In the beginning of our experience, little tykes had competitive pricing, pretty decent care, and…read moreour kids did pretty well here. We enjoyed the pictures on the brightwheel app, the sign in system is pretty convenient. As time went on, after they opened the new branch, a lot of the teachers that our kids were used to being with got moved around. It pretty much was a tossup which room they were going to be in for the day, and who they were going to be with. Our kids did not do well with this. We began to see price increases for things like the new sick time law, being charged for different food, costs of things here and there that the business didn't want to eat. Okay. The food that our kids got on a day to day basis. Breakfast pretty much every day is almost always cereal with raisins. Lunch would be things like bologna, ham and cheese, hot dogs with cooked carrots, mac and cheese. The amount of increase we saw did not reflect the type of foods our kids were getting, and it felt like they were really trying to squeeze their kids for as much as they could. We have seen the owner here maybe 2 times in the 2 years we have been here. Okay. Here are my biggest gripes. We have been sent home so many times because our kids were "too weepy" and they didn't want to deal with it. We have been sent home for supposed hand foot mouth disease many times where it was then confirmed by a doctor not to be hand foot mouth, and that the marks were simply scratches. They laughed at us in the urgent care for even insinuating the idea that it was hand foot mouth, but in order to come back to the center we had to have paperwork saying they aren't sick. The number of times things like water cups, diapers, bottle nipples, and blankets were misplaced/sent home with other people were too numerous to count, and when we ask anyone to help us find it they would tell us "go ask so and so" and when you do, theyd usually help us look but if they couldn't find it it would just be "we'll have to keep an eye out for it". We would bring our kids in the mornings, and they would be bawling their eyes out trying to keep us from leaving them (pretty common), and there are several employees sitting on the floor talking/on their phones who would make no effort to comfort the kids or to even keep them from trying to get through the door (pinched fingers /physical injuries can occur when they are trying to stop the door from closing) and didn't even act like they cared a tiny bit that our kids were crying. They would just sit on the floor, they wouldn't even bother to get up. Laziness! The level of care you got REALLY depended on who was in that day. The number of times we picked up our kids where their diapers were completely soaked, or loaded with poop were also too numerous to count. If we asked them to be changed we wouldn't be told no, but we shouldn't have to ask for our kids to not be poopy upon pickup. The number one most consistent thing that this place cannot get right though, is the billing. We would usually pay with checks to dodge the credit card fee. We have gone a full month multiple times where the money does not get taken out of our account, and then $1000 gets taken out of our account all at once, but the brightwheel app still says we owe money. We have had to ask soooo many times to have errors in our balance corrected, it's a wonder this place is even making any money! I don't understand how you have $1000 worth of checks just from one family sitting, not being cashed and thats okay and not disrespectful to the family paying you. There are plenty of people who live paycheck to paycheck, and if they pay you and you don't take the money out of their account, they might think they have money that they don't actually have, and now their account is going to bounce because you didn't cash their check. Overall, if your kids need consistency with teachers, you prefer up front no-nonsense billing, and you want your belongings accounted for, I would not recommend little tykes unless you are in a pinch and have nowhere else to go.
