Our daughter, just under two, attended A Child's Garden Montessori for three days before we pulled…read moreher out.
We had just moved to the area, and our daughter had previously been enrolled in an excellent daycare from three months old where she had done very well. I'm ashamed to say that in our rush to get things set up here, we didn't listen to our gut telling us "no", and ignored a lot of red flags about A Child's Garden before and during the three days she was there:
1. During our tour, the school director made a comment about how a Montessori curriculum can be great for "retarded children". Our daughter does not have an intellectual disability; this comment was unprompted.
2. The staff lost at least some of our paperwork almost immediately, and then accused us of never having turned it in.
3. The front desk was empty most of the times we were there, including on our daughter's first day.
4. At dropoff on our first day, the AM daycare teacher didn't welcome our daughter, or introduce herself to her, or make any attempt at ensuring a successful initial dropoff.
5. At dropoff on our first day, they didn't have a cubby or hook prepared for our daughter.
6. We got conflicting reports from various staff members regarding the first couple days. One would say she had a good day, another a rough day; one said there were no real issues transitioning, another would say she was really struggling; one said she slept for ninety minutes, another said she slept for maybe thirty. No agreement on basic issues of fact, so we couldn't really trust anything we were being told.
7. At pickup on the third day, our daughter could barely speak. We'll never know exactly what happened that day, but our daughter apparently cried long enough and hard enough that she physically couldn't speak above a whisper for a day and a half afterward. I've never seen anything like it. She seemed traumatized. She was timid, depressed, and overall a shell of her usual bright bubbly self. It terrified us and broke our hearts.
8. On that day - the worst day of our young daughter's life so far - the teacher's notes were empty. Blank. Not a word of anything amiss.
9. When we asked our daughter if she ever wanted to go back - if she wanted to see her teacher (let's call her Jane) again - she became upset and said "no Jane, no Jane, no Jane" over and over again.
10. When I went in to pick up our daughter's belongings and inform them we were pulling her out of the school, and asked her teacher where some of my daughter's things were, the teacher looked at me blankly and said, "Who?"
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Thankfully, after pulling her out of A Child's Garden, we were able to get her into another school where she's done very well; the normal anxiety from being in a new place was handled expertly by a team of caring and professional teachers and staff. She is loved and cared for there, and I once again have a happy kid excited to go to school and learn.
I don't think I'll ever fully forgive myself for putting my daughter through those three days at A Child's Garden.