Goodbye, Goddard…
…Hello, Melissa!
Starting tomorrow, Natalie will be going to a new daycare—an in-home daycare. We’ve realized that big daycare is not the right setting for Natalie or for us. Although she got comfortable with her teachers, wasn’t crying at drop-off, and napped well at school, Natalie was not thriving at Goddard. Most people we talked to about daycare told us that Natalie would learn more things faster being in a daycare environment. But after going to school 3 days per week for 5 months, Natalie still wasn’t talking while she was there. Her teachers reported that if they ever heard her babbling to herself while playing, as soon as they tried to engage her, she shut down and wouldn’t respond. Although this concerned us, Natalie has been thriving in general, so we didn’t start looking for other options until Natalie started transitioning to the toddler room.
When we toured the school last February, they stressed how slowly they transitioned the children from one room to the next. I had expressed my concerns to the school director about Natalie adjusting to the toddler room (the toddler room starts at 18 months) a month or so before Natalie was scheduled to start, given how long it took Natalie to adjust to school in the first place. Again, I was assured that the transition would happen very slowly, with the children visiting their new classroom with a familiar teacher for increasing lengths of time. We received a packet of information about the transition and the toddler room that stated that the transition could take 1-4 weeks depending on the child. Her transition was scheduled to start on June 30.
When I got to school on June 30, the head teacher in the infant room looked surprised to see us and told me that Natalie was to be dropped off in the toddler room. I was flabbergasted. I assumed that the start of the transition would be the start of the visits to the new room. Then I noticed that every room seemed to have crying children, which is normally not the case. Jennifer, the head infant room teacher, explained that there would be lots of crying today because a number of children were starting in new rooms. This was not transitioning, it was making kids change their routines cold-turkey.
I told Jennifer that there was no way I was leaving Natalie in the new room. After leaving her in the infant room, I spoke with the school owners and the director, who were surprised that I didn’t realize that that day was the day Natalie would be in the toddler room. They also couldn’t tell me if Natalie had ever visited the toddler room before. We felt that despite our best efforts to tell the school our concerns, they were not communicating with us. They apologized and said they would do better.
The next day, I went with Natalie to visit the toddler room. When Natalie and I left, I had a horrible feeling in the pit in my stomach. I knew there was no way I could ever leave Natalie alone there. There was nothing abusive, neglectful, or incompetent happening. The three teachers in the toddler room were doing all the things they were supposed to do: singing songs, reading books, giving out snacks, etc., but in my opinion they may as well have been robots. None of them seems to display any enthusiasm for the children. None of them seemed engaged or appeared to enjoy their jobs. Those factors, combined with a higher student to teacher ratio in the toddler room, plus difficulty communicating with the school management led us to the decision to find another child care arrangement for Natalie.
When we first started looking at daycares, a friend recommended we look at Monday Morning, Inc. For some reason at the time, I pooh-poohed the idea. On one hand I regret not looking into it before, and on the other hand, I realize that we couldn’t have known that daycare wouldn’t work for Natalie until we tried it. Anyway, Monday Morning does all the vetting for the clients, and does ongoing inspections and support for the providers. They led us to Melissa, who will start watching Natalie 3 days per week tomorrow. Melissa worked at a daycare for years before having her own children, comes highly recommended, and has a sweet, down-to-earth personality. It may be another hard transition for Natalie, but we’re hoping she’ll adjust to the smaller, homey setting a little easier and quicker than she took to daycare. Two of her teachers at Goddard told us that they also believed that Natalie would be better off in a smaller setting with fewer children.
Melissa has two of her own kids, ages 6 and 4. The 6-year-old goes to school, and Melissa also watches a 2.5-year-old and will have a 5-month-old starting in October. So for most of the day, it’s a 4:1 child to “teacher” ratio. We’ve visited Melissa every week since we decided to make the switch, and taken and looked at pictures and videos of Natalie with Melissa and the other kids. From the first time we went to her house, Natalie appeared to be comfortable. When I asked Natalie to recall our last visit to Melissa’s, she exclaimed, “Fun!” Fingers crossed that Melissa’s will still be fun when Mommy leaves her there and goes to work!
Are you still reading?? Man, I can be long-winded! To balance my wordiness, here are some of the latest pictures of Natalie.
I put her hair in pigtails for the first time a couple of weeks ago…although she likes having “2 ponytails!” she screams and wiggles through the process of hair dressing, so I doubt it’s a look that will be repeated anytime soon.
Natalie loves to color and eat at her new just-her-size table. I love that I bought it from Craig’s List for a mere $15!!
Natalie enjoying an afternoon dip in her kiddie pool:
Natalie mad that I won’t let her hold the camera:
