Mad Dad Warning

Watch out world, Daddy is on the warpath.

Little King David spends his days at a licensed daycare center while Mommy and Daddy slave away at work. It’s not the best scenario, but like many other families in America, we have mortgage payments and child support payments to make, so the parents must work. Despite our concerns about fulltime childcare, David has flourished. He is well-adjusted, very outgoing, eager to interact with other children, and happy to arrive at school each morning.

We are blessed that David has a special connection with his primary caregiver. His teacher has a special place in her heart for him and he gets a little extra attention because of this. He is always thrilled to see her in the morning and he screams and cries when she leaves the room for her lunch break. Mommy and Daddy are happy that he has an emotional bond with her.

The problem is the daycare director. She owns a daycare center, but she doesn’t like children. Does that make any sense to you? It doesn’t make any sense to me, either!

Personally, Mommy has had several battles with this daycare director. For example, we paid the registration fee in January of the year that David was born. He was born in March and was scheduled to begin daycare in mid-April. The director assured us that we would only need to call her a week before he would begin attending. Mommy called two weeks before returning to work and was informed that there was no space available for him until June! The director finally agreed to move another child to the toddler room to make space for David, but he still couldn’t start daycare until May. Daddy had to miss two weeks of work to stay home and that was just the beginning of this fiasco.

Since then, the director raised the tuition rates by $100 per month. Then, she changed the vacation policy the week before we were scheduled to take our tuition-free week of vacation. Then, the afternoon teacher quit and the director assured Mommy and Daddy that the teacher would have been fired anyway because she was inattentive to the babies and refused to follow directions. Then, the director allowed that teacher to stay! She still works there!!!

We have bit our tongues through all of this mess because David loves his teacher and his teacher loves him. A connection like that is hard to find and we know it is valuable to his development.

Daddy is done biting his tongue.

He is going to meet with the director today because she insisted that the babies’ nap schedules change because she doesn’t want them sleeping in the afternoon when parents arrive to pick them up. She obviously doesn’t have a degree in child development and she obviously can’t read or she would know that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children ages 12-18 months should get two naps per day for a total of 3-4 hours. She obviously doesn’t know how cranky David was last night when she tried to change his nap schedule without his parents’ prior knowledge or consent.

She also probably doesn’t know that Daddy is leaving work early today to meet with her. She probably doesn’t know that he will ask her to show him the codified ordinance that grants her the authority to supersede our parenting rights when our baby is in her care and allows her to make decisions on our behalf.

God help that woman because he is one Mad Dad today!