Have you had a bad experience with daycare? what was it and how was it resolved?

I have been really lucky, both my kids go to a daycare that was highly recommended by a friend, they are very sweet and loving to the kids and would never mistreat them. When some of the kids "graduated" to kindergarten this year a lot of the teachers were bawling because they love the kids that much. When my son was having a hard time this spring, the manager called him in the morning and told he that he could pick out a new matchbox car to take into preschool every day, and did that for a week or so. I feel really blessed!

When I was in college, my best friend was the assistant director of the best daycare in town and I used to stop by and visit her sometimes. After a few such visits, I SWORE I would never, ever put any child of mine in daycare.

The infant room was disgusting and smelled like poop. It was like a little warehouse for babies with about 20 cribs lined up in a room and it just smelled like despair. The baby room had an outside door in it and the infant caregivers used to stand there and smoke while the babies lay in the cribs. That wasn't the worst thing, though.

One day, I was sitting in the office talking to my friend. A little girl of about 4 was lying on a cot in a little alcove off the office because she wasn't feeling well. Her father was a doctoral student from China and the little girl spoke no English. She was lying on the cot just crying her little eyes out. Every now and then, the cook would come in from the kitchen and tease the little girl, and not in a nice way. She was pretending to speak Chinese to her, but was basically making sounds like, "Gibbledy gongly hoo ha" to her. The little girl would desperately speak to her in Chinese! The cook would do it some more and then my friend even did it a few times. They both thought it was hilarious. It just broke my heart because the little girl was still just sobbing away. I kept telling my friend to make the cook quit, but she didn't--she said it wasn't hurting anyone. Finally, I asked my friend if I could go in and try to comfort the little girl and she said yes. So, I went in and talked to the little girl and told her it would be OK, that Mommy was coming and patted her head.

Obviously, it was incredibly mean of my friend and the cook to torment the little girl, but, it was also really wrong of my friend to let me in to sit with that little girl! I didn't work there. Now, as a parent, I would be furious if I found out that some girl who didn't work at the daycare was touching my child!

Like I said, that was the best daycare in town and it was awful!

Recently (about a month or so ago) I had my son in a daycare that seemed pretty decent at first. But then my son started acting weird. He just wasn't himself. He quit wanting to go, was crying when I dropped him off, would beg me to stay home, etc. Finally one day the teacher we liked called to tell me she quit, and why: the director of the center would bring her foster children in (and they were bad) and one little boy pushed on of the foster kids, and he had to stand in the corner with his hands above his head for one hour. Another baby (he was one) tried to bite one of the foster children and he was put in a high chair for about an hour as punishment. They had a fenced type area where they were putting the kids that acted up as time out, kind of like a cage! And to top that off, they were accepting new kids, but not keeping extra teachers there. They would combine classes and have infants all the way up to 4yr olds in one class... as many as 18 kids for one teacher...

We promptly left the daycare, because it wasn't right or safe. We also called the state agency and reported them also.

I never sent my kids to daycare, but I did have a babysitter when they were in school and I was working full time.

I knew the babysitter tended to favor her child over the ones she babysat, but the last straw was when I came home and found my son sitting outside on the porch because he was running a fever, and she did not want him infecting her kid.

I found a new babysitter. Which really upset her, but oh, well.

well im not a parent, but i use to go to a daycare wn i was in elementary school, im in high school, almost graduating but i still remember it. THE ONE THING I HATED WAS THAT YOU COULDN'T LOCK THE DOOR WN USING THE BATHROOM!!! i hate wn ppl come into the bathroom wn im using it.....

it probably cost-ed $10,660 per year (yes, that is the real cost). You get the joy of being sick with at least a runny nose 200 times a day hahaha, bruises and bite marks, and ONCE AGAIN USING THE BATHROOM WITH THE DOOR UNLOCKED AND ANYONE COULD WALK IN.