This is a great place if your kid can take a hit. Unfortunately, we had a really negative…read moreexperience here. My daughter, 14months, was here full time M-F for one week.
Her third day there, I went to pick her up and saw Christina's son, a 5 year old with autism, walk up to a 2 year old child who was sitting on the floor. He walked up and kicked this child twice really hard and she screamed, Christina looked back and her son kicked the child once again. Christina said, "oh are you trying to play tag with her?" Obviously not LOL. She picks up the screaming child and consoles her. Within a minute of the first incident, Christina's son came up to this same child again and pushed her forehead so that she fell completely off of a bench. Christina said "oh are you trying teach her safety? Bottoms on the bench please, Ella."
The violence was completely unprovoked. I asked Christina if we could have a check in about what happened.
This is where the one star rating comes in. If we met with Christina and Brian and had an adult conversation, my daughter would still be enrolled. Unfortunately, they seemed unclear why we would want to talk about the events I witnessed to someone else's child. In general Christina and Brian seem to be on very different pages about a number of things, so make sure you communicate with both of them there and in agreement with each other.
Even before we met to discuss her son physically hurting this other child, Christina called me and said, "hey it has been a really long week and Fridays we clean the whole house and I have a strict bedtime routine for my son, so I can't give you an hour of my time. This really has to be 20 minutes or less." Totally fine, I didn't see anything wrong with that but it struck me as odd and unprofessional. Similar to the next event, I kept saying "ok" and let her vent.
The meeting was the most awkward and unprofessional experience. I wanted to know:
1. how often is this 5 year old child randomly hitting toddlers?
2. how can you make sure this doesn't happen to my kid.
I asked why Christina why she suggested he was trying to play tag or teach safety and why I didn't hear anything close to, "honey we don't hit our friends" and she said that she tells the other kids "No hitting" but not her son, because he has autism and she handles that in a unique way. This was the first time autism was brought up and it was brought up by Christina. I don't care that their kid has autism, I care that he is abusing kids and it isn't being dealt with.
The entire conversation was 15 minutes of defensiveness. Keep in mind, the child who was kicked and pushed was not even my child. Brian was very quick to go to the edge of his seat and actually raise his voice and start yelling that we are crossing a line and having him defend his parenting. My husband said "clearly this is a trigger, we're first time parents and just wanted to know that this isn't common practice here."
Christina said maybe my 14 month old was too young to be there at her daycare. Brian was running around the house frantically gathering my daughters things and Christina was teary eyed and repeatedly apologizing for him in a whisper tone. Super awkward. That is when it became clear that I was left on a holiday weekend without childcare for the following week, the first day of my new job. I really needed and wanted this place to work. Even as Brian started raising his voice and acting incredibly unprofessional, we still maintained our composure (because we are adults) and because I knew I still needed day care for my daughter.
I think this place has a lot of promise. There seems to be a conflict of interest having their son in the day care. Christina and Brian should work on communication between themselves and how they (mostly Brian) communicates with parents. I certainly hope they are informing parents when intentional violence is happening to their child. Accidents happen but this was repeated, intentional, and inappropriate. They are running an entire business built around keeping kids safe and I think they need to refocus around that guiding principle. Unfortunately as someone who also works with children, I feel inclined to report this facility.
The Pro's:
Quick response time
Organized enrollment process
Picture/text updates throughout the day
Big backyard area