I saw all of the positive reviews on here and was fooled into thinking this would be a good place to send my baby. Turns out I should have trusted my gut feeling and the negative reviews Charming Children received on Google. Here are all the reasons why...
Charming Children tells parents they will treat your kids like family and that infants "lead the room" meaning they can eat when they're hungry and not so much on a set schedule. Not even 6 weeks into my infant son starting there, Penny (the owner) complained that he cluster fed and ate too often... he was 4 months old. She continued to claim this periodically for another month when I'd pick him up until I received a random call at my job from Lee (the director) to tell me they don't want my son anymore - their reason? he cries too much and he eats too often. How's that for treating your kids like family? The best part- he gave me 6 calendar days (2 of those days were weekend days so essentially useless) to find a new solution for infant childcare. Everyone knows how hard it is to find care for infants with all the waiting lists etc.. Lee gave us no warnings. No probationary period. No apologies. Nothing. My son had never even been sent home from daycare and now they randomly call me at work telling me they're banning my 5 month old for crying.
That was the straw that broke the camels back, but there are other numerous alarming things about this daycare the public needs to know about. I specifically asked Lee during our tour about the daycare opening at 6 AM and said that it was important to us. He said yep we're always here at that time in the past 7 years we've been open. I put in my deposit and three weeks later-- the day before I went back to work -- I get told oh due to staffing we open later now (6:30) and we also close early.
Penny blamed me for my son being too gassy and told me I should change my diet. She regularly would come up with her own diagnoses as to what she thought might be wrong with my baby and making him cluster feed or cry despite him getting three well-checks by a licensed pediatrician in the 3 months he went there. I even provided doctors notes as documentation to her. She routinely disagreed with my pediatrician's recommendations, and tried to give her own 2 cents, then justified it by saying "I've worked here a long time." She has no medical degree to speak of and my son is perfectly healthy according to his doctor.
Their app is also a joke, they input incorrect information about what was fed to babies and what times they were fed. They inappropriately documented that my 5 month old used the potty. This happened at least 20 times in the 3 months he attended which is very frustrating for a parent trying to keep up with updates on my baby throughout the work day. Additionally, my son was banned from the daycare for "crying too much," and yet when I look at the app history, only 3 days out of 90 did they document that he was in an irritable mood. I never even got a phone call about it. Interesting!
The staff there also did not check my baby's diaper nearly enough, as evidenced by him constantly having "blowouts" at daycare when he almost never has them at home. Then staff would then wash his poopy clothes without treating the stain first so it would set in before you get them back. In fact I received someone else's kid's poopy stained onesie back from them on one occasion. Gross!
Charming Children ought to be ashamed of themselves. I'm utterly disgusted at the care we received and quite frankly I'm glad I got my baby out of there. What a blessing it is to never have to go there again. I would NOT recommend this daycare to anyone! read more
