Discovery Time Learning Center (Del Ray)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can't believe they left that toddler in the high chair for two hours! That is child abuse.

Yes my child is in that class and I know this situation because I spent lots of time in that class what I observed was a "busy" toddler who did nothing but bite in that classroom, the teachers did all they could do they shadow him made him their special friend etc.. from what I observed the days I was there he bit at least 4 times a day so the teacher in the class placed him in the high chair with crayons and paper and different activities, although the child in a high chair sounds bad the child was not in any danger nor upset. The only thing wrong in this situation is that the owner should have terminated that family after the first bite!

I'm a PP and my kid was in that classroom, too. She was bitten several times by that kid. I'm totally with you that the owner should have dealt with this long before she did. According to the inspection reports that kid bit others 18 times (!) I didn't spend time in the room like you so I didn't realize they had given him things to do in the high chair. IMO, keeping him in there for an extended period of time was not the way to handle the situation. I totally understand why his parents got upset about that. He needed to be expelled if his parents couldn't stop the biting.

Also, I liked Discovery Time and I like the owner. I felt sorry for her because right after she opened the place a relative got ill and she was the primary caregiver. So it's conceivable that much of this happened because she physically just couldn't be around as much as she needed to be. As someone who's also been responsible for caring for an elderly relative, I have tremendous sympathy for her situation. Problem is, you're paying a premium to put your kid there ($1600+ monthly in toddler room) and for that kind of money, you don't expect these kinds of issues.

I do hope all of this gets resolved and the daycare is a success.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can't believe they left that toddler in the high chair for two hours! That is child abuse.

Yes my child is in that class and I know this situation because I spent lots of time in that class what I observed was a "busy" toddler who did nothing but bite in that classroom, the teachers did all they could do they shadow him made him their special friend etc.. from what I observed the days I was there he bit at least 4 times a day so the teacher in the class placed him in the high chair with crayons and paper and different activities, although the child in a high chair sounds bad the child was not in any danger nor upset. The only thing wrong in this situation is that the owner should have terminated that family after the first bite!

I'm a PP and my kid was in that classroom, too. She was bitten several times by that kid. I'm totally with you that the owner should have dealt with this long before she did. According to the inspection reports that kid bit others 18 times (!) I didn't spend time in the room like you so I didn't realize they had given him things to do in the high chair. IMO, keeping him in there for an extended period of time was not the way to handle the situation. I totally understand why his parents got upset about that. He needed to be expelled if his parents couldn't stop the biting.

Also, I liked Discovery Time and I like the owner. I felt sorry for her because right after she opened the place a relative got ill and she was the primary caregiver. So it's conceivable that much of this happened because she physically just couldn't be around as much as she needed to be. As someone who's also been responsible for caring for an elderly relative, I have tremendous sympathy for her situation. Problem is, you're paying a premium to put your kid there ($1600+ monthly in toddler room) and for that kind of money, you don't expect these kinds of issues.

I do hope all of this gets resolved and the daycare is a success.

+1 to the last two paragraphs.

[Anonymous]

I worked at a daycare in the toddler room. I had a really bad biter… She belonged to one of my coworkers so there wasn't much I could do about it. The school wouldn't kick her out because her mom was an awesome teacher but the biting was crazy. Unless you made her sit next to you all day and not let her leave your side she bit. We never had an extra staff member in the room but once or twice. On those days she didn't bit because we had 3 staff for 11 kids vs 2 staff for 10.

I think they should have put an extra staff member in that room. 1600 isn't really a premium. It cost money to run a daycare. It is a daycare so lets get that straight. You can call it a learning center or preschool but it is a daycare. They feed your kids, pay insurance, pay staff, keep the lights on and so forth.

[Anonymous]

17:08 and 16:51 sound like the same poster. And the grammar/syntax is more like a daycare employee than a middle class parent.

If they can't care for a child without restraining him in a high chair all afternoon, they should have the parents find other care.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:17:08 and 16:51 sound like the same poster. And the grammar/syntax is more like a daycare employee than a middle class parent.

If they can't care for a child without restraining him in a high chair all afternoon, they should have the parents find other care.

17:08 and 16:51 on what page? I scrolled through a bit and can't fine what you are referring to

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can't believe they left that toddler in the high chair for two hours! That is child abuse.

Yes my child is in that class and I know this situation because I spent lots of time in that class what I observed was a "busy" toddler who did nothing but bite in that classroom, the teachers did all they could do they shadow him made him their special friend etc.. from what I observed the days I was there he bit at least 4 times a day so the teacher in the class placed him in the high chair with crayons and paper and different activities, although the child in a high chair sounds bad the child was not in any danger nor upset. The only thing wrong in this situation is that the owner should have terminated that family after the first bite!

I'm a PP and my kid was in that classroom, too. She was bitten several times by that kid. I'm totally with you that the owner should have dealt with this long before she did. According to the inspection reports that kid bit others 18 times (!) I didn't spend time in the room like you so I didn't realize they had given him things to do in the high chair. IMO, keeping him in there for an extended period of time was not the way to handle the situation. I totally understand why his parents got upset about that. He needed to be expelled if his parents couldn't stop the biting.

Also, I liked Discovery Time and I like the owner. I felt sorry for her because right after she opened the place a relative got ill and she was the primary caregiver. So it's conceivable that much of this happened because she physically just couldn't be around as much as she needed to be. As someone who's also been responsible for caring for an elderly relative, I have tremendous sympathy for her situation. Problem is, you're paying a premium to put your kid there ($1600+ monthly in toddler room) and for that kind of money, you don't expect these kinds of issues.

I do hope all of this gets resolved and the daycare is a success.

I can't believe you think the biting is the parents fault. I'm pretty sure if the parents were in the room, watching the child for signs and correcting the child immediately, the biting would have stopped much earlier. It is the fault of the teachers in the room, not the parents. As another post mentioned, they should have added another teacher to the room to help.

Happy to hear that the teachers were terminated or left, and that they are getting new teachers for the 2s and preschool rooms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:17:08 and 16:51 sound like the same poster. And the grammar/syntax is more like a daycare employee than a middle class parent.

If they can't care for a child without restraining him in a high chair all afternoon, they should have the parents find other care.

17:08 and 16:51 on what page? I scrolled through a bit and can't fine what you are referring to

Bottom of page 5, two posts in a row that start with "yes"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can't believe they left that toddler in the high chair for two hours! That is child abuse.

Yes my child is in that class and I know this situation because I spent lots of time in that class what I observed was a "busy" toddler who did nothing but bite in that classroom, the teachers did all they could do they shadow him made him their special friend etc.. from what I observed the days I was there he bit at least 4 times a day so the teacher in the class placed him in the high chair with crayons and paper and different activities, although the child in a high chair sounds bad the child was not in any danger nor upset. The only thing wrong in this situation is that the owner should have terminated that family after the first bite!

If a teacher was truly 100% shadowing him, he wouldn't have been biting because the teacher would have been right there to stop it. That's the whole point of shadowing. Sounds like the workers were not doing their jobs OR the director wouldn't staff the room correctly for proper shadowing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can't believe they left that toddler in the high chair for two hours! That is child abuse.

Yes my child is in that class and I know this situation because I spent lots of time in that class what I observed was a "busy" toddler who did nothing but bite in that classroom, the teachers did all they could do they shadow him made him their special friend etc.. from what I observed the days I was there he bit at least 4 times a day so the teacher in the class placed him in the high chair with crayons and paper and different activities, although the child in a high chair sounds bad the child was not in any danger nor upset. The only thing wrong in this situation is that the owner should have terminated that family after the first bite!

You are not a parent. No parent sits around their child's daycare room for hours upon hours "observing" for days and days.

[Anonymous]

I can't believe you think the biting is the parents fault. I'm pretty sure if the parents were in the room, watching the child for signs and correcting the child immediately, the biting would have stopped much earlier. It is the fault of the teachers in the room, not the parents

I don't understand why you feel the biting itself has to be anyone's fault. My son was a biter, though not to the degree described for the child at issue (no way to know if that is accurate or not). It wasn't the daycare's fault. They did correct him, but they weren't staffed to provide a one- on-one shadow to ensure it never happened. The biting wasn't our fault either, and stopped within a few months. The problem that I see is that it is not appropriate to use a high chair to restrain a child constantly to prevent biting. They should have asked the parents to leave the center if the daycare wasn't working out for their child, rather than continuing to take their money and leave the kid in a highchair.

[Anonymous]

Not a popular opinion but I live in the area and kind of knew that this would happen at the daycare.

Hiring decent daycare staff in this area is tough. The owner really would have to make a serious, concerted effort to weed out staff and then implement a very serious training environment for teachers and be very rigorous in observing, following up and letting go of teachers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not a popular opinion but I live in the area and kind of knew that this would happen at the daycare.

Hiring decent daycare staff in this area is tough. The owner really would have to make a serious, concerted effort to weed out staff and then implement a very serious training environment for teachers and be very rigorous in observing, following up and letting go of teachers.

Which may have been her intention, but impossible to do being offsite/away due to family issues.

[Anonymous]

I can't believe you think the biting is the parents fault. I'm pretty sure if the parents were in the room, watching the child for signs and correcting the child immediately, the biting would have stopped much earlier. It is the fault of the teachers in the room, not the parents. As another post mentioned, they should have added another teacher to the room to help.

Happy to hear that the teachers were terminated or left, and that they are getting new teachers for the 2s and preschool rooms.


That teacher was not terminated.

[Anonymous]

I had a friend who worked their while we were looking for a place to send my 20 month old daughter. I knew she was looking for a new place to work maybe a month into working there. It's sad because she is a great teacher, and she left a private school to work at Discovery Time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Same reason daycares in Crystal City have a hard time staffing quality people at the corporate daycares. Only the true workforce dregs will take daycare worker pay in those areas. And In Alexandria you are getting uneducated, non-English speaking immigrants or poor black women from the nearby public housing.

That sounds pithy but isn't true. My child was at another daycare in Old Town, and her teachers all spoke English and didn't live in nearby public housing. In fact, so many of the teachers lived elsewhere that the daycare followed Fairfax schools' snow closure policy rather than that of Alexandria City schools.