Daycare Demons At It Again

Some of you who know me in real life know that last year we were rather unceremoniously - and quite unprofessionally - asked to leave the daycare where my son had been - and had done well, and was well-liked by all - for three years. In the interest of time, let's just say that my letter in response to the sequence of events up to and including the manner in which my son was told he could not come back, which I addressed to the director's boss, was about 8 typed pages, single-spaced.

I haven't written publicly about this at all and hadn't intended to, but I just found out that the daycare is up to its old tricks again. I'm so upset and bothered and aching on behalf of the parent who is going through what we went through that I can't write much about it right now. I will say, however, that it seems that the daycare's stock response to any kind of behavior it doesn't like is to suggest that the mother is not spending enough time at home with her child.

Any parent reading this knows that what such a statement really means is this:

"If you weren't such a rotten mother, and if you cared about your child at all, you'd quit your job and be less selfish and stay home and raise your child properly, so that we wouldn't have to deal with your ill-behaved child, who, by the way, we don't like very much."

Overreaction? Well, maybe. But keep in mind that suggesting mothers spend more time at home is indeed their stock response. That's gotta mean something about what they think is the root cause of children's behavior. And they are supposed to be trained in child development.

Funny that none of the books about children's development that I have sitting here on my shelf have that same stock response.

So what's really going on? I think it's a way for the daycare to avoid blame. It's far easier to say, "your child is acting this way and therefore s/he should leave" than it is to say, "we share the responsibility for teaching your child to behave properly, and so we want to work with you to come up with a solution."

This will most definitely be continued.