Disturbing Day Care Story

The Bashaw family has been quite lucky for the past 4 years to have had a wonderful day care provider. At the beginning of March our world was flipped upside down when we learned Emma's day care provider would be retiring at the beginning of April. When we got the news, I was quite disappointed but I thought we could find another good place. Well, this search is harder than I thought it would be and I want to take the time to share a disturbing day care story.

Heather and I found a new place we thought would be perfect. Emma's new place was closer to my work, flexible hours, and we could have more vacation days. Well to our surprise it was far from perfect. One Friday morning I dropped Emma off and headed to work. After a long day of work I went to pick her up. To my surprise Emma came over to me wearing a "new" pink hat. I quickly asked her, "Where did you get that?" Emma responded, "From the store." I looked quite puzzled and the day care lady quickly said oh we went to a rummage sale and the lady hosting the rummage sale gave it to Emma. In my mind I'm thinking oh they walked to a rummage sale. Emma then proceeded to say, "Daddy today I saw where I go to swim lessons." Now I was even more puzzled. The school where Emma has swim lessons is across town. After Emma said this, the day care lady filled in, oh we drove to a local church who was having a rummage sale. Well this church was on the opposite part of town from this day care. The day care lady then proceeded to tell me after the rummage sale they ate lunch at McDonalds. After the story seemed apartently over, and the day care lady was a bit rude to me, I took Emma and went home.

Now as I am driving home these questions began going through my brain. What if she got in a car crash? Was Emma in a car seat? What if someone snatched Emma while they were out? Why am I paying someone to watch my daughter and then run her personal errands without telling me? Why didn't she tell me they were going to be leaving the house? Why was Emma the one telling me the story and not the day care lady? Why is this day care lady trying to hide stuff from me?

After cooling down I decided to give this lady a call. I very politely expressed my concerns to her about Emma being driven around town and not having any idea this was happening. She apologized and said that in her contract it states on days when she only has 1 or 2 kids she may take them and run errands. She then acknowledged that I had not been provided with a contract yet and because of this I would not know this information. I informed her, this new information made me uncomfortable and Heather and I would have to rethink about Emma coming there.

So, Heather and I talked about it and decided we would start to search for a new place. In the mean time we had to send Emma back to for 4 more days. That first day when Heather dropped Emma off, the day care lady asked if we had made a decision because if she would not be allowed to transport Emma around town she would give us our 2 weeks notice to get Emma out of her day care. She then asked Heather if Emma was ever driven around town by her grandparents? Was this lady trying to compare herself to our parents? WHAT???? After a brief conversation Heather told me about it. It was at that point we said, Emma is out of there.

I'm a new day care daddy but is this behavior from day care providers normal? If she would have just told me when I dropped Emma off this was going to happen I could have taken it a bit better but why the secrecy? At the last day care place, it was always communicated if Emma would be even leaving the house to go for a walk and Emma never left in a vehicle to go somewhere. So, the search for day care continues and we hope in the near future we can find another good place.

If any of you are in search of day care providers good luck because as I am learning good day care is indeed hard to find.