We were at Childroots NW for 4 months but we wanted out after 2 months. I will start with the positives. The rooms are clean, no shoes allowed, hand-washing and teeth brushing are encouraged and there is no need to pack a lunch or snacks. They have their own awesome chef and delicious, wholesome vegetarian menus and snacks. The NW location is central, convenient off I-405 and has its own parking lot, which makes drop-offs and pickups a breeze.
Now for everything else... We started in the beginning of September, in a room with 7 kids and 2 teachers, although not all kids were full time. One teacher left Oct 11th, the other - October 31st. It became apparent very quickly that the teachers were unhappy. They looked stressed and miserable, did not say hello or make small talk. Not that this is a requirement, but it does create a certain atmosphere. CR has a philosophy to encourage independence, which we support, but there is a thin line between independence and neglect and CR was crossing over this line on a daily basis. My son, at 2 years 7 months, even though potty trained and out of diapers at home for 4months, started having accidents there, was urinating all over himself as no one bothered to pull his pants down far enough when he went on the potty. The toddler "specialist" there told me that he can pull his pants down by himself, even though he never did it at home. It gets worse... I found massive amounts of stool on his underwear - not like he had been wiped and there was some left over, I am talking large amounts of stool smeared, because he was never wiped! That happened on 3 occasions, even after a 1-hour meeting with the director and "toddler specialist". The teacher told me that usually she stayed in the room with the group, my son went to the potty by himself, flushed and came back to rejoin and she never bothered to look what he was doing in there.
My biggest issue, besides finding my child with stool, is the state of their yard. It is pretty much a mud bath. It is poorly maintained, with broken slides, with some wood chips thrown in the mud, but no proper shelter from the rain! To make things worse, large trees shade it and even with sunny weather, it takes days for it to dry! I am all for outdoors play and fresh air, but I do not think that the conditions were optimal. I brought muddy pants home on an almost daily basis. I routinely found my son and saw many other kids with rubber boots put on the wrong leg and no one seemed to care. By contrast, his new daycare has a large sandpit, with a covered area and the rest of the yard is covered with fine gravel, so in a month of very rainy weather (January) he has only come home with wet pants, once and that was from sitting on the ground and refusing to stand up when the teachers asked him.
At CR, there was pretty much no continuity or accountability. After another kid left and one was moved to a different room, there was a single teacher working there. If I picked up my child anytime after 5, he was in a different location, with a teacher who knew nothing about his day. That teacher would shrug when I asked where my son's stuff was or just say "probably in his room". His father and me frequently found his water bottle thrown in the yard, wherever he left it and had to go looking there in the mud and darkness on multiple occasions. I have routinely found his boots, coat, hat scattered in various locations in the daycare center and no one bothered to put his stuff in his cubby. In our new daycare, nothing has been lost, ever! It was disheartening to not have any idea how his days went and to have to only rely on the card to know what happened.
The parent-teacher conference we had was, frankly, insulting. They took out the form for toddler development, which is used by pediatricians and read off some tasks that he was asked to do on the spot weeks ago by a teacher who had already left. First off, it is not meant to be done in one sitting - all 7 pages of tasks, and second of all - I do not look to the "toddler specialist" at daycare to tell me how my child is developing. His pediatrician is all over this. All I cared to know is how his days were going, what he liked to play with, who his friends were, what his favorite crafts were, and it was so disappointing when they were unable to answer any of these questions. Most importantly, I wanted him to stop having pee and poop accidents!
We are so glad to have moved to a different daycare, after 2 months of feeling stuck there due to their 60-day notice policy. My child used to cry every day on the way to daycare and he no longer does! He is happy and well adjusted and now that we have some perspective with the new daycare, we know we were not the problem! read more
