A lot of mothers fear putting their kids into daycare. I am no exception to the rule and never was. I mean with all the horror stories you hear about at home and large facility daycares alike can you blame us? It is our job to have our children’s best interest and safety in mind, but also a lot of us have to, or want to, work. How are we as mothers supposed to place all our trust and our children’s care into someone else’s hands, typically a stranger?
I had a lot of really good childcare experiences with the kids, all stemming from Mark’s first caretaker I guess is the word. I’m not going to use any names out of respect for her privacy, but I can not thank her enough. Her and her family truly made us feel like family. Before we even started dropping him off she made sure we met with them and got to ask questions and talk before his first day. She was phenomenal with Mark and offered to help care for him when we had no other options. She was tender and caring and had such a lovely bond with Mark. I will forever be grateful for her kids and her relationship with Mark being my introduction to the world of childcare. If she is reading this, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart.
After several months of me being spoiled with this amazing family, I think Mark was 8 or 9 months old, we got into the CDC on base. It got off to a little bit of a rocky start. Within the first week Mark got Hand, Foot, and Mouth and had the worst diaper rash he had ever gotten. I had not anticipated him getting so sick so quickly and was frustrated, until I was reassured that this had happened to pretty much everyone’s kids upon starting daycare. After that it started to get better minus this one infant room teacher I didn’t like because she was awkward, but was harmless. Mark was thriving and moved up to pretoddlers where he had the MOST AMAZING teacher. Everything you could want for your kid. She is another person who really just made me feel at home and safe with my son in her care. She always made sure to ask me how I was, and even more so after I got pregnant with Rose. One day after Rose was born I got a cold and was looking forward to having a day without Mark to recover, when I got the call that he was sick. I broke down into tears and even with the kids rushing around she took a moment to make sure I was ok and called someone for me to talk to, which I needed.
At this point it was time for Rose to start daycare and the CDC was our obvious choice. As if I hadn’t been blessed enough, Rose got the best infant class teachers ever. Honestly, such wonderful women and I wish they got to see Rose grow up. Aside from a biting fiasco, Rose’s time at the CDC was great. There was however, one child that bit everyone in the class multiple times and I would have liked to punt him down a hallway because he repeatedly hurt my baby. It had to be like the 4th or 5th time she had gotten bit and I got a call at work, again. At that point I was on the verge of angry tears and going to lose it. I drove from Boston to Hanscom in record time just telling my boss I had to go. When I got there I stormed in trying my hardest not to lose it as I walked past the front desk. They asked me what I was doing and all I could say to keep from losing it was “picking up my kid”. I wasn’t going to let her get bit again, and when I got to the room and broke down her teachers consoled me and were also genuinely upset about the situation. As I walked out, Rose in arms, I heard the director on the phone with the kids parents. Thankfully shortly after that, the spawn of Satan was moved to a different class and things went back to normal. Don’t judge me for hating this small child, he truly sucked. He laughed when he bit people like a psycho, because he knew it was wrong. He was horrible.
while Rose was only in that one classroom, Mark moved up to toddlers, where he started teaching his classmates some colorful language. (Oops.) Now toddlers are on the other side of the building and for whatever reason, that terrified me. But again, Mark was blessed with amazing teachers who built such an incredible bond with him. Honestly, not a bad one in the entire bunch of toddler teachers. All the toddler teachers he was around really excelled at their job and it was great. And then we moved. First of all, those were some of the most difficult goodbyes for me, to have to say goodbye to all these wonderful women who had so easily eased my daycare fears. But then after we moved, it all went downhill, and fast.
I’m not holding back on this and I have a lot to say so buckle up.
We moved to Cape May, NJ and in what I thought was a no-brainer, chose the CDC there for the kids daycare. It immediately sucked. The director from the moment I met her had a nasty attitude and was, in general, a distasteful human. Then, they gave us a hard time about Mark being lactose intolerant and said we had to get him enrolled in the special needs program before he could start. This was ridiculous to me because, it’s lactose intolerance, definitely not a valid reason to be in the special needs program, especially when he hadn’t to be previously.
We were already off to a rough start and then they told us that we would be paying several hundred dollars more a month than we paid in Boston despite getting paid less than half what we were. Now I brought this up and was greeted with nothing but attitude and a “apply for subsidy then”. Honestly lady, fuck off. Somehow it just kept getting worse, but we didn’t have any other options as Cape May does not pay you enough and did not have any affordable options that we could find that worked with our ridiculous schedules. ( But that’s a whole other story.) So our kids started at the CDC and shortly after my worst nightmare came to life.
I partially blame myself for the events that followed because I still enrolled them despite the path lined with red flags and a flashing neon sign in my head reading “DON’T DO IT”. But like an idiot in a horror movie, I still enrolled them out of necessity. In August of 2019, I was in Virginia for a school when I got a call and photo from Joseph that turned my world upside down. He told me that Mark “tripped and hit” his head on a cinderblock wall at daycare. The photo absolutely terrified me. My sweet baby, hours after the incident, still had a giant bruised lump on his head. I immediately jumped into mama bear mode and called my command and contacted the daycare. My command was appalled and the daycare director told me she watched the tapes and he just tripped. Again, fuck off lady, there’s no way this child that’s been walking steadily for 2.5 years trips into a cinderblock wall, especially not that hard. Not to mention how sketchy his teachers and the assistant director started acting after the incident.
In the following week, the director continued telling my husband that he was a bad father because our children wore the same socks two days in a row. Now if you have kids you know that some days it’s just not worth the fight to try and get toddlers to take off their “favorite” socks, especially when the kids are clean. She also had the audacity to claim neglect saying that Rose’s hair was “matted to her head”. False. Literally anyone who spends any time with my kids can assure you that her hair has never been matted to her head. I don’t take too kindly to people accusing my husband and I of not taking care of our children. She wanted attitude and she sure got it.
Then the week after that, after already thinking I had lived out my worst fear, we got another call that Mark hit his head again, but he was “fine”. Now I don’t know where they learned to tell kids were fine because they were on crack on this one. Joseph and I left work and picked him up and it was horrifying. A bump, bruise, and cut, just as bad as the first, in the exact same spot. He was very disoriented and not acting himself at all so we rushed him to the emergency room where the doctor told us he had a concussion and likely had a concussion two weeks prior as well. Livid doesn’t even begin to explain how I was feeling. Luckily, my command let me take some time so I was at home with the kids for a few weeks instead of taking them into one of the deepest rings of Hell.
After the second incident Child Protective Services was contacted from our end to investigate the CDC. The daycare retaliated and told CPS we were neglecting our kids. The base also opened an investigation against us. They had a woman call us in to her office who proceeded to defend the CDC and accuse my husband of being unfit. CPS came to our house, investigated twice for the two separate cases, and told us we obviously take care of our kids and this call was ridiculous. In the meantime, CPS and TRACEN Cape May told us that the CDC had done nothing wrong despite our child having two concussions and various other wounds on both of our kids.
At this point, I obviously didn’t trust the CDC with my children’s well being and looked into several options in Cape May County. Finally, we landed on a daycare within a mile of our house that had just opened. We paid for two daycares for two weeks because we didn’t want them at the CDC for any longer than they had to be, but we had already paid for the month. We got our new daycare set up with childcare subsidy and we were ready to roll. And when the CDC told me that they had a check for us for money we were getting refunded because subsidy had just gone through, they mailed it because neither of us wanted to deal with the other and thank God because I don’t think I could have kept it together at that point.
Their new daycare was an absolute Godsend after the Hell we went through at the CDC. It took a few weeks to trust them a little bit, but they gave us peace of mind. Lil Prodigy 2 eased my worries and treated our kids wonderfully, despite Mark now being terrified of being at daycare. He screamed pretty much every morning before we left the house, and then again getting out of the car, and was always clinging to us so we wouldn’t leave. For the short time we had the pleasure of being there, it was almost a little like being back at the Hanscom CDC again. I thank them for helping me gain some trust back by not being disgusting human beings.
This is not meant to scare anyone, I just want to be blatantly honest about how these terrors you hear can quickly become reality. I saw all the horror stories but thought it wouldn’t happen to us because we had such good experiences. But no one can truly be 100% sure until it doesn’t ever happen to you. I would have never been able to forgive myself if I lost Mark due to their negligence. I will continue to fight this cause and encourage others not to use this daycare until my dying breath. For the other families I know of who had issues (quite a few) and those who I’m sure have had issues since, I hope your issues are resolved and you get/got closure, because we sure as Hell didn’t. They got away with these terrible events and it’s not right.
It only takes one bad egg for you to lose your child to someone’s negligence, and we know who the bad egg at that CDC is. We had a lot of wonderful experiences, but in the end, the one absolutely terrifying and heart-wrenching experience has ruined it for us, potentially for life. Heed your guts warning, and mine, and do your research. Follow your gut, read your reviews, and thoroughly research your daycares before enrolling your kids, because it can go bad quick, even if you think it will never be you. Keep those babies safe and I will keep fighting this fight for all of us.
