After working in Childcare for a total of 5 years, I was astounded to see the lack of attention and care given in the Kindercare facility I worked in. I love children and always have. When I grew up, my mother had a licensed home daycare so that she could stay home with her own children and provide excellent child care for those mothers who couldn't. So when I grew up I also wanted to work in child care. When I was in College I worked for Head Start and after College I worked in a public school in Colorado then when I moved to Florida I worked for a family as their nanny and loved it. When the little boy I was caring for went to school I was no longer needed as a full time nanny so I began seeking employment elsewhere. I found I job at Kindercare not knowing their bad history and worked for a week.
At Cleawater Learning Center (owned by Kindercare/KLC) I was told I'd be working with the 3's and 4's, but when I actually started they put me in the toddler room. There were 10 toddlers in my room to two teachers which legal for licensing. However, they required so much paper work to be filled out for the children that most of the time one person was working on paper work and the other person was working with the children. (If you've ever worked with toddlers, this is just to hard to handle for one person) We took the kids outside to play for 45 minutes at a time, but when we came back inside there was nothing for the kids to drink. They'd be so thirsty and I couldn't even offer them a sippy cup of water. The only time they were offered anything to drink was at meal times.
When we were outside the other teachers would take their kids out too and the whole time the teachers would just sit near the fence and yell at the kids for anything and everything. I saw many teacher yelling at the kids to the point that they began to cry. One time I saw a teacher yell at the 4 three year olds for throwing multch in the playground. She made them sit by the fence for 20 minutes and she was yelling and lecturing them the whole time. (A three year old should only be in time out a max of 3 minutes) The poor kids were crying because they were being intimidated into compliance. One little boy was actually 2 and didn't have a clue why he was sitting there.
My kids cried for their mommies the entire day because they were bored and because the other worker in the room yelled at them (yes, she yelled at one year olds). There weren't age appropriate toys in the room so all they could do is get into trouble. The toys hadn't been sterilized in months according to another employee and every child had green runny noses (signs of a sinus infection).
One day a child was sick when he awoke from his nap. He woke up crying and had such runny stool that it soiled the sheets beneath him. I changed his diaper and told the other worker that I thought he was sick. The assistant director came in and I told her that I thought this little boy was sick and she said she'd call his parents. She never did and 20 minutes later he threw up. I called to the teacher in the room next to me and asked her to tell the director that he threw up. The teacher said she told her, but no one came to check on me in my room with the sick boy for another hour. Meanwhile, he's exposing the rest of the children and crying for his mommy. While I was waiting for someone to come help me I sent the other worker out into the playground with 5 kids while I stayed in the room with 4 and the sick little boy. Finally after 2 hours the mother came in and she asked me why we didn't call her sooner. I couldn't tell her why. All I could say is that I cared for her child as best as I could. My heart was broken for that little boy and the rest of the children. When I was caring for the sick little boy I also had children that I needed to change, but couldn't because I was busy with the one who was sick. When I finally got to change their diapers one was completely red with diaper rash because I couldn't get to him for 2 hours! I felt completely helpless there and couldn't stand giving poor care to these children who deserved far more than that!
All of that happened in one week and by the end of the week I quit. I couldn't stay there any longer and contribute to their child neglect and abuse. As far a I'm concerned, KinderCare is the worst place to put your child to be cared for and with the money you spend on tuition there you could hire a nanny. I don't understand why any parent would walk into that place and leave their precious babies there.
Something needs to be done about this!
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