Horror Story: Lost Child Incident At Daycare...Thoughts?

[Unregistered]

I don't think it is entirely your fault. What about the teachers in the other room - did they not notice another child coming in?
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That was never explained to me. What also gets me is there were two other adjacent fenced in playgrounds for lower age groups that had groups out at the same time as me. When I lined the kids up, the other age groups stayed out there. Not once from the half hour after I went inside to the time his father came in, did any assistant/lead teachers from outside knock on my door that leads out there and say, "I think you left a kid out there because he's alone and looks confused". I can't believe that no one saw him out there in that half hour and came to me.

[Unregistered]

Thank you guys!!!

I wasn't sure what to expect when posting because of how I felt about it myself and of how bad the posts were when I looked into other forums of this similar situation. You guys are really nice and I cried happy tears when I read your posts :-)

I always thought I'd want to try the same type of daycare facility again (especially since I happened to move out of state...don't worry.... unrelated to the incident) but now that I see my situation isn't unique. In-fact, I'm really disgusted with the general practices that these kind of daycares have. I didn't even go into other issues I had with the facility. For example, like the fact that they never even seemed to have hot water when washing anything and that I was ALWAYS sick when I worked with a cold or a fever because the kids came in sick and only left when their fever hit 101. It seems that you have to get lucky with good practices in place, if you want to work in a franchise company daycare. I am certainly more educated than I was about my career and about sending my own future kids to daycare.

As I said, I don't have my own kids yet (just love others) so if I go into daycare again, it will def. be as an assistant in a home daycare or I will open my own daycare with safer ratios than the recommended state guidelines :-)

[Snapdragon]

I agree with what others said. The only thing I will add is that in my state, assistant teachers can only be in the room alone with a group of children for the first and last two hours of care and at nap time. At all other times, a lead teacher must be in the room. Sorry for what happened to you.

[cheerfuldom]

See there is a prime example of the misconception parents receive about centers. To some parents they look like the almighty answer but their not. I feel like they are less monitered then home childcares. I don't know why but I just do.

Then with this new star's rating system and feeling like they are trying to oust family childcares, I think why? Why would they want to have children in these centers that are more institulinized and just seem yuck. Every center I have been in has felt dirty to me for some reason. I have been in 3 out of 5 in my area and they all felt dirty.

So in my mind I would like toknow why parents pick centers over family home?

Sorry not trying to hi-jack but your post made my mind start thinking!!!

Also, I do not think you were in the wrong in any shape or form-

Some of the reasons I have heard for parents picking centers over home care....

*sibling discounts
*longer hours
*home daycares do not have backup providers if the main one is sick
*centers provide academics/curriculum
*more kids = more socialization at centers
*experienced or certified teachers
*more security against child abuse/neglect because there is more than one person with their child

[cheerfuldom]

I agree with what others said. The only thing I will add is that in my state, assistant teachers can only be in the room alone with a group of children for the first and last two hours of care and at nap time. At all other times, a lead teacher must be in the room. Sorry for what happened to you.

that policy really doesnt seem full proof either. The assistant is still potentially left alone during the busiest times of the day, pickup and drop off. Plus the potential of four hours total added to the nap time....isnt that at least half the day anyway, maybe more for some kids. I am guessing that about 6 hours of care provided by one teacher only.

[Hunni Bee]

I was in the same kind of disorganized, fly-by-night situation as that for five years. I started at 19, untrained and sent on a field trip with children I had never seen before. Children and teachers were routinely bounced from room to room, children of differing ratios were mixed without adjusting the staff, we were expected and forced to operate out of ratio daily.

An assistant did lose track of a child briefly on a field trip once. I am amazed that's the only mishap we ever had. We had plenty of near mishaps and situations that could've turned really bad, but through the grace of God didn't. My fellow members can attest to this .

But I have to disagree with some of the other posters. I think when you (and Im talking about myself here too) agree to and continue to do something that you know is not right and makes you uncomfortable, you are at fault as well. They were extremely negligent and careless in how they operated, but you yourself said many times in your post that you felt uncomfortable and unsafe in those situations. Its your (our) job to step up and say no. And if you dont know something, ask. We take care of people's children, we cant afford to wing it.

I'm not being self righteous at all. I am just as at fault for all the wrong and unsafe situations I participated in, as I feel you were. Just take this as a learning experience, I did.

[LK5kids]

Sorry this happened to U. Make peace with it. It sounds like you were doing your best. That's all any of us can do. I hate that large centers can be equal to a puppy mill. I know not all operate that way. Sorry if I offend those who are working in group centers.

I owned a smaller center (licensed for 30 kids) for a few years. I counted, counted, counted when we were outside or at the park.....it's hard and draining. And these kids were familiar to me. I was co-owned was director and lead 4/5 teacher. I knew who was enrolled at the center, names, ages, etc. and it was a a fairly small place. Like I said, it's hard work. I sold out to my co-owner and went back to family child care.....ahhhhhh-I adored being back with my cozy group.

Long live family child care,

[Snapdragon]

that policy really doesnt seem full proof either. The assistant is still potentially left alone during the busiest times of the day, pickup and drop off. Plus the potential of four hours total added to the nap time....isnt that at least half the day anyway, maybe more for some kids. I am guessing that about 6 hours of care provided by one teacher only.

I agree; it's not foolproof.

[Kaddidle Care]

The daycare knowingly shuffled kids around, was short staffed, did not train you properly and did not have any policies in place to prevent this from happening. I also dont see this as a freak accident at all. It is extremely common in daycare centers unfortunately. Everything from leaving untrained staff alone, being over ratio, shuffling kids to and fro, not having safety measures in place, and choosing a scapegoat to fire when a parent walks in at an unfortunate moment.

Your extreme guilt tells me you are a conscientious employee and it was their loss. Find yourself a better job, thank God the child was OK and chalk it up to experience.

Leaving a young, inexperienced worker with a gaggle of 3 year olds (and 3 year olds are worse than 2 year olds) without a roster was probably illegal. They fired you and left you feeling guilty so they wouldn't get reported. Nice place - NOT!

[scarletto'hara]

just my two cents ...... but people need to realize that there is good and bad in every situation. Yes, there may be some bad centers but there are also some very good (and clean) daycare programs that have caring staff that work in them. Just as there are some not so good home daycare situations / and some really good home daycare situations. There is always the best and worst of both out there.

[Unregistered]

Daycare Horror Story

I was saddened to read about your experience. Unfortunately, most daycares seem to run this way. I am at a center currently that has issues and now some citations. I have worked there two years and have seen how they have put me in similar situations. I am at a point where I may have to move on.

Do not blame yourself. They chose to blame you when their bad business practices were exposed. This was not your fault. The situation was beyond your control. You mentioned another teacher may have grabbed the child. Why was this teacher not responsible? It is not OK for another teacher to come and take the child without fully explaining it to you and she should have obtained your permission, since you were in charge at that point.

The whole thing is a shambles and that daycare hopefully is no longer in business. I hope you are able to make peace with yourself and that you have moved on to better things.

[Thriftylady]

When we were doing Foster care, we were put in a situation where we had an issue with a kiddo and the social worker would not help us. We were found at fault for what happened, but the foster care agency lost their foster care license.

It is something that still plagues DH and I.

So I will say that I understand your issue. I also understand that fault can lay 50/50. All you can do is learn from it. From our situation, we learned that no matter how much someone begs, pleads, pushes etc. NEVER do anything if it goes against your gut feeling about what you can handle. In our case, a social worker made her emergency to place a child our emergency. We had the teenager once before, and he was not a good match for our home, or any home for that matter, his issues required a higher level of group home care. But that costs more so after being there for awhile they begged us to take him back.

Our initial answer was no but they kept pushing. Not many foster homes even accept teens. This particular "child" didn't get our undivided attention that night (and how can you when you have six kids in the house? So he started taking tylenol by the hand fulls. No it wasn't out of reach, because this "kid" was over 6' tall! At the end of the day we were cited for "allowing" a 17 year old to take the meds. Are there things we could have done? Sure there are, the very first one being sticking to my initial answer of NO. The agency put the child in harm's way to save a few bucks, and we allowed them to do it. We had full say of what child came into our home.

I learned a lot. The main thing was like I said though if it feels like a bad idea, it most likely is. Somehow we allow ourselves to push that aside, and it sounds like the day in question you were feeling like the way things were going was a bad idea. At the end of the day, all we can do is learn from our mistakes and try to move on. Keep your head up!

[Blackcat31]

Another old thread.

Original post was made in Jan 2013

[Thriftylady]

OOPs got me again!

[Silly Songs]

That original story is sad. I work at a center and have worked at a few others. None of the centers I worked allowed children to come in and out without the adults having a attendance sheet. And we have measures in place to be sure children are not left behind. We take attendance every half hour ! When a child leaves or comes into our room we mark it on the attendance role. Every single time. I have the children buddy up when going outside or coming in. If someone doesn't have their buddy I call the office and another employee looks for the child while the children and I wait a few mins. If that child cannot be located the school goes into lockdown ( it has never happened) Sounds like that center was very disorganized and didn't want to be accountable. We are all not like that !