I was hoping the staff at KinderCare would handle the situation appropriately, however after…read morespeaking to one of the other parents today, none of the parents were informed of an incident that happened over 3 weeks ago, and the teacher is still in the classroom. As a parent, I would want to know of any reported emotional and physical abuse by a teacher, even if it's still under investigation. I cannot believe other parents were not notified that their kids are potentially being mistreated.
My son (3 years old) once came home with bruises on his face. I notified the director immediately that I felt it looked like an adult grabbed his face (both sides of his chin) and she agreed it looked like someone grabbed him. She assured me she would look into it and said some of the boys in the class are just rough. I get that, my son definitely plays hard too. I let it go and just kept an eye on it. Over the course of three months, my son became increasingly aggressive, reverted to baby talk, started saying curse words (we do NOT speak like that in the home), said phrases like "make her bleed" (we rarely let him watch TV so there is nowhere else he would've learned this), he stopped napping, he lost interest in his swimming classes which he loved and his martial arts classes. He came home with multiple bite marks, bruises, and scratches from other kids almost daily, which to me shows lack of supervision.
They absolutely do not teach there. It's very much just a daycare with no instruction, just a lot of crafts and coloring and kids running around with no structure. The 'Adventure Learning' that they charge an extra $25 a week to actually teach your kid is a joke. I was told it was two half hours a week of 1-to-1 or small group-focused phonetics learning, but instead he got one hour straight (no three year old can pay attention that long) on some weeks, but other weeks received nothing. The excuse I got for that was 'well that teacher works four 10's." Great. Then to me she still works 40 hours a week and has plenty of time to get organized and give the instruction as promised. I will say that after discontinuing with this particular add-on, they did make-up ONE of the missed lessons that next week.
The final straw was when he had a full meltdown after school, refusing to sleep and terrified because one of his teachers told him he'd never see his mommy again and that she was mean to him and grabbed his face, which is when I connected the bruises I saw before on his face. It took us an hour that night to get him calm enough to sleep and assured him that teacher was not going to come take him or hurt his mommy. I disenrolled him immediately and set a meeting with the director. It was expected that an investigation was going to be done in lieu of me notifying CSB, which was my initial intention.
I get that kids have a big imagination, but there is no way my very sheltered 3 year old would have the frame of reference to make up that kind of story. They shove 20+ toddlers in one small class with one teacher and one aide. Yes, that's within state guidelines but when you mix behavioral kids and that high of a ratio of students to teachers, it's a recipe for disaster.
The director and front staff both seem very nice and understanding. They plan summer activities for the families and morning activities for the parents and kids, which is great! They did not give me any problems disenrolling immediately with no notice because of the allegations, however I am absolutely appalled that at the very least, other parents were not notified.
Since my son has been pulled from there, with constant reassurance that he never has to go back, he's finally napping again, he's not showing aggression, and he's starting to want to do things like his martial arts classes again. I would caution anyone looking to enroll in this school to watch your kiddos behavior VERY closely and if you're looking for somewhere focused more on learning, this is not the location.