I dont love our daycare, what to do

[Anonymous]

What kind of options do you have? It sounds like looking for another daycare that's a better fit is a good idea. In my area of VA, that means getting on waiting lists. Do you have the flexibility to do a co-op or other program that has shorter hours? I wouldn't feel bad at all about moving on, but I also know that in many areas, daycare places are hard to come by.

[Anonymous]

Kids are insanely resilient. Change the daycare, they'll be much happier in the medium to long term. If she has friends, you an always get the parents contact information and set up playdates after moving to a new day are.

We've had to change day cares for our 3 year old 4 times this year(23/24). The first one canceled on us that they could take her last minute. Then we had to find a temporary one(that she loved but was inconvenient location wise). Then we found a convenient local day care that she was happy but but not thriving at (high turn over of teachers/care givers, the other kids were awful, she came home with new bad habits and increased emotional outbursts). We knew we had to make a change, and then the day care had some major red flags pop up so we left. We went back to the temporary day care on a full time basis. She's off and running... couldn't be happier, better behaved, emotional outbursts and attitude has dropped significantly.

Make the move.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DD 3.5yo has been at a local daycare, a bright horizons, since she was 1 when we moved from VA to Chicago suburbs. Over the past couple years my dd has grown to dislike going to “school” due to a lot of staff turnover and the new staff that was hired in not being very nurturing, more standoffish, and from my DD’s perspective, “scary”. For example, every morning at drop off my daughter grips into my or DH’s leg and starts getting tears; the teacher who is there in the morning looks at DD, sees that she’s struggling and probably just needs a hug, but doesn’t come over to help bring DD into the group or help her transition. So then DH and I are left in this horrible situation every morning where we either leave her there crying by herself or we have to ask the woman to take DD, which then she’ll do begrudgingly. We also don’t love the admin and feel like the environment is cold across all staff from the teachers up to the admin. Something just doesn’t feel good, and we had two wonderful daycare/preschools that our older daughter went to back in VA that we just loved; they were so warm and loving with the kids. In fact, when my older DD switched to this bright horizons for her pre-K year right after we moved, she hated it too, but we just pushed forward knowing she’d be in K soon, and just blamed it on the move and the transition.

Now we are in this situation with my 3 year old who will be going into K in a year and a half. I feel like we’ve not been very happy for a while. Knowing that she only has 1.5 years until K, do we risk switching her to a new daycare/preschool that she’ll be happier at? What would you do? The part I’m struggling with is the unknown. What if switching makes it worse. She does have friends in her current daycare that she’s been with for years now. And she’s always smiling and happy when we get her at pickup and in the photos that get posted throughout the day. Anyone else been in a situation like this with a daycare and made a switch for the last year of daycare and was it the right decision? I need advice here.

You find a new daycare!

[Anonymous]

If I were you, I'd look to switch. Like you, I had a bad feeling, even though my kid looked happy in pics and was fine at pickup. We switched after a month, because something didn't feel right.

I also worried the new place wouldn't be an improvement, and then we'd lose our spot at the old place. What we did was take our kid out of the old place on a Thursday and Friday to test drive the new place. If the new place felt off, too, we'd be out a few thousand in deposits, but I felt like we had to do a trial to really know. The new place was much smaller and warmer and ended up being the right call.

[Anonymous]

We moved our then 3.5 yo daughter to a new preschool when we became displeased with certain decisions and personnel changes at her daycare. She did PK3 and PK4 at a private school and then started kindergarten at our local elementary school. No regrets. She made wonderful friends at her new school, and we remain friends with some of her earliest daycare friends. I would trust your gut feeling.