We sent our child to Bea's Playhouse for about 2 years, from 1 to 3 years old so this review comes…read moreafter long consideration and lots of benefit of the doubt.
For your child's sake and for your own peace of mind, avoid this place at all costs. I wish we had reviews to go on when we were evaluating her care but there was only one and it proved to be a very different experience than the one we had. Our experience was a lot more like the other 1 star review here, which is no wonder because two of the more recent 5 star reviews ARE WRITTEN BY HER CHILDREN (flagged). It is this kind of deceit that is so unnerving about Bea's place.
I am mostly mad at myself for staying with Bea's for as long as we did despite all the red flags but this was our first child and my wife and I didn't have anything to compare our experience with. In hindsight, I should have left the first time I witnessed Mark, a very big part of the creepiness at this daycare, downstairs in the child care area wearing pajama with a little boy on his lap in front of a computer. It gave me a bad feeling ("I hope he never does that with my child") but I wasn't going to jump to any extreme conclusions.
Over the next few years this is what we experienced:
1. Lying. Bea lies... a lot. In fact, her habit of lying actually makes it difficult to judge what is going on and impossible to communicate. We found that most of the lies weren't that big of a deal and the excuse I projected onto her was that other parents must be so difficult that she feels she needs to lie about little things because I might be one of those parents. For example, Bea has quite a few small dogs and she told us the children are never around them because they make sure to keep the animals separate. This is 100% untrue, but I really didn't mind. Unfortunately, there were other times when the lying really did matter.
First, there was the time my child started coming home smelling like cigarette smoke. When I mentioned it she immediately dug in and claimed no one in her family smoked, started blaming other parents, etc. Well smoking isn't illegal, I just don't want it around my child but claiming it didn't happen made any sort of conversation about it impossible. The day I mentioned the smell of smoke I saw her son smoking in the backyard and noticed a crumpled up pack of cigarettes in his car on the way to the front door. We should have removed our child that day but you know how hectic life is when you're balancing a career and parenthood and the next time I picked up my child, the smell was gone. Though Bea continued to lie about the smoking at least it was gone so... problem solved, right?
There were other incidents where the lying mattered and where the promises she made to us when we first met were simply not the reality of her care.
2. Screen Time. After two years my son doesn't know a single German word but he sure knows a lot about Paw Patrol, Amazon Video, and YouTube. When we first met Bea she assured us that there was no TV. Well that was a huge lie. The TV was on every time I dropped off. One of Bea's daughters even let slip they keep the TV on during nap time, which is probably why my child, who takes 1 1/2 - 2 hour long naps at home would always have bags under his eyes after daycare. Screen time is something our family might be more sensitive about than others but because of the lying it was hard to figure out what was happening. We should have pulled our child out after realizing the extent of tv watching but I second guessed myself.
3. Mark. This is where things are most obvious that we should have found a different daycare and yet the most difficult to discern. To begin, Mark and Bea constantly argue in front of the kids. In fact, they argued, uncomfortably, in front of us the first day we visited the daycare to see if it was a good fit. Red flag! Less tangibly, but more importantly, I find Mark really creepy. I think he acts strangely with the kids, I think he is impossible to engage in conversation, and I wouldn't feel comfortable if he were the only one there looking after my child. We should have run from this place at the first bad feeling in my gut.
There were other issues tied into the big three above: what I perceived as casual anti-Semitism around Easter and Christmas, giving our child candy against our explicit instructions (the worst was: "Mark gives your child candy so he will like him better"), and it was like pulling teeth to get a quick summary of our child's day at pick up. All I really wanted to know was did he sleep? Did he eat? What did he eat? Not only did I have to push for answers to these questions every single pick up but the answers I got were usually vague or flat out wrong.
I wouldn't have written about our experience had it not been for the fake review written by her daughter. Steer clear of Bea's. There are plenty of daycare facilities in our neighborhood that no one should have to risk using this place.