to suggest that they lost a good teacher because of my boy. Yes! This douche bag suggested that someone quit their job because of my son, rather than maybe they couldn’t hack it. Since I knew whom he was referring to without him mentioning names I already knew that person quit for other personal reasons, not the least of which was her inability to do the job. So how classy is that? He also suggested that it was okay to keep our baby girl there though they would understand if we chose not to. Uh, you think?
The fact is, daycares dismiss kids all the time for whatever reason, and believe it or not that’s not what I’ve taken real issue with. I take issue with two things. The first is the turnaround time between their notification that he had to leave and when they wanted him to be gone… way less than 24 hours. It’s not as if he was at the daycare that day and did something that simply warranted immediate expulsion, so obviously they had been thinking about this sometime in advance. The second is with the complete lack of feedback, or proper communication for that matter, from either of the daycare owners as to why they had come to this decision and so abruptly. We are at their facility at least twice every day AND one or both of them are often there as well when we come by. Yet they chose to call and talk to my wife over the phone. In fact, they went out of their way to not talk to any of us in person, me especially when I was there to pick up my baby girl that evening, and again a week later when I stopped by to get a few items left behind. I went by that evening right after picking up my son from the Elementary school to grab his things, my daughter and all her things. Robert was sitting in the office right by the front door with the office door wide open and maybe they weren’t expecting one of us to come by so soon after they called. Regardless, on any other occasion that I stop by they can clearly see and hear from within the office that someone came in, and unless they are in a meeting with someone else or on the phone (which he absolutely wasn’t) they would look up and acknowledge who’s there and say hello. This time, none of that as clearly he was not interested in making eye contact or saying a word. My car was also parked right outside the office windows when I pulled up, maybe he didn’t notice that either before I walked in or the several times I went back and forth loading the car. I made several trips back and forth to and from the car passing his office each time and again, no acknowledgement of my presence. And I stopped in the hallway just outside his office door to inform one of the staff that my daughter would not be back either and still he made no effort to acknowledge me. In all fairness he probably had a very good game of solitaire going and simply couldn’t afford to be distracted. A week or so later though I stopped by to grab the kids blue cards and some other items left behind and this time Pam was sitting at the front desk immediately as I walked in, and again, she handed me an envelope but didn’t speak to me at all. Instead she spoke directly to one of her staff at the desk to grab the rest of the stuff for me. Truthfully I wasn’t looking forward to really starting a conversation with anyone on either occasion because as I told my wife that fateful Tuesday afternoon, they already screwed up by handling this via phone and not having much to say regarding why that made any sort of sense. So I knew that not only would they not want to talk in person, but also that they lacked the professionalism to begin to know where to start or to have anything meaningful to say at this point. I would have respected them a lot more if they had simply told it like it is… that this is a business and it’s cheaper to let him go.
People like to say a lot that children all are the future, and what they actually mean is “your children are my immediate future” especially when they get to milk parents for all they can with promises they can’t and worse never intend to keep. It’s easy to make those promises especially when lots of money is involved. I never thought I had it in me to save much money, then my son was born and I found myself cutting back drastically on other frivolities and paying daycare expenses in addition to all the other expenses that come with raising any child. The daycare part is just a fraction of that cost, yet each year I spend enough on daycare alone to buy a new compact car outright with cash. That’s a hefty chunk of change and you never really question the cost and sacrifices as long as you believe you’re doing the right things for your kids. When the kids first started at this new daycare back in December of last year things were great. The main difference between now and then though was that the classrooms were much smaller with fewer kids and as a result the child to caregiver ratio was much lower. He started with only five other kids in his class. Business for them was noticeably slower back then. And, I had even talked to a couple people who had used that daycare before and didn’t like it for their kids but they had changed their name since then, no longer a franchise, and they really seemed to have revamped their image. But we’ve had a couple daycares in town close overnight recently, and so business has picked up quite a bit for them since then with several parents scrambling to find a place for this child. Now, with lots more kids in the room all of a sudden mine was too much of a handful? Coincidence? Not really, in fact Robert as much as admitted in his own words that this was more about the money than anything else. Not the welfare of my child or any of the other children under their care. Because he said they didn’t have the resources to handle him and couldn’t afford to add another teacher to that class. Suddenly it wasn’t difficult to find children to fill their classrooms so getting rid of my son was an easy decision to make. Now a daycare is a business and so like any other business they have to make money too. And if they genuinely don’t have the resources to care for my child, he does need to find someplace else to be. So again, it may surprise you that I have no issue with that either. I have a serious issue though with bitch asses who can’t look me in the eye and talk to me as an adult, and with realizing that I’ve been entrusting the welfare of my child to such a person for a while now.
There’s a lot of red tape involved with starting and running a daycare. I know because I checked years ago when my son was born and I was doing research to figure out what things to look for and questions to ask before choosing a place. I wanted to be sure a place wasn’t a daycare simply because they said so. There are lots of risks and liability issues involved but it is in fact big money, and greed often trumps these concerns. Ideally you want people who are in the daycare business, or any sort of child care for that matter, to actually give a damn about kids – in my opinion. But all too often now I’ve found that’s not the case. I also see this all the time, not just with daycare, but with the school system and social workers and others who are supposed to provide for kids need. Some of them are people I’ve known for years who got into the field to make a difference and to help. Now, they hate their jobs and are content to do enough just to collect a paycheck especially in this economy. To hear them talk about their work makes me sad for the kids they are supposed to help. And maybe it’s a byproduct of the government regulations, or working within the confines of the system, of realizing that you can’t help as much as you thought you would be able to, or just because it’s not easy to move on to another job these days. But it doesn’t matter how bad the kids are or that the system sucks; it matters that you do the best job you can to at least try and help them. This is why we did our homework before choosing a place for OUR kids. When we (my wife and I) first vetted daycares for my son we visited several locations here in town and many of them which may be considered very fine facilities got disqualified over little things that may seem ridiculous to some but I simply did not feel comfortable with. Maybe in some instances it was because I was a first time father, but now I have my daughter too and I feel exactly the same way for the most part so I don’t think so. Maybe I just have a stick up my ass. Call it whatever you like but these are MY kids and I can’t hand them over to just anyone for a few hours. I have to be cautious, to a fault if necessary. For example, we visited one daycare and noticed one of the teachers in the infant room was warming up a bottle for a baby in a re-used Steak Out drink cup filled with warm water. Now, maybe it was an isolated incident and maybe not, but it happened where we could clearly see and the person giving us the tour should have noticed and said something at the time. These places make enough money to not have to warm up a bottle in a re-used cup from someone’s lunch break. There’s no world in my book where this is sanitary or acceptable at home, much less in a child care facility.
I can tell now that maybe they did in the beginning but now this daycare didn’t care much about my son or even about his parents beyond collecting payment due. First is the quick turnaround on removing him from their facility. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had another child lined up to fill that slot or the slot was already filled while he was out that week on Monday and Tuesday. If you’ve dealt with daycares you know how difficult it is to not just find a quality facility, but to find ANY that has an opening available on short notice. In most cases you have to get on a waiting list well in advance. You can’t order up one like a happy meal and get exactly what you want immediately. So losing that convenience literally overnight is a very big deal and if you are a household with two working parents, or worse a single parent, chances are someone will need to take time off from work until other daycare arrangements can be made, or you can try to hire a nanny (something else that costs and takes time with interviews, background checks etc.) again on short notice to watch the kids while you work, and you likely have to work to cover those expenses so you can’t risk losing your job taking too much time off. As I said earlier, this is one time I’m glad I am not working because the kids stay home with me and I always enjoy spending time with them. It completely screws with my regular routine and my honey-do list is on hold right now but my family always comes first, no matter what. So in that respect it worked out for us, but others may not be so lucky. Imagine now if I had decided to pull my kids from the daycare, they would require some advance notice. And since I had already paid for the full month, they would have been happy to compensate themselves for their inconvenience. When I pulled him from his last day care, we had to give them thirty days’ notice. They need to be compensated for having to fill that spot I guess, but no one is really that concerned with any inconvenience to us, the parents, when they decide a child has to go.
But what bothers me the most is the phone call rather than an in person meeting, and the lack of feedback as to a real reason why my son was no longer welcome there. If I play Devil’s advocate and suppose my son is an angel at home but a fallen angel at daycare, and he went Chucky (hope I’m not dating myself with that reference… lol) on those poor unsuspecting bastards and simply terrorized them to where he simply had to go immediately. The thing is I would never know. If you are in the child care business and genuinely care about the kids in your care, you sit with the parents and explain why they can’t bring their child back, document incidents that led you to your decision, and see to it that the parents are fully informed in case there’s something they need to know and address that could be potentially serious. Your kid may not be going Chucky on you at home right now, but maybe he’s warming up for his big finale later and by then it’s too late for your ass. So it’s the professional and responsible thing to do – in my opinion. Some parents won’t want to hear anything bad about their kids and refuse to listen. We are not those parents that refuse to listen; in fact we couldn’t be easier to talk to. Still even the most difficult of parents to talk to deserve at the very least an attempt at reaching out to them as well. Don’t just run them away and hope they take their child to a new facility and unleash whatever it is that was a “problem” for you on another unsuspecting facility. I know that’s not my son, not just because of his interactions with us at home, but his interactions with others in general and also at the Elementary school. And whatever concerns were present when we signed him up at this daycare they were discussed extensively and everyone was in agreement that it wouldn’t be a problem. But obviously something about him bothered them enough to change their mind now, and if it’s more than just about the money for them I wish they had taken the time to say just exactly what that was.
At his previous daycare before we moved him to this new facility, the staff there took a great deal of interest in his care and development and it showed. If there were ever any concerns by us or them either one could request a meeting to sit and talk about it. We met before each transition from one room to another to talk about his progress so far, and the transition happened in a phased manner with the child spending just a couple hours in the new classroom to observe how they were adapting the first few days before they were then moved fulltime. They weren’t perfect and I’m sure he was a handful for them too, but they never kicked him out. We hated having to move him but that’s how life is sometimes especially when you are a slave to your job. You sometimes have to make compromises that may not work out to be in everyone’s best interest long term. And it’s my fault for not doing my homework and not paying more attention to what was really going on with him. Never again!
I thank them now because I’ve learned a valuable lesson from this. If you need to put your kids in daycare and want to be sure they get the best care possible, take the time and do your homework, not just before you choose a location but for as long as your kids are there. Homework is an everyday thing as parents and we can’t afford to slack off and miss assignments. I’ve also learned that if you live in Huntsville, Alabama and are looking for a quality daycare for your child, Cambridge Academy is NOT the best option – in my opinion!
-Konscious Vybz